What is the worst day care / nanny experience you have had to date?

I have mostly been a stay at home mom but have worked a few times. Our own personal bad experience was 8 years ago. I was only working part time so public day care was out of the question. We used a woman that had home child care right near our house. She had years of experience so we thought she was trustworthy. My daughter was almost 3 1/2 and my son was not quite 1. After just a few days of them going there I started looking for a new sitter. One day I had to drop the kids off at 6am so of course the were still sleeping and in their pj's. When I picked them up at 3pm they were still in their pj's (it was 80 degrees outside)and my potty trained daughter still had her overnight pull up on. She required all meals except lunch to be provided which was fine except that if my daughter didn't eat her breakfast immediately after arriving, even on the early mornings when she was asleep, the sitter fed the food to her dog. One day she called me at work and demanded that I come home "now" because her husband had gotten home early and they wanted to go shopping. The final straw was when she sent my sister in law, whose kids also stayed there, to my job claiming she didn't have the phone number to tell me that she wanted the kids picked up because they wouldn't take a nap...it was only 11 am. Thankfully my SIL offered to take them back to her house for the rest of the day. The sitter sent them home with her with NONE of their belongings, not even their shoes. She told my SIL I didn't leave anything for them. Three days later she dropped everything off at my mother in laws job and said she never wanted to watch my kids again BUT she still wanted the money due to her for the day my SIL took them and the 3 days after that that she had been scheduled to watch them! I didn't pay her and the kids never went back. A few years ago my SIL (the same one) attempted to open her own certified in home day care. She did all the paper work and spent lots of money on upgrades to her house to get certified. Everything was going really well for her UNTIL her neighbor (male but not "sick", honestly) started standing in his yard video taping them while they were outside. THEN he wrote a letter to the editor about how "unsafe" home day cares were because "anyone can come by and watch the children"! HE was the only one doing the watching! A big fuss was made over it and in the end she "voluntarily" shut down because this neighbor wouldn't leave her alone and she really was worried about him video taping the kids everyday even though he has no record of doing anything wrong other than being a really nosy neighbor.

I've had 2 not so great childcare situations. The first was when my oldest 2 girls were about 4 and 1. The sitter kept changing plans and making my husband late for work. The second was when my first 4 kids were 8, 5, 3 and 2. The sitter had a 3yo son who didn't like to share his toys (no surprise-what 3yo does?). He and my 3yo fought over toys all day and the sitter developed a dislike for my son.

i have had one daycare that i have had a real problem with. i would drop him off and he would scream and scream. i didnt think anything of it til i had to put his older daughter in there. she would come home and tell me stories about what she did that day,etc. well one day after i left he threw his daily fit and found out later that they had hit him. at the time he was only 3 years old. he really hates that place even 9 years later. after that experience i had to take a leave of absence so that i could find another daycare for them and found a wonderful one. my son actually learned things there that he wasnt at the other one. i hope noone has to go through this.

I was forced to perform sexuall acts on the day care lady's son when I was little. I have very vauge memories of it. With my children, the only bad thing that had happened to us is the lady refused to feed my child dinner when I was running a bit late from work. My baby sat there screaming while this horrible woman and her faily ate dinner. I never really forgave myself for putting my little girl through that.

i don't have anything that happened to me personally but my half brother had a bad experience. my dad had gotten home early and the nanny had tied my brother to the chair and taped his mouth. she said he was being too loud.

I have so many horror stories it is unreal. When my first child was born, I was teaching and my husband working full time so we hired a retired nurse to come into our home and watch my son. She lived 3 doors down from us. She was a smoker and I told her that I did not want her to smoke in my house or around the baby. I told her that when he was napping if she felt she needed to smoke, she could take the monitor and go outside to smoke. Well, she ended up smoking in my home and that was the end of her. Then I took him to a girlfriends till I could find someone else. When I finally found another day care provider my son was crawling around. I took him to the new sitter and he cried. I thought it was because of a new place, but he also was crying when I picked him up. Then the next day I went to pick him up early and she had 2 3yr olds standing on chairs stirring noodles in boiling water! She got my son out of the crib and he had a huge bump on his head! She told me that he climbed out of the crib and fell. That was his last day there. He went back to my girlfriends till I could find someone else. I finally found someone that I liked until my son ~now just 2 yrs came home and said the F word! He said he heard the sitter say it to her husband! That was the end. I quit my job and now am a daycare provider. I have been doing daycare now for 15 yrs and feel great about it. I know that I provide a safe environment for these kids while their parents are working.

While my 3 year old son has never been in an actual daycare...there are a few occasions that we have to find someone to watch him..other than my mother in law. On one occassion, we left my son with our neighbor. My husband is friends with her husband and she has been over here numerous times. It was only for about half an hours. The lady is hearing impared and wears a hearing aide. With this hearing aide, she can hear and all is well. On this day...I came home to find my then 2 year old son standing on the front porch by himself. (we live on a busy road). I quickly jumped out of the car and grabbed him. Wondering where the heck she was...I yelled when I walked in the door. I yelled over and over...her name...without an answer. I finally started to walk thro the house. I found her in the back bedroom...one my computer. Later realized that she had her hearing aide turned way down as when I began to speek to her..she turned it up...so she couldnt hear a thing. Needless to say, we had a few short words and she has not been asked to look after my son again. Thank goodness we came home when we did.

im a childcare assistant, and i would have to say that being in a childcare centre would be a better option rather than a nanny, well everyone is different to how they treat their kids, but if ur in a centre you have a variety of people looking after the children and not only the one person, everyone seens the progress of each child and then you have staff there if someone was to step out of line with the kids your there to catch them if you know what i mean, but with a nanny they are there by themselves. dont get me wrong, nannies are good and the majority are lovely people. i just heard so many stories.

i know how you feel i have three kids and at the time i had two that where in daycare my daughter was 1 at the time and my older son was 6months old at the time. i had called the state to see if they could help me find a daycare that was really good and had no to very littel bad reports about them and they recomended one to me that was very close to my work and my husband at the times work. so we went and saw the daycare and we thaught it was okay for our two kids to go thier. well they went thier for 3 months and after a while my daughter would cry before we would even get any where nier the daycare. at first i thaught it was because she did not want to leave mommy. after awhile it was getting to me on why she was crying . i went home that night and talked to my husband about it and he said do not worry about it. well after awhile i was starting to notice marks on her back and a burn just above her bekinie line. no we all know in the daycare business they are not to smoke on the grounds. well this one was smokeing in her business and my daughter was getting burnt. i took pictures of the marks and the burns and reported them to the state and they in return told the state that my husband at the time was doing nasting things to my daughter. so to make a long story short my kids never went back to a daycare agian and i got a job that worked arround my kids schedual and that daycare was reported and i was the 13th parent to report them and the state was not even sipposed to send anyone thier.