I've read some absolute horror stories of nursery managers screaming at mothers when they pick up their kids, and this is not that. But I am still really unhappy with the manager at my LO's nursery.
So LO has had 4 one hour sessions and she's not managed to settle yet. I like the actual nursery workers, but I'm having serious issues with the manager, and specifically her communication.
I'm a new mum and I've never used a nursery before, so I'm coming at this completely blind. I'm well aware my questions will seem naive at times. But I would have expected a nursery to be used to parents in situations like that.
So, first issue is that I wasn't told how many settling in sessions my LO was due to have, or even what a settling in session was. I didn't find out til the day before the second one that LO was in for 2 more days.
Second, I told manager early on my work days hadn't been finalised yet, and that I would inform them when I knew. She advised I put the most likely ones and we can we revisit it at the time. I finally found out 2 weeks ago (right during the settling week), which meant I had to alter the schedule and only then was I told there was a hard deadline to alter the days, which had passed.
Thirdly, and most importantly, her messaging style on the app is causing me serious confusion. I don't want to sound snobbish or mean but I don't think she passed GCSE English. She doesn't seem to read my messages properly, so a lot of my questions go unaddressed. The ones she does address are either not answered properly or she words them unclearly. I'm HF autistic and unclear communication is a real anxiety-maker for me, but I don't know how to get her to word clearer responses without coming off as snotty, passive-aggressive or badgering. So I often either leave it, or do my best to get the information I need as politely as I can.
And then today, I got what I would call a rude message from her. Again, I messaged about an extra settling in session, as LO has been unsettled and I'm concerned, she states "as [LO] is scheduled for [original days, inc the day I asked for the extra settling in session], this is when we'll have her in". Which bothered me, as she's not addressed my question about an extra settling in session. So I respond, asking (this is what I put verbatim) "so is tomorrow ok then? I'm also wondering about the longstanding schedule change from [this day] to [this day], is it also possible to accommodate that?"
In response, she sent (and this is what I find rude: again, verbatim, including punctuation & spacing): "as explained several times before, we see if we have availability for [requested day] thisday unfortunately we dont. This was explained to you at the door" (AN: in the conversation she is referring to, I was left with the primary impression that it was still an open question, but they had to see about availability, which I said "sure thing" to.)
I sent back a message saying I'm sorry if I had misunderstood something, as I had thought it wasn't confirmed yet. But it's left such a bad taste in my mouth. I wanted to get off to a good start with my child's nursery - I brought in chocolates for the staff the first week, and I've said to them "I'm a new mum, I'm anxious about my child attending nursery, I'm sorry if I ask loads of questions/ask obvious things", so I really think her attitude is really unfair, and that her inability to craft a comprehensible message is a real problem.
Husband says I should leave it and we should find somewhere else for LO, but I really want to say something about the communication problems here, possibly to upper management. Does anyone have any insight as to what I might be able to do here?