In 2020, staff member at a Sanibel Island day care provider in Florida was fired after writing a note on a baby's stomach to let the mom know that the day care had no more diapers for him. We've all heard about day care horror stories happening, and while this isn't exactly a horror story in that no one was seriously injured, it's still downright disturbing and a terrible way to both treat a small child and communicate with a parent.
Apparently, the worker thought this note would serve as an appropriate reminder to the mom to bring more diapers to day care. Instead of, ya know, an actual note. The mom, as you may have guessed, thought otherwise.
The shocked and shaken mom's name is Heather Chisum. She discovered the note on her child's belly when she was changing his diaper after day care that day. That's when she saw the note scrawled across 1-year-old son Milo's belly. At first, she didn't know what to think of it. So, like one does, she took to her Facebook community to air her frustrations, as well as to reach out for advice from others.
Heather posted a long note to her followers on Facebook shortly after the incident. She started off saying, "So. I need opinions. Am I right to be furious about this? Or am I over reacting?"
Along with her lengthy post, she shared two pictures of her child's belly, complete with the marker stains still visible. "I really need your opinions guys, because I’m about to barge in this daycare tomorrow morning and have some words." Honestly, that doesn't seem too harsh, considering the care worker wrote in marker on her child's body. In no way should such a thing ever be acceptable from a child care worker.
In the pictures Heather posted, you can see the message. It reads, "Mom I'm out of diapers pls read my report." Heather said she attempted to scrub the black marker off Milo with baby wipes. But it was pretty tough to get off of his little body.
Heather also said that the Sanibel Island day care places a daily report in her son's lunchbox that always lets her know if her son needs anything for the next day. But because she had missed the note from the day before, which every busy parent knows happens from time to time, the day care worker took things to the extreme. Then the bizarre incident occurred.
"I guess yesterday they wrote on his report that he needs diapers," her post continued. "And I failed to see that. Now keep in mind, I see several teachers at drop off and several at pick up, if I failed to see that he needs diapers a simple, 'Hey Heather, your son needs diapers maybe you missed the report; would have done the trick. From any of the many teachers there I see daily."
Yeah, that sounds like a more acceptable way to communicate about being out of diapers, to say the very least.
As Heather's post went on, she seemed to get angrier as the reality of what happened set in. "But instead, I change his diaper this afternoon AND SEE THIS WRITTEN ON MY SON WITH MARKER. You can’t even see all of it in the pic.. it says, 'Mom I’m out of diapers pls read my report."
What's even worse is that the marker was tough to get off. She shared, "I’ve scrubbed it with several baby wipes and it’s not coming off. I had plans to take them to the beach to play, and now I can’t because my son has writing all over him."
Regardless of what this mom had planned for the day, though, a day care provider writing on a child is simply not OK. Heather admitted that it is not the first time they have written on her child, either! It's pretty unfathomable that this day care thinks this is an appropriate way to communicate.
While the child clearly wasn't harmed, it's still downright disrespectful, and the action came from the very person who is supposed to be caring for him. The good news is that the day care has since taken action. "We are aware of the incident at the school, and we are terribly sorry for the distress it has caused the family involved as well as all of our families. It was a breach of our professional ethics on the part of the teacher," said Cindy Carter DeCosta, director of Children's Education Center of the Islands, in a statement.
She continued, "The school has taken immediate action to remove the teacher from the school. We are reviewing protocols already in place to ensure that nothing like this occurs again."
It's unsettling that the incident took place at all. Parents have to make what is sometimes a tough choice in leaving their kids in day care all day, and they simply deserve to be able to breathe easy when their kids are in the care of someone else. Hopefully this will serve as a lesson to this particular day care's staff that they need to do a better job of monitoring who they hire and how they treat the children in their care.
