I run a daycare for preschool children. There is one mother who is always late to pick up her child, and I am bringing it up again with her this evening.

Me: “Miss [Her Name], once again you’re almost half an hour late. I have to stay behind until you get here, I hope you realize?”

Parent: “Oh, stop being so dramatic. Besides, I’m not even the last one here! You still have one more child in there!”

Me: “That’s my own child, so we’ve both had to wait for you before we can go home.”

Parent: “Your… own child?! As in that is yours?!”

The parent seems strangely concerned by this.

Me: “Yes, my own. Now, drive home safe and remember to be on time from now on.”

This parent continues to arrive a little late, but less than ten minutes, so I can live with it. Later, going through the accounts, I can see that her monthly bank transfer didn’t go through. I email her about it but get no response, so a few days later, when she’s dropping off her child, I mention her late payment.

Parent: “Oh, it’s not late. I’ve just decided that you shouldn’t be charging us.”

Me: “I… uh, what?”

Parent: “The way I see it, you’d be here looking after your own kid all day anyway, so it makes no difference whether ours are here or not. It’s not right that you get free childcare and we don’t.”

Me: “You do realize that I run this daycare, right? It’s my business. If I charged for my own child, I would just be paying myself!”

Parent: “Exactly. You thought you could trick all of us hardworking parents into paying for childcare, but you’d have to be doing it anyway, so why pay?”

She turns around, and I call out to her:

Me: “Miss [Her Name]! Since you’re behind in payment, I cannot let you leave your child here. Any attempt to do so without bringing your account up to date will be considered child abandonment, and the police will be called.”

Parent: “You can’t be serious?”

Me: “As serious as it’s possible to be.”

Parent: “I want to speak to the manager.”

Me: “What part of me running this business did you not understand? I am the owner.”

Parent: “Fine! I’ll transfer the money this afternoon. I’m too busy now, and I need to—”

Me: “Either you transfer the money now, or you take your child now. Those are your only options.”

The conversation has gotten tense, and my assistants plus the other parents dropping off their kids are beginning to notice. The parent looks around at all the eyes on us, scoffs, and grabs her child. She then tries to make an announcement to all the parents as she storms out.

Parent: “Did you know that THAT child—” *Points to mine.* “—belongs to the owner of this business!? That means they get to watch their own child for free while making the rest of us pay! How is that fair?!”

Other Parent #1: “My dad owns an Italian restaurant. You’d best bet that he doesn’t charge himself for a plate of spaghetti! What’s your point?”

Other Parent #2: “Are you stupid? If none of us paid, how would she pay rent on this place or pay all the staff? What… what were you even thinking?!”

She quickly realized she wasn’t about to start her revolution and continued her storm out. I haven’t seen them since, but I hope her kid is doing okay.

My two-and-a-half-year-old son has moved to a new group at the daycare. I’m picking him up for the first time at this new group.

Teacher: “He’s had a great first day! But I was wondering: can he read already?”

Me: “Um, no, unless he’s keeping it a secret from me. Why?”

Teacher: “Well, this morning he picked up a book and started reading out loud to the rest of the kids.”

Me: ‘What book?”

Teacher: “[Book].”

Me: “Oh, we have that one at home as well. He knows it by heart indeed. He picks that one at home all the time too.”

Teacher: “Well, yes, but then I gave him [Different Book], and he read that one out loud as well.”

Me: “Yes, we have that one at home too.”

I work for a daycare program hosted by the local community center, serving kids from three to twelve years old after school and during summer break. The community center has a fenced-in playground and field for outside play when the weather is nice. The play area is on the corner of the lot, bordering two streets that don’t usually have a lot of traffic.

I was with the older kids outside one day, and saw an SUV pull up on the other side of our fence and park along the curb. Since this is the USA, this immediately triggers a mental alarm bell for me, and I start mentally preparing to herd the kids inside in case anything happens.

Instead of the worst-case scenario we all fear, I see a mother and two boys, roughly eight and eleven years old, get out of the car. I don’t recognize the two boys, so they are obviously not on our roster. The mother starts encouraging the boys to jump the fence, so I call out to her and start walking over.

Me: “Excuse me, ma’am, boys, please stay outside the fence!”

To their credit, the boys freeze, but the mother starts screaming.

Mother: “They just want to have fun on the playground!”

Me: “I understand, but this is not a public playground. This is [Community Center] private property, and this is a private daycare group.”

Mother: “Oh, just let them play! I have errands to run, and I can’t take them with me.”

Me: “I cannot allow that, ma’am. If you want to register them for the daycare program, you can go around the building and speak with the women at the front desk, but I cannot allow the boys to join us today.”

The mother starts walking back around to the driver’s door of her car.

Mother: “Too bad, they’re here now! I’ll be back in a few hours.”

Me: “MA’AM, if you leave your children here, I will call the police for child abandonment.”

The mother holds her hands over her ears and sings out “LA-LA-LA-LA!” like a petulant toddler, before showing me both middle fingers, getting into her car, and driving off down the street.

After processing everything, I tell the boys to follow me through the gate and around to the front desk of the community center. At the front desk, I report what happened and ask one of the receptionists to go outside and help with the daycare group so that I can tell the police exactly what happened.

Throughout the entire situation, the boys didn’t react at all, as if they were used to this happening. The police arrived, I gave them my statement, and the officers took the boys with them to the police station.

A few months later, I received a summons to attend court. Apparently, the woman (a single mother) had multiple charges of child abandonment on her record and was finally facing a criminal trial. 

I testified as a witness, along with others who had dealt with her sons after she abandoned them. She tried everything in court, sobbing about how much she loved her sons, raging at me and the other witnesses for “being mean and not helping a struggling single mother”, and anything else she could think of, but was found guilty on all charges and given the maximum prison sentence for child abandonment in our state.

She lost custody of her sons. Unfortunately, they were put into the state foster care system, so I have no clue where they are now, but I hope they’re doing better without their mother.

I work in the childcare area at a gym. We have a mom who comes in semi-frequently whose child has a… unique name.

I swear this happens almost any time she comes to pick him up, and there’s someone else in the room, like another parent or sometimes an older child:

Me: “Anakin, your mom is here.”

Other Person: “Anakin? Like Darth Vader from Star Wars?”

Mom: *Angrily.* “No! Not like Star Wars. I don’t know why everyone says or thinks that!”

I’m an assistant Prekindergarten teacher. The daycare I work at has two pre-k classes. While heading to break, I see a teacher from the other class putting on gloves and heading toward the children’s bathroom with a look of dread.

Me: “Uh, [Teacher]. What are you doing?”

Teacher: *Sighing.* “[Student] swallowed his mom’s wedding ring. She asked if we’d sift through his bowel movements if he had any here until it’s recovered.”

Me: *Wide eyes.* “Girl, she’s lucky he is in your class because that would have been a no from me. We do not get paid enough for that.”

Teacher: “I know, but [Mom] seemed really upset that she potentially might not get her ring back.”

I asked the head teacher in my classroom what she would have said or done, and she said if it had been one of our students, she guessed they would be staying home until the ring was recovered because she would have said no too.

The teachers did end up finding the ring and basically got a half-hearted ‘thanks’ from the mom when she got it back.