Am I the asshole for pulling my daughter out of daycare mid-day and refusing to bring her back?
I (32F) have been dropping Penny off at Sunshine Kids on Maple since she was eighteen months old. She’s four now. I work full-time as a pharmacy tech – I can’t just not have childcare. My husband Derek (35M) thinks I overreacted. My mom thinks I did the right thing. My friends are split and I’m going insane trying to figure out if I blew up our childcare situation over nothing.
Penny has always loved daycare. She’d run in without looking back at me, backpack bouncing, calling out for her teachers. Three weeks ago that stopped completely.
She started crying at drop-off. Clinging to my leg. I figured it was a phase – every parent in that parking lot told me their kid went through it. Then she stopped eating lunch. Her teachers mentioned it casually, like it was nothing. Then she started wetting the bed again, which she hadn’t done since she was two.
I asked her what was wrong. She’d just say “I don’t like it there anymore.” When I pushed, she’d change the subject or start crying. Four-year-olds aren’t always able to say what they mean, so I kept watching.
Last Tuesday I picked her up early because she had a dentist appointment. I got there at 1pm instead of 5. The front desk woman wasn’t at her station, so I walked back to the nap room myself.
Penny was awake on her mat in the corner. Not napping. Just lying there, completely still, staring at the ceiling while the other kids slept.
That’s not what stopped me cold.
It was the aide standing over her.
I don’t know his name. I’ve never seen him before. He was crouched down next to Penny’s mat, close, and when I walked in he stood up fast and took three steps back. Penny’s head turned toward me and she scrambled to her feet so quickly she tripped.
She ran to me and grabbed my hand with both of hers and said, “Mommy, can we go? Can we go right now?”
I picked her up. I signed her out. I strapped her in the car.
On the drive to the dentist she was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “Mommy, I told Miss Dana I didn’t want to nap by the window anymore and she said I had to.”
I asked her why she didn’t want to nap by the window.
She looked at her hands in her lap and said, “Because that’s where he comes and – “
And Then She Stopped
She didn’t finish the sentence.
She just stopped, the way kids do when they realize they’ve said something big, when they don’t have the words for the rest of it, when they look out the car window instead of at you.
I kept my voice even. I asked her what she meant. She said she didn’t know. I asked her who “he” was. She said she didn’t know his name. I asked her what he did when he came to the window mat.
She said, “He talks to me.”
I said, “What does he say?”
She picked at a thread on her leggings. “Stuff.”
I didn’t push. I know enough to not push. You push and they shut down, or they tell you what they think you want to hear, and neither of those helps anyone. I asked if she liked it when he talked to her.
She shook her head. Small, quick.
That was enough for me.
We did the dentist appointment. She had a small cavity. The hygienist gave her a purple toothbrush and she carried it like a trophy all the way back to the car. I drove home instead of back to Sunshine Kids. I told her she didn’t have to go back today.
She fell asleep in her car seat before we hit the highway.
What Derek Said
Derek got home at 6:30. I had already called the daycare and left a message saying Penny wouldn’t be in Wednesday, and I’d been sitting at the kitchen table with my phone, going back and forth in my head about what to do next.
I told him everything. The aide. The mat by the window. The sentence she didn’t finish.
He was quiet for a while. That’s Derek’s thing, he goes quiet before he speaks, which I used to think was patience and now sometimes reads to me as hesitation.
He said, “Did she say he did anything?”
I said he talked to her. Crouched over her while she was lying on a mat. Made her scared enough that she stopped eating, stopped sleeping dry, stopped running into a building she used to love.
He said, “But she didn’t say he touched her or anything.”
I said I knew that.
He said, “I just don’t want us to blow up a two-year relationship with this place over a misunderstanding. She’s four. She might have the story mixed up.”
And here’s the thing. He’s not wrong that four-year-olds get things mixed up. He’s not wrong that I don’t have the full picture. He’s not a bad father for saying it.
But I kept seeing the way that man stood up and took three steps back when I walked in.
You don’t do that if you’re just checking on a kid.
Wednesday Morning
I didn’t send her Wednesday. I called in a favor with my mom, who took Penny for the day, and I drove to Sunshine Kids alone.
I asked to speak with the director, a woman named Carol Briggs who I’d met exactly twice before, both times at enrollment paperwork meetings. She has reading glasses on a beaded chain and a laminated staff photo on her desk.
I told her what I saw. I described the aide, what he looked like, the crouching, the three steps back, the way Penny ran to me. I told her what Penny said in the car. The mat by the window. The talking. The sentence that stopped.
Carol listened. She nodded in the right places. She said she took these concerns very seriously.
I asked her who the aide was.
She said she’d have to look into it.
I asked if it was possible someone was in the nap room Tuesday who wasn’t on the regular staff.
She said they sometimes had subs come through an agency.
I asked if the subs were background-checked.
She said of course, absolutely, all their staff went through a full vetting process.
I asked if she could tell me specifically who was in the nap room Tuesday at 1pm.
She said she’d need to pull schedules and she’d call me.
She has not called me.
That was four days ago.
What I Did Next
I filed a report with CPS. I want to be clear about this because some people in my life acted like that was a nuclear option, like I’d accused someone of something proven. I hadn’t. I reported what I observed and what my daughter said. That’s what you’re supposed to do. The person who takes the report decides what it means, not me.
The intake worker was a woman who sounded like she’d had this exact conversation a hundred times. She was not unkind. She asked me the same questions Carol did, in a different order. She asked if Penny had any physical marks or injuries. No. She asked if Penny had made any direct disclosure of abuse. No, not in those words, not in any words she finished saying.
She told me they’d follow up.
I also called a child psychologist whose name I got from our pediatrician, a woman named Dr. Falk, who has a waiting list but whose receptionist told me they could fit us in for an intake appointment in two weeks. Two weeks feels like a long time. It also feels like the right thing to do, which is the only thing I can hold onto right now.
The People With Opinions
My mom thinks I was right. She said she’d have done the same thing. She also said some things about the aide that I’m not going to repeat here because they were based on nothing and that’s not fair to anyone.
Derek came around by Thursday. He said he’d been thinking about it and he didn’t want to be the person who talked me out of protecting our kid. He apologized for the “she might have it mixed up” comment. He meant it, I think. He’s been the one putting Penny to bed the last few nights, reading her extra chapters, letting her sleep with the overhead light on if she wants.
She’s been sleeping dry again. Three nights in a row.
My friend Becca thinks I’m overreacting. She said kids go through phases, the regression stuff is normal, lots of kids hate nap time, and I might have walked in and misread a totally innocent interaction. She’s not cruel for saying it. She has two kids and nothing like this has ever happened to her and she’s used to daycare being fine.
She’s also never seen her kid run across a room and grab her with both hands asking to leave.
My friend Jess said, “You don’t owe anyone an explanation for pulling your kid out of a place that scared her.” Which isn’t really an answer to whether I was wrong. But it’s the sentence I’ve been reading back to myself at 2am.
What I’m Doing About Childcare
I don’t have a solution yet. That’s the honest answer.
My mom can do two days a week, maybe three if her PT appointments don’t conflict. Derek is looking at whether he can shift his hours to start earlier and pick Penny up from wherever she ends up. I’ve toured one other center, a place called Little Learners over on Greer Street, which is $200 more a month than Sunshine Kids and has a waitlist I’m now on.
I’m working four days this week instead of five. My supervisor, a guy named Phil who is not particularly warm but is fair, said I could adjust my schedule temporarily while I sorted out childcare. I don’t know how long temporarily means.
I’m also looking at in-home options. A woman in our neighborhood, Karen Doyle, watches three kids out of her house and has for twelve years. I haven’t called her yet. I keep meaning to.
The thing is, none of this is the point.
The point is I walked into a room and my daughter ran to me.
What Penny Said This Morning
She was eating cereal. Cheerios, dry, no milk, which is a hill she’s been dying on for about six months now. She had her stuffed rabbit on the chair next to her.
She looked up at me and said, “Mommy, are we going to the old school today?”
I said no. I said she wasn’t going back there.
She looked back down at her cereal. She picked up a single Cheerio and held it. Then she said, “Good.”
Just that. Good.
She didn’t look relieved. She didn’t cry. She just said good, the way you’d say it about weather, and went back to eating.
I stood at the kitchen counter and looked at the back of her head, the little elastic in her hair that was already going crooked, and I thought: I don’t care what anyone thinks I should have done.
I don’t care if Carol Briggs calls me back. I don’t care if CPS finds nothing. I don’t care if Derek’s coworkers think we overreacted or if Becca thinks I burned down a perfectly good childcare relationship.
Penny said good and ate her Cheerio.
That’s the whole thing. That’s all of it.
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If this one sat with you, pass it along to another parent. They’ll know exactly what this feels like.
If you’re dealing with a difficult situation and wondering if you’re in the wrong, check out how other people handled similar dilemmas, like the grandma who went behind her daughter-in-law’s back after her grandson said, “I’m Not Supposed to Say,” or the person who “Reported Her to Security Before I Knew Who She Was.” Sometimes, the best way to gain perspective is to read about someone else’s experience, like the officer who found “A Note Was Left Under My Keyboard at the Precinct and Now I Can’t Unsee What I Know.”
