Victoria K.

Westlake Child Care

At first, I was thrilled to find this childcare center because it was close to my office, and it would allow me to continue breastfeeding my infant. They also heavily promoted their water play days which would be exciting for my 3 yr old. I went for a visit, and I was a little turned-off by the appearance of the place. There was an overall wet dog smell that permeated throughout, but it seemed to be reasonably clean. I enrolled my 2 kids for part time care (3 days/week).

After a couple weeks, I had to pull my kids out of there for a number of reasons. Here are just a few:

1) During a lunch visit, I noticed my infant had a pacifier in her mouth that was not hers, even though I had provided a pacifier for my infant, and it had her name on it.

2) One day, the let my infant go more than 4 hours without offering a bottle, and I have the Daily Care Sheet to prove it. The caregiver apologized to me the moment I walked in the door and acknowledged her error.

3) An infant caregiver constantly wore heavy perfume. It would give me a headache during my brief lunch visit, and my infants clothes would reek of it.

4) The air-conditioning never seemed to adequately cool the place; I would sweat profusely when I would try to breastfeed my infant, and my 3 yr old always had sweat-soaked hair when picked up at the end of the day.

5) My 3 yr old complained on numerous occasions about older boys bullying her. My husband witnessed one such event. The caregiver was totally clueless and not observant, despite the small class size.

To top it all off, when I told the director about our dissatisfaction and explained why we were removing our children, she refused to relinquish us from the requirement to provide 30-days notice of withdrawal. They are suing us for the tuition/fees due for 30 days after we removed our kids even though we clearly had their incompetence documented.