The Children In the Shoe Child Care Center & Preschool, Olney

Failure to give an infant their heart medicine? I think I’ll be taking my child somewhere else…. I am a first time mom so leaving my son in the care of someone that wasn’t my husband or my mom was pretty terrifying. On top of that my son Aiden was 5 weeks premature and had SVT (which is a condition which results in an extremely elevated heart rate) in utero which continued after he was born. I did a lot of research on different child care options and decided a center would be the best fit for our schedule and location. After a ton of research of options in our area I put Aiden on the waitlists of 2 centers one of which was Children in the Shoe. When I went for the tour the director seemed very nice and the facility seemed clean, welcoming and organized. Unfortunately the tour was the last time I felt that way about Children in the Shoe. After 12 weeks of maternity leave it was time for Aiden to start daycare and his first day was also his last. The first day had a laundry list of issues: - I instructed the care givers that we fed on demand but that Aiden usually ate about every three hours. I supplied 3oz bottles of breast milk along with formula and instructed to start with the breast milk and if he was still hungry to supplement with the formula. At the end of the day when my husband picked Aiden up we discovered that they only fed him every three hours and only gave him the breast milk. He was clearly hungry when we picked him up and took over 5oz when we brought him home. - At 12 weeks Aiden was taking 3-5 naps per day at about 1.5-2 hours each; while at Children in the Shoe he was put down for less than 2 hours total. - Like most daycares at the end of the day you get a summary sheet of what happened. Instead of writing things out actives were circled out of a list of options. One activity that was circled for Aiden was “played with blocks”. Needless to say my 12 week old premature son was NOT playing with blocks. Now up to this point I would not have been happy but could have chalked things up to first day growing pains but the final straw was that my son was not given his prescription heart medication. My husband picked up Aiden around 2:45pm brought him home where we immediately fed him since he was so hungry. While feeding him my husband went to review the daily form and noticed that a note was not made about what time his medicine was administered (which was supposed to be given to him at 2pm). We assumed not writing it down was just an oversight but when we called the center the person that answered the phone said they couldn’t find the records on their end and that the teacher had left for the day. After some choice words from my husband emphasizing that they better figure out getting a hold of the teacher, they finally admitted that it was not given to him. Thankfully Aiden is OK and he did not have an episode as a result of the negligence of the staff at Children in the Shoe. Your child might not have a heart condition, but if this is how they are dealing with children with serious medical issues you can only imagine how they are taking care of everyone else.