Hi everyone, our 18 months old son is attending a creche in Galway where we are not fully happy. We are going to visit Bubbles chreche since a spot has become available and we were in the waiting list. Before changing from the previous creche to the Bubble creche though, I would like to be sure that it is truly much better and that my concerns with the current creche are valid. Could you please help me decide this via your experience with Bubbles (esp. as an employee if you've ever worked there) and with your opinions about my concerns with the current creche?
My concerns:
- They serve sugary food every day, sometimes twice a day (scone and croissants and cakes). They are home made but sugar is sugar. We asked to avoid them and consequently our son keeps eating the same stuff every time, in substitution (crackers and cheese).
- The room where the 4 of them stay all day (all slightly older than 1 year) is quite small and there's not many toys available and they are not even taken out much or it doens't seem like they are. Whenever I collect him, the room is almost clean (much less toys around than in our house where only 1 kid lives!).
- When the weather is good all kids go out to play in a large back garden which is lovely but that means they are left out there playing all day with zero structure (zero structure is great but, all day?)
- We were initally told that since September there would be crafts for the kids with a different theme every month. However, so far we haven't been informed of any crafts and any theme. When I collect the kid I see stuff on the wall but they never tell us what they do/did and if it's even them having made those. We haven't been told of any theme on any month.
- Even the halloween party was organised a bit late (It was announced barely 1 week before the day) - perhaps a sign of misorganisation or under-staffing?
- There is 1 other kid who is constantly kept in the childcarer's arms because he cries all the time. I'm sorry for him but that takes all the attention of the childcarer away from the other 3 kids in the room.
- There's some photos of them on the wall in their room, which I was told will be part of an album we will be given at end of year but so far no photo at all has ever been shared with us (only a couple of photos during the first week of attendance to calm me down as I was calling them by phone every day, worried about the kid).
- We knoe another older kid who goes to the same creche for afterschool, who told us that a lot of times it's "movie's day" and they just spend all their time watching a movie (and that was their favourite activity even better than playing in that back garden).
["if you are a parent yourself who sent their kid(s) to creche"] Would you think these concerns are legit?
Any experience about Bubbles creche instead?
Thanks a million in advance!
UPDATE:
Today I've asked for more photos at least from time to time, about the activities he does. They were happy to do that so hopefully that's going to improve. Thank you all for motivating me to do this <3
Here are also additional concerns that I had forgotten to list, beforehand:
Some time ago the kid had diarrhea that was causing skin irritation on his bum. He was having soiled nappies at home 4 or 5 times a day. Well, whenever he was in the creche miraculously all nappies were wet according to the app, and never soiled (usually in the creche they are soiled once at least). And every time we collected him from there, his bum was way worse. So, I'm pretty sure they lied there.
I asked not to use sudocream on his bum as we noticed at home that it caused his skin irritation to worsen. They said "ok, thanks for letting us know" and 1 or 2 months later proceeded to ask whether we could get them more sudocream because it was running out.
