I Had an Incident Yesterday - Lost Daycare Child

We had a back to school night last night and the teachers had to shuffle the remaining kids that had not been picked up across the street to the main church building where they were providing childcare while the teachers and parents would talk.

So yesterday evening I was trying to shuffle my one-year-olds across the street and one of them lost a shoe in the process before we could leave the building so I was helping him quickly put it on when mom showed up. While helping mom I made sure that all the kids were beside me as we finished up I noticed one of them had gone missing. I started to panic! I went looking around the other rooms, I even asked my assistant teacher that's beside me in the afternoons if she had seen them after coming out from the bathroom.

So I thought one of the teachers was nice enough to take him across for me because I was struggling, so I went across looking for him and he wasn't there so I came back to the center and asked if the assistant had seen him and she shrugged her shoulders. Long story short one of the part-time elementary school teachers found him in the room by himself playing.

I explained everything to mom and she said he's the reason leashes are needed on children laughing.

long story short.
this morning the asst director came to me asking me for a statement and I wrote it up just as I said here. I simply asked if I was going to get into trouble and she said probably you cant lose someone's child.


am I at fault?

[Ac114]

Their whole process sounds like a chaotic mess. How many children are you responsible for walking across the street? Why is there not 1 person in front of the line and 1 person in the back? Why is a parent allowed to pick up during this process? There are soo many questions.

Yes, you are responsible and more than likely will get written up or terminated but honestly, this whole process is not ok and as a parent I would be extremely upset this is how the daycare operates at pickup. Pick up is already a chaotic process and walking toddlers across the street while this event took place was not a great idea.

[Blackcat31]

Whenever children are under our supervision, we are ALWAYS responsible.

What state are you in and what are your ratios for adults to 1 yr olds? Were you working alone?

1-4 is the ratio but I believe i can only take two at a time to across the street.

[LostMyMarbles]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

1-4 is the ratio but I believe i can only take two at a time to across the street.

Who watched the two when you are taking 2 across?

Originally Posted by LostMyMarbles

Who watched the two when you are taking 2 across?

My other assistant / lead teacher.

Originally Posted by Ac114

Their whole process sounds like a chaotic mess. How many children are you responsible for walking across the street? Why is there not 1 person in front of the line and 1 person in the back? Why is a parent allowed to pick up during this process? There are soo many questions.

Yes, you are responsible and more than likely will get written up or terminated but honestly, this whole process is not ok and as a parent I would be extremely upset this is how the daycare operates at pickup. Pick up is already a chaotic process and walking toddlers across the street while this event took place was not a great idea.

THIS. I asked this same question yesterday :

Why didn't they require to pick up their kids before 6 pm knowing there's an event going on and teachers had to be across the street at a certain time? Because the parents that usually pick up before 6 were super late.

[storybookending]

This happened to me when I was at a center. It’s was a mix up with walking across the street to another establishment for a field trip with school aged children. I was the lead and I had two assistants and we divided the children into groups (we did this always not just for this trip) and one of the girls that was supposed to be with one of my assistants got left in the bathroom. I guess when he did head count a teachers child was on the playground and got mixed up and counted. I noticed the girl was gone when we got across the street and my assistant raced back to find her, her grandma had came and picked her up and just left. We had recently switched over from teachers signing them out to whoever picked up. We self reported to licensing and of course they came by the next day for a check and we checked out with no violations but got a talking to about face counts/head counts. A couple days later my boss brings me paperwork as it all fell on me as the Lead that I refused to sign because the child was not in my group. It’s on the state website still for the center and my refusal to sign didn’t come up when I applied for my in home license, no one even mentioned it.

Gosh this is tough. As a mom/dcp, years ago, I went to pick-up my kids w/dc kids in tow, and we had to go thru a gate which parents were notoriously famous for leaving open (regardless of rules). 3 kids NOT MINE/DC came into my vehicle and I was counting and was like "wait a min" and one kid piped up saying "AJ said we can come over!" I was shocked and said "ummm...you are supposed to be at school!" And walked them back to the teacher. I was SHOCKED that 3 kids got out of gate in dangerous parking lot. And if I was not a dcp/mom and a kidnapper instead? Omg how scary, right? Now their ratios were much higher but to think 3 kids got out of their sight and enough to get in MY CAR!!!!