I put myself through my senior year of college working for the before-care and after-care school program sponsored by the YMCA. I started as an aide and worked my way up to Director. Although, I have to say holding that job and having mono simultaneously was not a great idea. I recall catching six upper respiratory infections in a row despite using hand sanitizer and ushering everyone to the restroom to introduce them to soap and water. (I never missed a single day of work either, which is amazing as I remember being quite miserable!)
Anyway, I know what it is to try and supervise the chaos that is a gaggle of kids. One kid even managed to break his nose under my watch. Who knew a basketball could be a deadly weapon?
So I am full of empathy for the brave women who staff the child care at my local Y. These women allow me to walk away from my daughter and sweat out some of the stress of motherhood.
However, the limits of my empathy were tested today.
"What happened to her eye?" I asked the second I walked through the nursery door.
What?" was the response.
"What happened to her eye?" I repeated gesturing to the glaringly obvious injury to my daughter's eye.
"Her eye?"
My jaw clenched, I picked up my daughter to inspect the damage. A large, puffy you'd-have-to-be-blind-to-miss-it welt extended from her eyelid into her temple and a blue-gray pallor underneath promised to shine later.
"Oh, wow, her eye! Ummm, we don't know! I think she may have butted heads with one of the other kids."
Not only did they not see or know what happened, I had to prompt them to do an incident report. I mean, if it had been a simple bump on the head, no biggie, but this is an eye, a fragile area, and we have no way of judging how serious the injury is or isn't because no one saw what happened. So, yeah, you fill out a freaking incident report!
Fortunately, the babeola is in good spirits, but I'm not sure how long that will last, especially as the bruising comes to the fore. I gave her some Motrin, then called the doctor and talked with the nurse trying to sort out what to do. We have an appointment later today to assess the damage.
The Mother Night
8 hours ago
1 comment:
Hope you don't mind...I clicked over from The Meanest Mom and your post pushed a button for me, anyways, just wanted to say that I think you should definitely follow up with the YMCA. The way they handled the situation seems totally unacceptable. When my daughter was about 7 or 8 months old I was working out at a Gold's gym and watching the daycare on a TV screen. All of the sudden I saw an older child hitting her in the head (she was still crawling so she was pretty much helpless) I was off that elliptical and out the door and over to the daycare so fast! She was perfectly fine when I got there, but I was bawling. Anyways, the daycare workers were great. They followed all the proper procedures including having the other mom come pick up her child and then later that night the director called to make sure everything was all right and then a few days later after we hadn't been back (I still needed a few days to get over it :) ) she called again. Anyways, your situation seems much more serious and I would bring it to the directors attention!
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