Parents being rude to your kids

[Littledragon]

Mom drops her son off this morning and he has a cookie in his hand. My son sees his cookie, and like a zombie, is totally attracted to it. I'm like, great, and tell my son I will get him one too. I'm saying come on, let's go get one, trying to get mom to leave, she just stands there. My son is continuously trying to get to her kids' cookie while I am trying to usher her out the door. She bends over, takes her kids arm and pushes my son's hand away and says "stop" like he's a dog. It wasn't like, an authoratative stop, it was like "you're ***ing annoying, stop." I really didn't like her tone or the way she pushed his hand. I was sort of shocked so I just picked up my son and got him a cookie. Finally mom left, but the more I think about it, the more it pisses me off. FIRST OF ALL, she brought her kid with a cookie, what did she think was going to happen, second of all - there's no reason to talk to my kid like that, I don't talk to her kid like that.

What would you do?

[Lou]

I would have sent the cookie back with Mom and said "You can have breakfast here, Johnny, but cookies are for dessert and it needs to go bye bye with Mommy".
I would email Mom and tell her that for the future, if her child was unable to eat breakfast at home then she may pack a healthy breakfast for him to eat here after drop off. I would include a short list of healthy foods (fruit, yogurt, granola, etc) too to make it EXTRA clear, lol.
That would tick me off too!

[Crayola kiddies]

Immediately you should have taken the cookie and handed it back to her and said sorry no outside food is allowed especially not cookies in the morning.

[mimi]

She should not have touched your child. That is over the line. I would have a calm chat with her about the incident and let her know that her child should not come with food that you have not o.k.ed and that if your child needs some instruction, that it will come from you. Also let her know you don't condone physical force in your daycare towards any of the children in your care.

[Inspired by Reggio]

...What would you do?

Yup - the minute they showed up with food from outside my home I would have told her 'Sorry ~ if he wants to finish that you need to go back to the car - otherwise here's the garbage you'll need to toss it out .... although my 'no outside food' is mainly due to allergies this is another reason ~ it is not fair to the others to see someone coming in with a perceived 'treat' that they cannot have!

However now that we are dealing with 'hindsight' I would approach it with a 'I was not comfortable with this mornings interaction over the cookie ~ " and that put in how you want to handle either NO outside food, only outside food if they bring something to SHARE or only 'healthy breakfast type options' whatever works for your program?

[skippy]

I'm not the best with confrontation so I would probably send home random news letters with rules that come up, issues to be addressed, and include some fun stuff like future outings, recipes the children liked etc.

[Sandbox Sally]

I'm kinda bad with confrontation too, but I would most definitely address this. As everyone else upthread has said, I am uncomfortable with the nutrition level of the "breakfast" as well as her behaviour toward your child. This would not be acceptable to me.

[Littledragon]

Thank god! I thought I was completely nuts! I have made the decision to terminate. Not due to this, but EVERYTHING I've dealt with in the past few months. Mom's pregnant (whole other bitter issue), and he may not be staying past October, and I feel bad letting him go when she only has a few months left, but I'm fed up. I am now actively looking for someone to replace them. I don't think there are ANY issues left to address with them. The ONLY thing they haven't "done wrong" was paying me on time lol which I guess is a big issue but EVERYTHING else has been an issue.

Thanks for making me feel like I'm not completely nutso lol

[apples and bananas]

I have a mom that shows up with bags of fish crackers... cheesy's (yup in the morning) cookies, bananas ect. Such a pain! And rude too. I don't send my children to other peoples house food in hand.

[playfelt]

You are not completely nutso. If the situation was reversed a parent would have walked out and not come back. In this case the parent was totally out of line on so many counts just with this one incidents. Add in other issues and that just makes it more compelling.

If you do keep this child then no matter what happens in daycare she will blame it on your son so you are no further ahead just delaying a future issue.

I like that you have decided to term. The fact she is pregnant and going to cause disruption in the fall anyways is besides the point. Replace now so you have a new group in place for the fall.