How to be Entitled and Coddling at the Same Time

Alright, so I work at a daycare. I’ve been at this daycare for two years and I love it. It’s not a perfect job and of course, we run into entitled parents a lot. However, it’s usually a weird mix of entitlement and wanting us to baby their children. 

There is this one family who have two little boys. Let’s call them Maverick and Randolph. Maverick is the older brother, nearly three, and his brother Randolph turned one last year. Now I’m closer to Randolph and I’m one of his favorite teachers. His mom, who I’ll call Miss E, seems to be a bit out of it. When Randolph was little, she asked the teachers in the baby room why he wasn’t crawling. They then asked her if they were practicing crawling with him at home. She told the teachers no.

So the baby room has eight babies all together. A normal person would realize we cannot focus on just one out of the seven. Later, she complained we were using too many wipes on Randolph. Shocker of shocks but babies poop a lot and Randolph had so many blowouts as a kid. Parents have to supply their own wipes, which isn’t a big deal for most parents, but for some reason, Miss E seemed to think we were wasting them. She wanted us to count the wipes we used.

I wish I was kidding.

The bigger issue is how Miss E treats Maverick. Despite being older, Maverick is struggling. Randolph can use words and I understand him. Maverick? He barely can form sentences. The other kids in his class will have full-on conversations with me. Maverick can’t. He can say some words but understanding him is hard. This is worrisome because this could be sign of development delays, but most of us think it’s because his mother is babying him. According to her, he still gets bottles at home. When the kids have lunch and breakfast, they have milk in a cup. Maverick never drinks it and Miss E brought up that he still gets a bottle at home. Getting this kid to sleep during nap time is a complete nightmare. He will not stay on his cot, be quiet, or lie down. Someone either has to sit with him or rock him. Again, his peers can go to sleep on their own but not him.

But the big thing, the issue that we’re facing now, is Maverick doesn’t want to have his diaper changed. According to his lead teacher, he doesn’t like being on the changing table anymore and fights her. Now in his class, not all the kids are potty trained, but some are. He’s in the classroom where the potty training starts. Want to know why Maverick isn’t potty trained?

His mom isn’t ready.

Yep, that’s right. His MOM isn’t ready to start teaching him. Keep in mind, we have to deal with her son while he’s at the daycare. He doesn’t want to have his diaper changed and fights teachers when he’s up there. It’s both an inconvenience and dangerous. It just seems that she wants to fight us on every single thing. Miss E’s husband is fine, I have no problems with him but Miss E is driving us all bonkers. She seems upset we won’t baby her kid like she does. When the other kids move up to the new classroom, Maverick might not be able to move up.  This isn’t a normal sense of entitlement, it’s mixed with a refusal to let her kid grow up and it’s affecting him but also making our jobs harder.