Daycare: "Keep your kid home if she's tired." Reasonable? Common?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Our daycare provider recently sent a note home to all parents with some rules “To ensure her day goes smoothly.”

Most of these are reasonable, I think - no sick kids, be on time for pick-up and drop-off, help getting dressed/undressed, etc.

However, she also asks: “Keep your child home if s/he is tired or fatigued.” (Because this can lead to difficulty, obviously.

Does this seem reasonable?

It seems to me that her rights and obligations should have some parity with the parents’. She gets the same 2 weeks vacation and 5 allowed sick-days as other workers in our province, which is fair.

Of course, as it’s set up, I have to make my 5 sick days stretch 3 times, since I’ll take one if I’m sick, or if my kid is sick, or if my daycare provider is sick. Don’t really see a fair way around it, but it kind of sucks.

Realistically, excessive personal days can have an economic impact and affect my job security.

With the market the way it is here, our daycare provider earns more than I do in IT. Am I under obligation to take another hit in the pocketbook if my daughter has a rough night and is dragging her ass in the morning? Obviously, it’s in my interest to make sure she’s rested, because if she isn’t sleeping, I’m not sleeping. I recognize that a tired-and-cranky toddler is going to make my daycare provider’s day a little more challenging, but I don’t get to say “Oh, I’m not going to go to work today, because the domain controller crashed.” Yes, it’s out of the ordinary, but it’s work.

We give her almost $10,000 a year, and she has 3 other full time kids. Does it seem reasonable that she should ask to pass on “tired” kids, or would this usually be considered part of the job (when it’s inevitable.)

ETA: Side question: Do you think we’d run into the same thing with other providers, or is this off-the-wall?

2

It seems unreasonable to refuse care for a child who isn’t contagious. Does she decline clients who do not have sunny personalities?

3

She can refuse service for whatever reason she wants, correct? But in general, yeah, you’re gonna get some cranky kids from time to time. It happens. I’d say the daycare provider is being unreasonable. Do you know the parents of other children she watches? Any comments from them?

4

No, it does not seem reasonable. Sometimes she’s going to have rough days at work, just like everyone else. Does she think I can call in to work because “my kid is tired” and get away with it? I used daycare a lot in the past, and have never heard of this.

5

We’ve used a variety of daycare centers and preschools over the years, and none of them have had this requirement/request. Certainly if the child is actually ill, and is tired/fatigued as a result, you should keep them home. But just being tired from a night of bad sleep? Er, no. I think most people probably need to save their personal/sick days for times the kid is actually sick.

6

Is that her way of saying keep your disruptive kids away from me? Because I can’t understand a daycare center not willing to serve tired babies.

7

Does she send the kids home when it gets close to naptime?

I think I would find myself becoming a very poor judge about how tired my daughter is and not feel guilty about it. The other kids can’t catch the cranky like a stomach virus.

8

This is what I was thinking.

If the child arrives tired, the child takes nap time earlier then usual.

What’s the biggie?

9

On the one hand, if your job isn’t cleaning out monkey cages, you shouldn’t have crap thrown at you all day.

On the other hand, people hire day care in order to fill an essential need, they are physically unable to care for their children while working a paying job. With such an essential service, you need to suck it up, get those monkey cage days from time to time, and price your service accordingly.

Cranky toddlers are part of the job.

10

Ridiculous. Kids go from full throttle to “tired” in the span of about 4.2 seconds, so unless your child is with her for less than that, there’s going to be *some *time during the day when she’s got to deal with tired children. If she doesn’t know how to settle them down and get them to nap, she’s not a very good daycare provider.

Frankly, I LOVED tired children when I was doing daycare. Nap time was my favorite time of the day! :wink:

11

What’s she going to do if you send in a tired kid - call you at work to come claim the young 'un??

Sheesh, we all have crappy stuff happen at work - deal.

12

Another vote for “off the wall”.

Now, if a child is *consistently *coming in tired and cranky every day, that probably warrants a conference with the parents to discuss nighttime routines and sleep habits.

But as an occasional thing? That’s ridiculous. I’d start looking for a new daycare provider. Or just ignore the rule.

13

I wonder if this is really what’s going on here. One family who lets their precious snowflake decide when and where to sleep (Og help me, there’s actually a name for this horrid practice, but I forget what it is…“child directed sleep” or some shit?), or otherwise has a neglected, consistently tired and cranky kid on their hands and dumps them off at daycare. Add one daycare provider who’s too scared of losing business to address it directly with that one parent, and you’ve got a recipe for passive aggressive “Rules” handed out to everyone but really written for one family.

14

My first thought actually was that it was one particularly troublesome family she can’t afford to alienate. I would pretty much ignore it and assume she was talking about a problem much bigger that your kid getting a fitful night’s sleep.

15

I was thinking exactly what ShelliBean said. It sounds like she’s got one family who doesn’t manage to keep their toddler on a regular schedule, and is regularly problematic. Instead of addressing the problem on an individual basis like she should, she put it in the contract for everybody.

16

If she’s smart, she only put it in the contract for the problem parent, hoping he’d recognize himself.

Huh, Larry? Huh? Huh?

17

Well, the uniformity here is reassuring! (I am responsible for the one “yea” vote, accidentally.)

I think the “tired” bit was probably directed at us, as she had commented a couple times about her being hard to rouse from a nap and sleeping over her snack. For sure her other concerns are things for which we are generally blameless.

Was a little concerned today as our daughter was awake from midnight until three, refusing to go back to sleep - insisting, “All done!” Eeesh.

When we dropped her off, my wife stressed that she had been a bit restless - and when we picked her up, asked if there had been any issues. Seems it was okay.

I think our policy will be to keep the details of her sleep to ourselves and have a frank talk about our expectations if she ever presses the point with us directly.

18

I am not at all sure that I’d agree that other kids can’t catch the cranky like a stomach virus.

And I think people in general underestimate the difference that having or not having a particular tired and cranky individual around makes in other people’s moods.

And sometimes tired kids are sick kids and no one knows it yet–cue anecdote of overprotective father playing with blocks for 45 minutes while I’m thinking “you can go anytime now” ( I was a sub and had just met his kid for the first time that day). And kid turned out to have strep throat–but no one knew it until after the day was done.

All that said, I’m not sure that a “no tired kids” policy is reasonable or enforceable.

So I might step up efforts to get my hypothetical child to sleep on a regular schedule if needed, but I probably would not otherwise change my behavior–except perhaps to not mention the likelihood of tiredness to the day care provider.

19

She’s waking them up from their naps? I find that puzzling. It would probably be nice if all four kids were awake and asleep at the same time, but to wake a sleeping kid to reach that end seems a little controlling to me. I don’t have kids myself, but I got to know seven home care providers very well when I worked with them via bringing a preschool literacy program to them, and none of them would have woken a sleeping kid up…

20

I think it’s fair from the POV of the child. Sometimes you just need a nap/mental health day/down time. Having to experience that with a bunch of other kids/frazzled adults doesn’t sound all that much fun…