Follow-up from Annie

Remember Annie's creepy "birth mother" comment from her son's caregiver at daycare? She sent me an update on the situation:

"I confronted the caregiver and she claimed that she never said anything like that.  It was a difficult situation- I didn't want to accuse her of lying but I know what I heard.  I approached the conversation from the stand point of- "well, here is how I feel because this is what I thought you said."  I also told her that when I was visiting my son she didn't need to spend a lot of time and attention on him.  Prior to talking to this caregiver I spoke with the second caregiver in the room and asked if she had seen anything alarming or heard anything strange.  She understood why I would be upset but said she didn't see or hear anything that would set off any red flags.  Since my conversation with the caregiver she is not as friendly with me and is often short in her responses, I haven't seen any additional alarming behavior though.  We’ve been so very happy about the care our son has received- and really have had no complaints- aside from this major one. This incident has definitely been disappointing- as all of you know- child care is a very complicated and difficult entity- the guilt can be over whelming, but knowing that your child is well taken care of and happy at the establishment certainly makes things easier to deal with.  Because of our experience with this place we have decided to continue with care here.  Happily my son is moving into a new room starting at the end of May. 

Thank you so much for all your comments and words of advise- I will definitely post again to this site- I appreciate the support that I received!"

Comments

[anon]

Thanks so much for the update. I've been thinking about your situation, and even went back to check the old thread a few times to see if there might be any news.

[Kay]

Yay! Happy news!

[Bobbe]

I don't want to be a negative nelly, but it might be a good idea to pursue this a bit further -- I get the feeling that the caregiver lied to you, and was supported in this lie by her coworkers, but perhaps I'm misreading the situation.

I was having some (what I thought were) small conflicts with my caregiver of more than two years (in her home, I'd been using her full time since my son was 7 months old). I read of your situation in Moxie's original post with a feeling of "at least my situation isn't that bad."

Until my babysitter revealed that she had not been making ANY attempt to communicate with my son on his level since he had turned two, because he wasn't being as verbal as she thought was "age appropriate"--- and then she quit abruptly rather than deal with the situation.

Now I get to deal with the guilt of knowing that my son was miserable for at least a year and a half because I wasn't watching the cues of bonding etc with his babysitter. My son, thank goodness, seems to be bouncing back quite well since he stopped going to her place three weeks ago-- is talking MUCH more, no longer deals with chronic constipation, etc.

Anyway, all that to say, I know it's tough to consider changing what appears to be a good situation, but... it's important to be on the lookout for the small clues that something is wrong, because the kid isn't old enough or mature enough to tell us these things.