Being a daycare worker is hard work, especially when children act out on account of their parents not being present. However, what happens when the parents picking up the child are just as unruly? These daycare employees share the harrowing moments they’ve had to deal with a bad apple and the tree it didn’t fall far from.
All content has been edited for clarity.
Think Fast!
“In my late teens and early twenties, I ran a free after-school program for kids out of a community center. The program was for kids ages eight and twelve whose parents were currently undergoing a messy divorce.
We had a sister program next door for parents of the kids. It was part class, part community group, and part group counseling.
The class was free. The center paid for most of the materials. The rest I paid for from my own pocket. I liked the class because it gave me a bit of padding on my resume. I was more than happy to buy snacks, coloring materials, and prizes for the kids.
At the time, we were a few weeks into the class. I had a total of eight kids attending my program. Eight was a great number for me because many supplies came in packs of eight. This meant I could buy stuff in those eight packs so each kid would have something, and I didn’t waste money on spares. This was definitely cost-effective.
One afternoon, the kids were coming in. A parent I hadn’t met or seen before with an unknown kid came by and attempted to drop the kid off without a word to me or her child.
Shocked, I rush over to the woman.
‘Uh….Ma’am? Ma’am!’ She was quickly ushering herself out of the door. She swung her head back, clearly annoyed that I stopped her.
‘What?!’ The mother snapped.
‘Hi, I don’t think we’ve met.’ I tried to sound as friendly as possible. ‘Your son isn’t enrolled in this class. You can’t just drop him off with me.’
The mother scoffed at me before responding. ‘I thought this class is free.’
‘Yes.’ I said. ‘But it’s not just a daycare. You do have to enroll your child first at the beginning of the term. I can’t watch any random child dropped off. There are things I need to know like allergies, and emergency contacts. Heck, I don’t even know his name.’
‘Well, you can ask me right now.’ The mother’s eyes widened in disbelief. At the time, I couldn’t believe the woman was actually serious.
‘I’m sorry, but the class is starting right now, so I can’t. But you can enroll him in the next term. You can find information on how to do that on the website.’
I watched the abrasive mother roll her eyes before glancing down at her watch.
‘I have an appointment! Can’t you just take him?’
For the record, the parents were supposed to be enrolled in the class across the hall, not just use my program for free child care. I could understand the mother’s frustration but couldn’t wrap my head around her being fine leaving her child in an unknown environment with someone who outright refused to watch him in the first place.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Besides, I didn’t know I’d have another student today, so I don’t have enough supplies or snacks for him.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t need any snacks,’ the mother pleaded. ‘He won’t mind.’
‘Ma’am, of course, he is going to mind all the kids eating Nutella snack packs and Capri-suns,’ I felt my voice amp a little but I was beginning to run out of patience.’ It’s not fair to him. Besides, it’s not really safe for me to watch a child that I have no information for. So you can sign him up for the next term.’
The mother gave up but didn’t hold back on expressing her anger toward me.
‘Fine!’ The mother snatched her son’s arm and stormed off. I thought it was the end of it. But a few minutes later, I heard the door creak open.
I paused for a moment to watch the door open just a crack. To my surprise, the same kid from before was shoved into the classroom right before the door slammed shut.
The other volunteer and I shared a ‘What the hell?’ look before I bolted to the door and looked out.
Sure enough, the entitled mom was in the middle of booking it down the hallway.
‘Ma’am!’ I shouted after her.
The mother yelled without turning around. ‘I’ll be back in a few hours!’
There were so many things wrong with her and that statement. The program was only an hour long for starters. I sprinted after her but stopped as I called out to the mother again.
‘Ma’am, if you don’t come and collect your son, I will call the police about an unaccompanied minor. He won’t be here when you get back!’
This made the mother stop dead in her tracks. With a look of disgust, she powerwalked back to the door and grabbed her son. ‘You are being so unflexible! This is terrible customer service!’
‘You’re not a customer. Please take your son.’ I didn’t hold back my frustration with her.
The entitled mother grabbed her kid’s hand and stormed off while yelling, ‘I can’t believe you would call the police on a child! What kind of teacher are you? I am going to tell your boss about how horrible you were to me and my son!’
To this day I wonder if she attempted to talk to my boss about my behavior. It was a shame. I would have gotten a kick out of imagining the look on her face when she found out the boss of the program…was me.”
“I Don’t Have To Listen To You”
“I worked in a daycare for five years. Four out of those five years involved me managing the same daycare. I was eighteen years old when I first got into a management role. I was bright-eyed and chipper when I first started my new role. This may have seemed like a mediocre job to some, but I was ready to change the world one aftercare program at a time!
Then IT happened.
During my time managing the daycare, there was this little boy, that never listened. I believe he was eleven. He would intentionally do things he knew he shouldn’t do just to get a rise out of the other workers. It never mattered how many times I talked to him or what I did. Nothing ever worked.
I tried working with this mom multiple times. It got to the point where my boss was absolutely fed up. ‘He’s not to come back for the rest of the week,’ she would declare. Then my boss would push me into the room with them to drop the bomb. The mom and dad ALWAYS had excuses for their troublesome child.
So with this particular issue, the kid ran away from his group. It wasn’t the end of the world or anything. We did find him after the fact. The kicker was he hid in a secluded part of our building and played angry birds on his phone until I finally found him because he screamed.
When I asked him why he left the area, he told me, ‘I just didn’t feel like listening. I don’t have to. My parents told me they don’t like you so I don’t like you either.’
I wasn’t surprised, and I was fine with this comment. His parents weren’t exactly my favorite people to be around either. I of course had communication with my boss the whole time during this situation, and he had communicated with the parents about what was happening. She told them we would have the consequence and paperwork ready when they came to pick the kids up.
This is where the fun began.
Hours later, the kid’s mother stormed into the daycare and approaches me. I take a deep breath and smile faintly to brace myself because I knew where this is going.
‘He isn’t suspended. This is clearly your fault.’ The mother snapped at me.
‘Actually, he definitely is suspended for the next three days. You are welcome to bring his sister back during these three days, but your son is unfortunately not able to join us.’ I said this as politely as I could, but the mother wasn’t having it.
I tried to go into why and explain the safety issue and how we need him to understand that he has to stay with the group, but she cut me off with more arguing. She screamed and at one point slammed her hand on the table. The son grinned as he looked at me and said, ‘I told you she didn’t like you.’
I shrugged my shoulders at the boy’s comment, but I was genuinely shocked at what his mother said next.
‘That’s true. This is why.’
After blaming the teacher for him running away even after telling her what really happened, the mother stormed out of the building with her kids.
I thought the situation was finally over.
It wasn’t. Not even in the slightest.
It was about thirty minutes until closing when I got a call to the front check-out desk. I calmly made my way there and saw the boy’s father standing front and center, brooding in the lobby. Confused, and bracing myself for more drama, I asked him how I can help him today.
He then yelled, ‘Do you realize that you’re suspending a Marine’s son? Why don’t you take better care of my kid? Maybe if you did he wouldn’t be making bad choices.’
I was stunned at such an accusation. Surely a child’s behavior is the responsibility of the parent more than anything. However, I dismissed the thought and said, ‘Sir, I’m sorry that this happened, but we have a parent and code of conduct handbook that both you and your student signed acknowledging the rules.’
As the conversation continued, the father’s anger intensified. He started yelling and scared my front desk attendant. She immediately started texting the owner who already left for the day.
I ushered the dad into the office because other parents were coming in. It was see-through. My assistant had visuals on him and me the entire time.
That’s when he got in my face.
‘I’m a Marine, dammit! You’re not going to suspend my son and he will be here tomorrow.’
‘Thank you for your service,’ I said evenly. ‘I can’t imagine the dedication to this country you have. However, that doesn’t change the outcome of what happens today.’
His next words shocked me, but I held my ground.
‘I’m going to kick your ass! I’m tired of you acting like a smug little moron because my son doesn’t follow the rules.’
I laugh when I’m uncomfortable so I was full-on chuckling at this point. I think I held myself well, but the boy’s father was ripped. He could have squashed me like a bug if he had a mind to. The more he screamed the harder it was for me not to laugh. So he continues to scream and finally I just look at him and told him I was about to call the police and he can either leave right on his own, or in handcuffs.
The father then gave me a whole rant about how he was a marine and millennials were dumb people who didn’t care about veterans. The whole time I kept thinking about how my entire family were veterans and his accusations were nonsense. My boss ended up intervening and I left the room unscathed.
I held my own, but I didn’t realize how shaken up I was until after the father was not in front of me anymore. My assistant came to me and said I was a badass. She even said was impressed. I felt more like a punk.
In the end, the kid got suspended. Once he came back he still act defiant. His parents started telling him they didn’t care if he didn’t listen in daycare so long as he listened in school. From what I heard, the kid hardly did that either. The boy continued telling me he didn’t like me but it got to the point where I just counted down the days before he was too old to be in the program. His sister was an angel so I knew when he left it wouldn’t be an issue anymore.
Don’t work daycare, ladies and gentlemen.”
Stop Bullying My Kid!
“The in-school daycare I work at does a summer program where we keep the kids for twelve hours a day. Some days we took them on field trips or we would create fun activities for the kids to do during the day.
There were quite a few kids that were difficult but there was this one boy in particular who had a hard time controlling his anger.
One day, he pushed a little girl down for not sharing her gummy bears with him. When I tried talking to him, he ran out the front doors of the school. I had to chase him down in the parking lot and brought him inside, before writing him up.
At first, his mother was understanding of our course of action. She explained to us that he had ODD (oppositional defiance disorder) and that she would talk to him about his behavior.
As the days went on, this kid would just accumulate more write-ups from hitting and terrorizing other children, breaking things, swearing, you name it.
Although I was the teacher that was writing him up because he was in my class, he absolutely loved me. Every time he would get into trouble or start to do something bad I would talk to him and explain that what he was doing was wrong. I would give him a hug and tell him that we would work on it and everything would be okay.
There was this one day when I was busy doing something with some other kids that he snapped. He was playing outside and had hit another kid in the face with a basketball. On purpose. The other kid’s nose was bleeding everywhere and the boy got into trouble.
The boy ran inside and crawled under a table and was screaming, ‘ALL OF THE TEACHERS HERE ARE FREAKING IDIOTS! I HATE IT HERE.’
For my boss, this was the final straw. She wrote him up. Because it was his sixth serious write-up, the boy got kicked out of our daycare program. My boss then called his mom and told her that he was no longer in the program and prompted her to come pick him up immediately.
The mother came a few hours later making a ridiculous accusation about us. Her face was almost as red as her hair was. She screamed at my boss that we were singling out her child and ‘bullying him.’ She said no other child got write-ups as much as hers did. She then accused us of not knowing how to handle his ODD and even went as far as to say we were discriminating against him.
There were two things wrong with her accusations:
The first was we weren’t allowed to tell other parents about other children’s behavior unless it is their child.
Secondly, we treated every child the same. I wasn’t sure what she expected us to do about his defiant behavior. Did she want us to just let whatever he was doing slide? We couldn’t just ignore the fact that her child was a repeat offender when it came to punching other children and breaking school property. Plus this woman never told us what to do when his disorder was making him act up.
The entitled mother grabbed her kid, cursed out my boss, and slammed the glass door on her way out of the building.
A couple of minutes later, she came back in and demanded we give her the money back for the week. My boss explained to her that she would have to go to the school board office and talk to the people there about it because we didn’t have the authority to give her any money.
The mother stormed out once more, slamming the glass door again. I really wish the door broke. It would’ve been hilarious if she had to pay for it to be fixed after her little tantrum.
From time to time, I still see her kid around the school. Every time he sees me he gets so excited.
I really wish there was more we could’ve done for the kid, but we had over two hundred other kids we had to care for so we couldn’t just sit down and work with him all day. I can only hope he has learned to control his anger, rather than lashing out at summer camp.”
Double Trouble
“I’m a preschool teacher.
One time, a mom put in a complaint about me. Her kids were three-year-old twins, and they were an absolute mess. I love all kids, but these two are something else.
Their names were incredibly similar, first of all. So these girls didn’t know their own names. Mckinley and Mckenzie were their names, but they both responded to ‘Mckenzie.’
I was a little annoyed when I found out both of them weren’t potty trained. They barely knew any letters and colors and they had a low vocabulary when they were first enrolled in my class. The girls had an older sibling, both parents, and a nanny taking care of them, yet they were so far behind.
The girls hit and shoved each other, pulled each other’s hair, and would try to stick their fingers in each other’s eyes. There were times when they intentionally stepped on my other kids to get where they were going because they were so used to always having their way.
One of them, Mckinley, was cute and listened when she wanted to. I had already made decent progress with her. She had progressed to using the potty by herself, knew a few colors, and started to respond to the correct name.
Then there was Mckenzie.
This twin literally clutched her pearls and looked offended if I asked her to do basic things, like clean up her toys, go potty, or line up for recess. She got angry whenever she was told to say please. Mckenzie screamed, ‘CHICKEN,’ if she didn’t like her lunch, and said ‘No,’ while giggling at everything she was told to do.
I would speak to her mother at pickup about her behavioral issues. At times I found myself delivering my concerns in a soft nature, editing out the true emotions I felt about her. I never even told Mckenzie’s mother everything she did. Nonetheless, the mother would insist that the twins’ behavior was because ‘they spoke two languages’.
Mckenzie knew exactly what ‘go potty’ meant, she just didn’t like to do it.
One night, Mckenzie was throwing a bigger fit than usual. I told her she could stand up and walk to the potty or I could carry her, but laying down and kicking her feet wasn’t an option. She wasn’t cooperating, so I picked her up to take her to the bathroom while she continued having a tantrum.
Big mistake.
Once we were there, I gave her a minute to stand still and calm down, then told her again to use the potty.
She immediately struck me hard on the arm.
That was the first time she hit someone other than her twin. I made her go potty and sat her down in the library away from the other children because she was still throwing a tantrum and I didn’t want her to hit another kid. I took hitting very seriously so I told her she needed to sit until she could be nice again or until mommy got there so I could talk to her.
Mckenzie kept screaming and stomping so I left her alone to cool down. I was sitting next to her, but my being there was only enraging her more. Soon enough her mother came to pick up Mckenzie and her sister. She was rushing to get her screaming kids out so I only had time to tell her that Mckenzie was sitting out of the group because she wasn’t being safe. The twins’ mother then asked why Mckenzie hit me, so I told her it was because she was refusing to go potty again.
To my astonishment, the mother simply said, ‘Mckenzie, no no, you need to be nice,’ and rushed them out.
This next morning when I arrived at work, the twins’ mother was in my boss’ office throwing a fit and demanding the twins be removed from my room. I wasn’t there for the conversation but my boss called me in later to talk about it. Apparently, their mother described last night as ‘the teacher put Mckenzie in timeout for not going potty’ which totally was not what happened.
I was on the verge of a panic attack all day because I didn’t know what was going on or what I had done wrong. My boss was fine with it once I explained. Then she told me to make sure I’m conscious of how things look to parents when they pick up their kids.
The twins were moved to another preschool class. At the end of the day, I overheard that teacher crying to the manager because the twins’ mother had chewed her out over something too!
The entitled mother could not handle her children getting any kind of discipline whatsoever. Unfortunately, schools had schedules to keep to and we couldn’t spend forty-five minutes waiting for a child to ‘decide to go potty on her own.’
When she first enrolled them, she asked my co-teacher if we could spoon-feed them. Keep in mind they are in pre-school. Their classmates spoke in full sentences, drew detailed pictures, counted to thirty, could recite the entire alphabet, and some could write their names already. They were basically running circles around the twins.
I can only hope the mother just pulls them out of the school. I told myself if she tried to put them in my class again I wasn’t going to take them. There was no way I was going to put my entire class behind because of two children in my class who I’m not allowed to teach.”
