Am I the asshole for pulling my daughter out of daycare mid-day and telling the director exactly why on my way out the door?
I (32F) have been sending my daughter Brianna (4) to Sunshine Kids Learning Center for almost two years. I work 40 hours a week as a dental hygienist, I’m a single mom, and that place was the only thing making my schedule work. I gave up a spot at a closer daycare to get Brianna in there because three other moms I trusted said it was the best in the area. I was on a waitlist for seven months.
Brianna has always been a talker. From the time she could string sentences together, she would get in the car and narrate her entire day – who said what, who cried at lunch, what song they did at circle time. Last month, that stopped.
She started going quiet on the drive home. Stopped eating dinner most nights. She wet the bed twice, which hadn’t happened since she was two. I thought maybe she was getting sick. I made a doctor’s appointment. But then she started doing this thing where she’d freeze up whenever I said it was time to get ready for school.
Not tantrum. Not crying. Just – still. Staring at nothing.
I mentioned it to her lead teacher, a woman named Donna, who’s been there for six years. Donna said Brianna was “going through an adjustment” and that some kids just get clingy in the fall. She said it with this smile that made me feel like I was being handled.
I let it go for two more weeks. I don’t know why. I think I needed the daycare more than I wanted to admit.
Then last Tuesday, I was dropping Brianna off and she grabbed my arm so hard her fingernails left marks. She wouldn’t let go. She kept saying “don’t make me go in, don’t make me go in” over and over, not crying, just saying it in this flat voice that made my stomach turn. I had to pry her fingers off my arm in the parking lot.
I went to work. I stared at a patient’s teeth for four hours and felt sick the whole time.
At 1pm I told my supervisor I had a family emergency and I drove back to Sunshine Kids. I didn’t call ahead. I signed in at the front desk and asked where Brianna’s room was, which they already knew, and I walked down the hall.
I stopped outside the door because I could hear Donna’s voice through the window, and something about the tone made me stop instead of walking in.
That’s when I saw what was happening inside that room.
What I Saw Through the Glass
Donna was crouched down in front of a little boy named Marcus. I recognized him because Brianna used to talk about him all the time. Marcus built the best block towers. Marcus knew all the dinosaur names. That Marcus.
He was crying. Not the loud, theatrical crying four-year-olds do when they want something. The other kind. The quiet kind where they’ve already learned that loud doesn’t help.
Donna had her face about six inches from his. Her voice was low, which is why I’d heard the tone before I heard the words. I pressed closer to the window.
“You don’t get a snack if you can’t sit correctly. We’ve talked about this. Do you want everyone to wait because of you?”
Marcus shook his head. His whole body was shaking.
“Then fix your face. Nobody wants to see that.”
I stood in the hallway for maybe three seconds. Then I opened the door.
Donna looked up. The smile appeared so fast it was almost impressive. The kind of smile that’s been practiced until it’s automatic.
“Oh, Brianna’s mom. We weren’t expecting you.”
“I can see that,” I said.
Brianna was at a table in the back of the room. She saw me and went completely rigid, the way she’d been doing at home, that freeze I couldn’t explain. Then something shifted in her face and she started crying, and she ran at me so hard she nearly knocked me down.
She didn’t say anything. Just grabbed two fists full of my shirt and held on.
I looked at Donna over the top of Brianna’s head. Donna was still smiling.
The Conversation I Should Have Had Sooner
I’d met Donna probably forty times by then. Drop-offs, pick-ups, two parent-teacher conferences where she told me Brianna was “blossoming” and “such a joy.” I’d bought her a Starbucks gift card at Christmas. Twenty-five dollars. I remember picking it out.
I asked Brianna, right there in the classroom, “Do you like coming here?”
Donna started to say something. I held up one hand and she stopped.
Brianna kept her face against my shoulder. She shook her head.
“Does something happen here that makes you feel bad?”
Nothing for a moment. Then a very small nod.
I picked her up. She’s almost five, she’s not light, but I picked her up and I grabbed her backpack off the hook with the little turtle tag she’d picked out herself, and I walked toward the door.
Donna said, “I think it would be better to talk about this when Brianna isn’t upset.”
I turned around.
“She’s upset because she’s relieved,” I said. “There’s a difference.”
Donna opened her mouth. I left.
The Director’s Office
Her name was Pam. Office at the end of the hall, door with a little placard, a rubber plant in the corner that was definitely fake. She stood up when I came in carrying Brianna and I could tell from her face that she’d already gotten a text or a look from someone at the front desk.
“Mrs. Kowalski, let’s just – “
“It’s Ms.,” I said. “And I’m not here to have a conversation. I’m here to tell you what I saw so you have it in writing that I told you.”
I described what I’d witnessed with Marcus. Donna’s face six inches from his. Nobody wants to see that. I described Brianna’s behavior over the past month, the bed-wetting, the freezing up, the parking lot that morning with the fingernails and the flat voice saying don’t make me go in.
Pam was nodding in this careful way that meant she was managing me, same as Donna’s smile had been managing me for two weeks.
“I understand your concerns and I want you to know we take – “
“I’m withdrawing Brianna today. I’ll send the formal notice by email tonight.” I shifted Brianna to my other hip. “And I’m going to suggest you check on the other kids in that room. Specifically Marcus. He was crying in a way that told me this wasn’t the first time.”
Pam wrote something on a notepad. I don’t know what.
I walked out.
The Drive Home
Brianna fell asleep in her car seat before we hit the highway. She just went out like a light, the way she used to do when she was a baby and something had worn her all the way down.
I drove with one hand and kept checking her in the rearview.
The marks from her fingernails that morning were still on my arm. Four little half-moons on the inside of my forearm. I’d been looking at them all day at work, sitting in my scrubs, and telling myself I was overreacting. That Donna had six years of experience. That some kids just get clingy in the fall.
I’ve been a single mom since Brianna was fourteen months old. I’ve made every decision alone. What pediatrician, what apartment, what daycare. When you’re doing it alone you second-guess yourself constantly because there’s no one to say yeah, that’s weird, trust your gut. You get used to eating your instincts and calling it being reasonable.
I wasn’t being reasonable. I was being scared.
There’s a difference.
What Came After
I texted three moms from the center that night. Two of them had kids in Donna’s room. I told them what I’d seen, kept it factual, didn’t editorialize.
One of them, a woman named Carol whose son Danny had also stopped wanting to go in, texted back: oh my god. oh my god I knew something was off.
The other one didn’t respond until the next morning. She said she appreciated me letting her know and that she’d be speaking to the director.
I don’t know what happened after that. I pulled Brianna out and I’m not in that group chat anymore. I heard through Carol that at least two other families asked questions. I don’t know if anything came of it.
What I do know is that Brianna talked the whole drive home from the park on Saturday. Twenty minutes of who said what, who fell off the climbing structure, what kind of bird she saw near the water fountain. She wasn’t sure if it was a sparrow or a pigeon and this was apparently a very serious question that required a full investigation.
She ate all her dinner.
She slept through the night.
The Part I Keep Thinking About
I keep coming back to those two weeks after I talked to Donna. The two weeks I waited.
I knew something was wrong. I knew it the way you know things about your own kid, in your back teeth, in the way you can’t sleep right. And I convinced myself it was me being anxious, me being a helicopter parent, me not trusting the professionals.
Donna had six years of experience. The center had good ratings. Three moms I trusted had recommended it.
And my four-year-old was leaving fingernail marks on my arm in a parking lot every morning and I was going to work anyway.
I’m not writing this to get absolution. I already know I’m not the asshole for leaving. I think I’m writing it because of the two weeks before that. Because I want someone else who’s sitting in that two weeks right now, eating their instincts and calling it being reasonable, to read this and maybe not wait as long as I did.
Brianna saw a sparrow on Saturday. Or possibly a pigeon. The investigation is ongoing.
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If this one got to you, share it. Someone you know might be in the middle of their own two weeks.
For more stories about parents at the end of their rope, check out My Son Was Sitting on the Bathroom Floor Trying to Hold Himself Together. That’s When Derek’s Face Told Me Everything., My Babysitter Said “He Doesn’t Know” – I Was Standing Right Behind Her, and She Said Her Name Out Loud and My Stomach Fell Through the Floor.
