There is a lot of trust that is involved in leaving your kids at daycare while you’re working.
As parents, our children mean everything to us, and sending them off to daycare means putting our faith in people who are more or less complete strangers to look after them. It begs the question, how well do you really know the employees that are responsible for taking care of your kids after you drop them off?
While most of the time, everything turns out totally fine, there definitely have been cases reported occasionally where things go really wrong, really quick. That’s exactly what happened to one mother from Brenham Texas recently.
Mother Tiffanie Cedillo was shocked to find that her 1-year-old returned with second-degree burns on her foot after leaving the infant for a few hours at the local daycare!
“She was screaming when I went to go pick her up,” Cedillo told KBTX News.
Screaming is never a good sign, but honestly, it’s not too out of the ordinary for a child of that age.
When she inspected her 16-month-old baby’s feet, however, is when she realized the real extent of what was going on.
The poor little girl’s feet were covered in blisters and red patches.
Immediately, she began questioning the employee’s to figure out what had happened. It turns out, they did something that was extremely irresponsible.
“She said she was sent out on the playground with no shoes on, because earlier that day she had diarrhea and it went down to her shoes,” said Cedillo.
The employees did not consider the fact that the hot pavement and equipment heated up from the sun might be too high of a temperature for the baby’s sensitive feet.
“I was heartbroken when I saw her foot because half of her foot was blistered,” said Cedillo.
Cedillo rushed her daughter to the emergency room and contacted the police to help her track down the employees responsible.
After all, what they did was extremely careless, and understandably, she wanted to hold them accountable for their actions.
“It was almost a hundred degrees yesterday,” said Cedillo. “It’s just common sense you don’t send kids out barefoot on the playground. My child was neglected and I would like for people to know that.”
Many parents and daycare employees don’t realize it, but playground equipment on a hot day poses a huge risk for toddlers and other small children.
Their skin is just much more susceptible to burns than that of adults, playground safety inspector Tom Kalousek said in an interview with Accuweather.
“Younger children, especially under 5 years old, can suffer second- or third-degree burns in a matter of moments. They take their shoes and socks off and use their hands and feet to get around and don’t realize the dangers,” said Kalousek.
In this story at least, there are multiple lessons to be learned.
However, sadly, solutions aren’t always easy to find or entirely realistic.
Cedillo personally shared that she no longer trusts daycares to look after her baby. For her, Mommy daycare is the new norm. She now sets up the nursery at her job so she can look after her daughter herself while still trying to get work done.
Unfortunately, for many moms out there, bringing the kids to work is just not really feasible.
Instead, parents are left to trust in daycare centers that may or may not always be able to provide an acceptable level of care and supervision.
It is a bad situation all around, but as parents, we do the best we can. Hopefully, more workplaces will become more accepting of bringing kids in with us in the future.
Watch the whole video of the shocking daycare burn story from KBTX below.
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