Furious mom pulls 'terrified' daughter, 3, from daycare as staff kept 'hugging her' and ignored 'no touching policy'
An angry mother revealed that she removed her three-year-old daughter from daycare because staff members kept violating her "no touching" rule. The mother added that her daughter only gives her mother, father, and grandmother happy hugs and is not "a snuggler." She said, "They ignored our no-touching rule."
The little girl has always disliked being hugged or touched by others, the mother wrote in a post on Kidspot. So when the family enrolled the child in kindergarten, the mother described the young girl's aversion to physical touch and stated that she prefers to be soothed with her favorite toy or quiet time away from the other children. "I told the teachers that she does NOT like cuddles and that they should never try to hold her or cuddle her to help her calm down. I know some other babies, even my son who is one, love cuddles and feel safe that way, but my daughter doesn't," she said.
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'My daughter was absolutely beside herself'
"I gave them a list of other tools they could use to help her feel safe. Her favorite toy. A quiet place in the corner by herself. Reading a book. Some space and time so she can come over when she is ready. But do not cuddle," said the mother. But the teachers reportedly didn't listen.
"I'll never forget looking through the window out to the outside area where all the kids play, and seeing the teacher picking my daughter up and trying to hug her. My daughter was absolutely beside herself," she said. The mother said that she made an effort to put the flagrant disregard for her daughter's boundaries behind her and that all she did was remind the daycare manager that no cuddles were permitted.
'They kept offering her cuddles'
The toddler would reportedly cry every day when she entered the school and the staff would come forward to hug her, which made her mother uncomfortable. "They kept offering her cuddles. 'Good morning, would you like to come here for a cuddle?' 'Can I pick you up?' She would cry and I would have to remind them." "I felt like I was constantly repeating myself and fighting so hard just to help my daughter feel safe at childcare. It shouldn't be this hard to help each child feel safe? It didn't feel right to me," she said.
After a month of going to the school, the toddler told her mother that she didn't like her teachers. "She said to me 'I don’t like my teachers mum. I don’t like when they cuddle me.' It hit me like a tonne of bricks. She didn’t feel safe. She was terrified to go and was having terrible anxiety every single time we went." So the mother pulled her out of the school for good and regrets not doing it sooner.
A few months later, she brought her child to a different school, gushing about how amazing it was and how they even gave her a "quiet space" for times when she felt overwhelmed. As a result of the change in strategy, the three-year-old was eager to start school, and her mother felt that she had made the right decision by pulling her out of the first one.