Location: Michigan, USA
My husband and I placed our 10m son into a small in-home daycare and for the first 1&1/2 months everything seemed fine. Then the director hired some new people, and our son began returning home dirty, with diaper rashes, they started not being able to tell us how his day went, what he ate, if he slept etc. When we raised this to the director she seemed sympathetic at first, but then quickly switched to tell us we needed to find new daycare ASAP because our son cried constantly, always had to be held, and they couldn’t “take it anymore” as she didn’t want her employees to quit. She told us she would keep caring for him while we searched and offered no remediation or explanation about why we hadn’t herd about any of this for the past two months.
So we began searching for daycare as fast as we could, and my son began coming home with dirty cuts on his feet, diaper rashes so bad he was nearly bleeding, and fecal matter smeared on the outside of his diapers. For about a week we kept trying to talk to the director, and she would either never be in the house or the teachers would tell us they would “take a message” when we asked. My husband and I were in a panic and trying to find any way we could get family to help as it seemed every day he went there he was coming home worse then the last.
Then on morning my husband dropped him off and began receiving text messages stating that they had to use diaper cream on him because “his dad dropped him off dirty again” when I asked what they ment they stated that my husband was dropping him off dirty and thats why he was having such bad diaper rashes. I explained that I was the one who gets him ready in the morning, and that didn’t explain why I was picking him up dirty. They doubled down, and I called my husband and informed him what was going on. He speculated they were trying to find a way to flip the blame onto us, and he would call family. I ended up being able to pull him that afternoon as his grandmother took the entire week off work when we filled her in on what was happening.
Well, then I was dumb and left a bad review stating I was going to file a report with MDHHS, and my husband left one as well (his didn’t say anything). By the next morning her reviews were flooded with 40+ 5 star reviews, many of them saying we were neglectful parents ‘harassing’ the owner. My husband then got pulled aside at work that same day, and was told someone had gone to his FB, then to his works FB and left a complaint about him being a terrible salesman (he doesn’t work in sales).
This freaked us out so we deleted the reviews and privated all of our socials. My husband is our only income asI am in graduate school, and this is a new position he has only had for three months. He wants to completely drop it because “if thats what she’s willing to do over a few negative reviews, I don’t want to risk a official report, and they now know it would be use who filled”. My entire family thinks we should file anyway, especially after my mother dug through the MI licensing database and found lots of complaints of the daycare already (something I wish I had done before I sent my son there).
Is there a way for me to file this report and keep my family protected if this behavior does pick back up again? If it does is there anyway we can protect his job? His work seemed understanding as the complaint was obviously fake but he’s concerned that the complaints could ramp up in severity. I have kept lots of pictures and screenshots, as well as a timeline and text messages, but I just don’t know if it’s worth the risk to my families security.
Comments
Hope it works out for u