Needing to vent about selfish daycare parents.

[FS2011]

I have 4 respectful, kind and understanding daycare families and one that has become so selfish or maybe just finally showing their true colors. I started having conflict with them over their sons behavior. This has led to communication issues and very little respect. My child and another in care has come down with a viral infection that is very contagious and painful spots appear over parts of the body. And immediate isolation of the 2 children occurred and most families found alternate care for the rest of the week except for one family that bullied me into remaining open for them and they will take their chances in their child getting I'll. Now I'm telling them I have decided I must close because my child needs rest. They are not even showing empathy for my child or the situation and threatening to find other daycare.
It's so hard to be in this industry! You put all you have into these little people all day, to not even get as much as a thank you! It's a take take situation it seems, 80% of the time. I have never been a parent with a child in daycare so I can't understand what goes on in parents minds!!??

[Play and Learn]

Good for you for standing up. No one should bully a business owner to stay open. It's YOUR business, and YOU and only YOU make the rules.

The way I think about it: Family comes first, then work. They don't like it, then they can leave. They have NO RESPECT for you, your family or your business.

Start to document what they have been doing, and if you have to term them, you have all the documentation, and it will be that much easier to do!

Good luck to you!

[Judy Trickett]

................NEXT !

I would terminate a family like that. Your JOB is to keep kids safe and yes, that means closing down when some nasty bug is going through your daycare.

[playfelt]

Going to take the side of the parents on this one sorry. They contracted with you for a service which you are no longer able to provide. I get that the circumstances are beyond your control but they are looking at this from a business standpoint not a social one. Empathy has nothing to do with it. They are working and need daycare. If you can no longer provide the service for whatever reason they are free to go elsewhere. Not sure what the complaint is. Yes they sound selfish and not too concerned for the welfare of their child or totally naive about the spread of viruses. Are you expecting these parents to pay for the days that you are closed. If your child needs rest then fine, it means a tv day which will distract your own child from their illness too. When an illness goes through my house I give parents the option of staying home if they want/can and then restructure the day to be all freeplay, restricted activities depending on what I want to sanitize or how everyone including me is feeling. Mom of 4 though so maybe that makes a difference since even without daycare I would be catering to several so the diversion for my own healthy ones was always nice leaving me to cuddle with the sickies.

[zen39]

Going to take the side of the parents on this one sorry. They contracted with you for a service which you are no longer able to provide. I get that the circumstances are beyond your control but they are looking at this from a business standpoint not a social one. Empathy has nothing to do with it. They are working and need daycare. If you can no longer provide the service for whatever reason they are free to go elsewhere. Not sure what the complaint is. Yes they sound selfish and not too concerned for the welfare of their child or totally naive about the spread of viruses. Are you expecting these parents to pay for the days that you are closed. If your child needs rest then fine, it means a tv day which will distract your own child from their illness too. When an illness goes through my house I give parents the option of staying home if they want/can and then restructure the day to be all freeplay, restricted activities depending on what I want to sanitize or how everyone including me is feeling. Mom of 4 though so maybe that makes a difference since even without daycare I would be catering to several so the diversion for my own healthy ones was always nice leaving me to cuddle with the sickies.

I get what your saying but I have to completely disagree with you. For me personally, I explained to parents when they signed up that I was not a daycare center, rules are different here. If I have a sick day or one of my kids has a contagious illness and I need to shut down than that parent is required to find alternate care. When they sign up, I explained they need to have back up caregiving for these kinds of circumstances. I don't charge them for this time off. They can use the money they would have paid me to pay someone else if need be.

It has nothing to do with watching 2 or 4 kids. It's putting the needs of your child first. I would rather say no to parents then shut my child off into another room for the day. I don't close down for just any illness, but for a highly contagious and painful spot illness, I would be crazy not to. Considering that things like this happen so rarely is it really unreasonable to close down for a couple of days? I don't think so.

[Judy Trickett]

I get what your saying but I have to completely disagree with you. For me personally, I explained to parents when they signed up that I was not a daycare center, rules are different here. If I have a sick day or one of my kids has a contagious illness and I need to shut down than that parent is required to find alternate care. When they sign up, I explained they need to have back up caregiving for these kinds of circumstances. I don't charge them for this time off. They can use the money they would have paid me to pay someone else if need be.

It has nothing to do with watching 2 or 4 kids. It's putting the needs of your child first. I would rather say no to parents then shut my child off into another room for the day. I don't close down for just any illness, but for a highly contagious and painful spot illness, I would be crazy not to. Considering that things like this happen so rarely is it really unreasonable to close down for a couple of days? I don't think so.

Yep. When you sign on at a home daycare then there are certain things you accept. And one of those things is that there WILL be times during the year that you do not have available daycare.

Parents want all the pluses of home daycare - smaller numbers of kids, (usually) healthier foods AND, let's face it - MUCH cheaper fees. Well, you get what you get. There is a reason big centres charge more and of those things they charge for is a guarantee of 100% service on EVERY day they claim to be open.

And, let's face it. If a daycare centre had 40% of it's kids with an virus then WOULD close because the health unit would force them to. Well, if you only care for 4 or 5 kids and 2 of them have the virus then that's the same ratio.

[Skysue]

I'm a caregiver too and I think Playfelt is just trying to tell the parents point of view?
My own daughter come out with a very weird rash last year that no one could diagnos, all the kids were exposed and it came down to the parents keeping there kids in my care due to the fact that they were already exposed. She never had any other symptoms outside of the rash so i was ok with it. With that said if she became extremley ill then I would have closed and I'm sure my parents would have had to comply.

It all depends on the situation.

Don't you think?

WRONG! A service that is no longer being provided is a service that ceases to exist permanently. Service disruptions are a fact of life in this world. Human beings are not robots nor are they slaves. If you wish to consider YOURSELF a slave, then so be it, but DON'T expect everyone else to act in the same manner that you do nor treat their own children as Second Class Citizens in their own home by their own mothers. And reducing the quality of service to the healthy children because the "sickies" are in need of cuddling -which SHOULD BE COMING FROM THEIR MOM - is a poor service. I am a daycare, not a hospital. If my child is sick and in need of medical care and rest, I close my daycare a day. If she is not charging, and it's in her contract that this may happen from time to time and the parents signed the contract, it is legal and binding and they agreed to the terms of service. Too many parents just sign the contract without reading it then play dumb. Too many parents are lax about the care of their children and read furnace service contracts in greater detail then they do the terms of care for their most precious possessions.

I am completely shocked at your lack of responsibility to the health of the children in general. When a daycare provider's child is sick enough that she needs to close down to care for her own child cause God knows, we didn't sign up for this job to neglect our own children, she needs to do just that. These parents drop their kids off sick and go to work. When the PARENTS are sick, they drop their kids off so THEY can have alone time to rest and relax - we don't get that luxury. We have to take care of ourselves and our families to have a healthy environment for other people's children to come into because THAT'S what the parents expect. If the daycare home is constantly overrun with viruses and the daycare kids are always getting sick and the parents are using up all of their vacation to care for their sick kids who can't go to daycare, then they leave. I'm sure that closing for a day to care for your own child is the better route to STOP the constant proliferation of viruses. A sick house is both physically healthy and emotionally unhealthy. A daycare provider is NOT service slave and these parents have employers who CONTRACT with them to provide a service and when they're unable to provide that service due to illness and family, you don't see their employers bullying them to come to work - they have backup employees. Well, ALL parents should have backup care. I'm sure a D/C provider in their neighbourhood wouldn't mind being over numbers for one day.

When a caregiver does this to another caregiver, my blood boils. Never side with a parent who is bullying another caregiver.

[Skysue]

This definatley depends on the illness, I hope. What would you do if the flu rocked your daycare?

Going to take the side of the parents on this one sorry. They contracted with you for a service which you are no longer able to provide. I get that the circumstances are beyond your control but they are looking at this from a business standpoint not a social one. Empathy has nothing to do with it. They are working and need daycare. If you can no longer provide the service for whatever reason they are free to go elsewhere. Not sure what the complaint is. Yes they sound selfish and not too concerned for the welfare of their child or totally naive about the spread of viruses. Are you expecting these parents to pay for the days that you are closed. If your child needs rest then fine, it means a tv day which will distract your own child from their illness too. When an illness goes through my house I give parents the option of staying home if they want/can and then restructure the day to be all freeplay, restricted activities depending on what I want to sanitize or how everyone including me is feeling. Mom of 4 though so maybe that makes a difference since even without daycare I would be catering to several so the diversion for my own healthy ones was always nice leaving me to cuddle with the sickies.

[FS2011]

That's just it, I am a family daycare...not a group facility with extra staff etc. They wouldn't be charged for the time I closed down. I really want to to term them but I'm way to nervous about it because I have documented much and I'm just going off of feelings.

[mamaof4]

this may be like other issues- we may just have really different points of view