Am I right to pull child out of the nursery?

[CyberFirefly]

As this is my first time posting, please excuse any errors in my post.

My son (11 months old) has been attending nursery since January 2023, and up until now, it has been a pleasant experience. He thrives at nursery, meeting all his milestones and such. The nursery staff love him.

However, as soon as I started working at the same nursery, my pleasant experience as a parent became sour. Without going into too much detail, I was treated like rubbish and then given a rubbish excuse as to why they terminated my contract.

Upon terminating my contract, they explained how they still wanted to keep up the parent partnership concerning my son. As soon as I heard this, I automatically thought, yeah, you only want to continue the collaboration for the money.

Now I am in a predicament. I don’t want this nursery to have my money out of the principal for how they treated me, but my son loves the nursery, and the nursery keeps saying this as well (as I have spoken about withdrawing him). My parents say that my son is the product of us (his parents) and not the nursery, and he will thrive in any other nursery.

For reference, a lot of people say that I should pull my son out of the nursery as they do not deserve my money for the way they treated me.

So, here’s the point of my post:

What should I do?

I have looked at other nurseries, and I am planning a couple of visits, but that is as far as I have got in the decision-making process.

At 11 months I’d just swap nurseries. He’ll be fine provided you don’t move too much. Just don’t apply for a job at the new place!!

I wouldn’t apply for any more nursery jobs. I’ve just got my teaching degree and the job was a filler for the summer. A filler I deeply regret…

What did they sack you for?

If your child is settled I'd be inclined to keep him there, rather than assume he'll settle anywhere.

@CyberFirefly that's sounds awful! Your son is only 11 months and I think you should take him out and send him elsewhere tbh. The staff obviously weren't nice to you and you feel let down... Do you mean they were bitchy and didn't include you or worse? Do you think they didn't like the fact that you are a parent of a child there and also a staff member? Are other staff members parents of children there or was it just you? Sometimes staff feel threatened or 'watched' when a parent starts working in the nursery which is totally wrong as they should be doing their jobs correctly regardless of who's working there...

They sacked me as I forgot to tell them of an injury that my son had. This injury happened on the weekend at his grandparents and he’s fine, he basically has a scratch on his hand which is healing. The termination was based on the fact I didn’t follow safeguarding policies.

I didn’t sleep that much that night and I forgot. I apologised and thought nothing more. Then they informed me they had passed a concern onto social services the next day. I now have social services watching me and it’s just spiralled.

I have no issue sharing this, I’m not ashamed of anything nor having nothing to hide, but I am annoyed that they think of me like that. What makes it worse is the fact that they said ‘once this all blows over, you are welcome to re-apply for the job’. Which makes me think the reason they gave it a load of rubbish, but more the fact I have social services involved with my child due to a scratch on his hand.

For the record, he has been to the GP and the GP reaffirmed it was fine and there was no safeguarding concerns. Along with this, the social services have no issue with him being in my care.

My partner is certain this is because I’ve just qualified as a teacher and they are jealous, or something along those lines.

This week has been tiring and I do not want to step back in that nursery.

If a nursery treats its staff well, then logically the staff will treat the children well.
If the nursery treats the staff badly, it brings concerns on the quality of care for children.

The trust relationship is gone. Moving wil be in his best interests.

Oh ok, in that case I'd say moving him and starting afresh is definitely the best option.

Why would you stay at a nursery that put social services onto you?!

Because I am in conflict. It’s not the staff it’s the management. The unit he is in, the staff are really nice. They like him and he likes them. I just do not want to feed the management anymore of my money.

I’m actually starting to convince myself to move him now…

They reported you for something so small and minor, what if your child falls in the park and hurts their face?
I work in a nursery and we had a child come in with a missing tooth because they fell off their scooter. How would this nursery respond to that incident?
They are trigger happy and I'm shocked they reported you in the first place. If you have another child the midwife will ask if you have been known to social services, you will have to tell them yes. Same for if your child has to go to a&e, I know this because I have been asked these questions.
They will be hyper vigilant over your child now and I wouldn't trust them to jot turn any minor ailment into a case file for social services.

There's no way mine would be staying in those circumstances.

Maybe wait until he would naturally move, eg when he starts walking to they put him in a toddler room with different staff anyway?

Although if you're on summer hols now now might be a good time to help him settle in somewhere new before you stray busy new teaching job.

Is it a small nursery like your fees are literally lining the managers pocket or will they earn the same whether your child is there or not? Definitely find another one you like, with space available, before you remove your son from current one as they fill up quickly

@CyberFirefly they gave forgetting to report a pre-existing injury as a reason for dismissal? That seems odd to me, they've treated you as staff in this instance not as a parent. When you were working there I'm assuming you were with other children and not in the same room as your son? I'm an ex nursery nurse and am now a teacher, my 2 year old goes to nursery and in both my own experience as a practitioner and as a parent if an injury has been noticed during the day a telephone call is made or in the instance of the parent being a member of staff a face to face conversation to check if the parent was aware of the injury and an accident report is filled out following the conversation which the parent is then asked to sign upon collecting the child.

Personally I would withdraw my child from this setting.

Good luck with your teaching journey when term starts! 😊

I can’t think why you’d keep your child there, now that you know how they behave behind the scenes.

Most parents have little idea of what a nursery is really like. I see it all the time on FB: a new parent will ask for recommendations and existing parents (and some staff) will rush to tell her how wonderful their nursery is.

There was one I saw just this morning. I was so tempted to post:
”Yeah - that one’s actually got a brilliant legal team that takes out injunctions to shut up the local media;
that one has only just opened a few weeks ago, you’re in the honeymoon period, of course you think it’s brilliant!;
God, have you seen their Ofsted reports?! How many com
that one keeps closing rooms - staffing issues; wouldn’t send a goldfish there - the babyroom staff say a child was dropped off the change table and they covered it up!;”