I think it’s going to depend on the style of daycare. If the daycare is something akin to a preschool environment, I can sort of understand. OTOH, the daycare where my kid goes, is more like a glorified babysitter, if a kid is tired, no big deal, the crash on the couch for an hour. In fact, some kids get occasionally get dropped off early enough that they plan to sleep for another half hour before the rest of the kids show up. Like others have said, as long as one kid isn’t going to make the rest of them sick (or require a ton of attention from the day care provider that he/she can’t see what else is going on) it’s fine.
I remember when I was first bringing my daughter there, I felt bed for the providers (a mother and her mother) because my daughter would cry her eyes out for sooo long after I left. For the first week or so, I would hang out for 10 minutes trying to calm her down. At one point I mentioned this to the mother’s daughter, whom I work with. She made a great point…“She’s been doing this for 30 years, it’s what she does, don’t worry about it, just take off.” In fact, I was saying something about crying babies to her just the other day and she made the same “it’s what she does” comment to me. And with that, what I’m getting at is, if the day care provider can’t deal with a tired kid, you might need to find a new day care, I assure you there are other day cares that can not only handle tired kids but also will be happy to take your money.
I’d find a new provider. Toddlers have nights they don’t sleep well. They have days that despite sleeping well, they are undergoing a growth spurt and are tired. They’ll get cranky for no reason at all for months at a time. Being a daycare provider or a stay at home parent involves just coping with this. You have a daycare provider so that you can get to your job fairly dependably. This undermines the reason you have daycare.
Frankly, doesn’t matter if its reasonable to her, if the other kids benefit from it because its a preschool environment, or if your kid would benefit from a “PJ and Movie Day” at home. Unless your employment situation is different than most people’s, the most important thing for a daycare is that they watch your kids dependably and safely - that is the service you are paying them for. Obviously, there are times when they can’t - if your kid is contagious you need to leave them home. If its a home daycare provider, they’ll take sick days and vacation days. But my bosses would have put me at the top of the layoff list if I had to call in with “my kids are tired” or top of the “they have a fever, ear infection, are throwing up” that was common then.
I had two in daycare for a total of 12 daycare years. During that time we had our share of ear infections and fevers. We lost a whole FOUR days of work to “staff development days” and ONE day to “there is a gas leak near daycare…we are evacuating the kids and need you to pick them up here…” I had one or two “illness false alarms” - where they were sure my kid should be home, but the pediatrician didn’t think so - and accepted a note from the pediatrician.
She can set any rules she wants and you’re free to seek care elsewhere.
You’re paying for a service and if it’s not what you want, why pay for it? I realize good day care is hard to find. This is one of those “Can I live with this?”
I can understand both sides, as a day care, if she can afford to only have the best behaved kids, why not? As a parent, you’re paying for something you don’t like, so why do this?
In reality the only thing that changes people’s mind is the pocketbook.
Perhaps you should actually contact the day care provider & talk to her personally about the matter. Before she presses the point.
Or–do you have another provider lined up if she asks you to take your kid elsewhere?
I am hoping that her message was just poorly-phrased and that she was talking about being fatigued from illness. (It was “tired, fatigued, or unwell.”)
It could be that we have been mistaken and that regular tiredness from a restless night is not a concern for her at all. We aren’t in a hurry to change providers because I think that generally it’s a very good fit. She gets on well with the other kids there and has a lot of affinity with the provider. (Also, my wife is very recently pregnant with our second and if that goes according to plan she’ll be at home after she delivers.)
She has never explicitly said to us: “Stella seemed a bit sleepy today; I think she should have stayed home.” Since it seems most people think this would be unreasonable, I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she is like-minded on this point. Seems reasonable to assume that it’s not really an issue, and that she really meant something more like, “If your kid has not quite finished recovering from dengue fever and is an inert, listless lump, please keep her home a little longer.” 
“She was wide awake when I dropped her off!”
It’s not unreasonable for her to make the request. It’s also not unreasonable for you to ignore it.
Then a conversation with the lady might be more useful than asking a bunch of strangers on the Internet!
When I posted the OP, I thought it more likely that she might ask this (or that it was something you might run into.) She’s the only daycare provider I’ve ever had any contact with, so I didn’t really have much of an idea about what’s “normal.”
Since I would prefer to stay with her for the duration, I think it’s best just to let sleeping (ha) dogs lie. If it actually is an issue for her, I would expect it to come up again at some point.
I’d be surprised if the provider didn’t have a schedule to keep. When I was teaching, naptime started at 1:00 and went until 3:30. At 4:00, if you were still sleeping, we woke you up. Many times, I’d pick the cot up at the head, tilt it so the kid slid onto the floor, and put the cot away. I’ve got things to do, bub! Time to get up!
But anyway, I’d say the note isn’t so much “If they’re tired, stay home,” it’s “Put your kid to bed by 9:00”.
My daughter outgrew naps faster than her daycare cohort. So for her, they put her down at 1:00 - if she fell asleep immediately (within 15 minutes or so) without help, nap until naptime was over - she needed the nap. If she needed to have her back rubbed, etc., then she probably didn’t NEED the nap and was up late - then we had the child awake until 10:30 who had to get up at 6:30 that was cranky until naptime the next day (she was supposed to get 10-12 hours of sleep at that age, not eight). So they started (in consultation with us), giving her 15 minutes and if she didn’t fall asleep, they moved her into a room with older kids and she stayed there until naptime was over.
When we used a home daycare provider for the Small One we ran into similar problems. To be honest, it was a constant irritation - and this was with a certified provider in a well-known network.
She never used the “keep her home if she’s tired” bit, but there were other methods of sending the Small One home. She trotted out phantom fevers every couple of weeks. After the first few “Fevers” where the Small Girl seemed just fine and didn’t seem warm I and my then-wife got into the habit of asking that her temperature be taken when we arrived to get her; sure enough, it’d come out fine, the flustered woman would say “uhh, uhh, it was 102 when I called you ten minutes ago, honest” and she/I’d have a few short parting words about how curious it was that the child looked so healthy. So that tactic ended.
Then it became that the provider was sick, and boy, she got sick a lot. Regrettably, she did not always bother to inform us, such as one memorable morning when my ex wife was due as the opening of a new location she had personally overseen the project execution for and upon arriving was told “But I took the day off.” Were we told? Gosh, no. Was the alternate available? Nope. My wife had no choice but to take our daughter to the grand opening and beg her people to take shifts caring for her in back. That was the last straw.
We used home based daycare because it seemed like a cost effective option. It was a fucking joke.
The moment we went to a real daycare center the problems went away. She has been sent home of course, but only for specific and objectively definable problems. Real fevers. Real spots. Real problems. Tired and cranky children is THEIR job to deal with, and they have done it magnificently.
I’d be gone. Heck, I’d be gone if the lady who watches my daughter wouldn’t take her if she had a cold. Now…high fever, vomiting, serious illness…obviously, I’ll stay home with her, but a cold? I’d lose my job if I had to stay home every time my daughter had a cold.
If she’s cranky in the morning? That’s at least a day each week. (She perks up in an hour if she’s cranky upon wakeup). That’s what she gets paid for. Don’t like cranky kids? Don’t go into child care.
We’ve had two different women watch my daughter…the first for two years, and we’d have kept going but she ended up taking another job to make a little more money (and is now regretting it…she still sits sometimes for us as a backup or in the evenings occasionally), and the new lady we go to is similar (though with tighter hours). High fever or really sick, has to be at home…colds are fine, crankiness has never been discussed. Both have cared for our daughter as if she is one of their kids. And we pay less than what you’re paying (A smidge less than $8K a year)
When my elder boy was in daycare, they said he wouldn’t nap at all. Not odd at all, I thought, seeing as he had turned three. They also said that they managed to get EVERY kid to nap eventually. Not my kid. After a few months they sent him to the head’s office to play while the entire rest of the daycare (93 kids) slept. They asked me to get him up at 6 so he’d sleep. Seeing as we lived about 1 minute walk from daycare and I started work at 9, another minute’s walk away that was SO NOT HAPPENING!!! I just smiled and agreed. Then ignored them.
I would find your situation with daycare extremely frustrating. I have yet to meet a toddler or baby who’s learning new skills or discovering social interaction and didn’t wake up in the middle of the night wanting to practice or play.
If her tiredness was mistaken for illness, fine, but otherwise, I’d probably find a new provider. Also, I’ve noticed that my kids tend to nap better at daycare than they do at home - I think it has something to do with peer pressure (my kids sleep better when other kids of their age are sleeping around them) and also they stay still because someone other than their parents is watching them. Of course, like anything having to do with children, that doesn’t work with all kids.
Under those conditions, I wouldn’t rock the apple cart by even asking for clarification. I would trust she’ll clarify it with you if Stella is indeed the issue and maybe even put up with a few extra “sick” days. You like her, that probably means she likes you and your daughter. Its a short term arrangement anyway (although I remember months being a LOT longer when the kids were toddlers than they are now).
That’s my thinking. As it happened, she had another bad night the night before last. Let her climb the stairs to our third-floor apartment twice after daycare, with a walk to and from the sushi joint a couple blocks away (carried only across the streets) with the idea that it might help to tire her out and sleep through.
Nope. Up at 12:00 and again at 5:00, wanting to play. Evidently her mother was like this, too.
My wife asked if she was okay at daycare and the provider said that she did seem tired and we had some conversation about what we might do about that - with no suggestion that we ought to keep her home and no hint that it was creating a problem for her. Here’s hoping. 