Day Care Disaster

Let me start by saying that I been advised by more than one professional to avoid reading disturbing news stories. Often things I read, especially things involving children, bother me, and I mean really bother me for weeks on end. I listen to local news while I'm getting dressed in the morning, and then sometimes the Today show afterward, although it's getting harder and harder to stomach NBC's "reporting" of the Presidential Race. Their news anchors can't even read a news story off a teleprompter without letting their bias come through in their voices. The closer election day gets, the more I think I'm going to have to find something else to listen to in the mornings. Maybe my Pandora Internet radio stations will get a little more attention.
Avoiding disturbing stories, particularly those involving children, is hard to do in this day and age, particularly when you are online as much as I am. I honestly think AOL goes out of their way to find the most horrendous "news" stories they can to put on their home page. Usually I can count on my local news to report on stories that actually count as news, and they generally keep the really disturbing stuff to a minimum. But this morning they reported on a story I had heard about previously, in which a day care worker administered a muscle relaxer to two babies in her care to keep them quiet.
Allow me to elaborate so that you will get the full gist of this story. A worker at a CHURCH day care gave a MUSCLE RELAXER to a FOUR month old baby and a SEVEN month old baby to "keep them quiet," both of which required medical attention afterward. What the hell is wrong with her? What was this woman thinking? I would love to know just what in her life experience made her think that this was even SORT OF acceptable behavior!
People ask me why I chose to "just stay at home" with my kids. I present to you exhibit A: see the paragraph above. I have also heard a story from a daycare worker about a child who had an accident on the floor, and while the staff was cleaning up the child, another child played in the poop and actually put it in his mouth. Here's the kicker: They didn't tell the other child's mother that her son ate someone else's POOP at day care. True story. Just thinking about that makes me sick. I have another friend whose kid broke a bone at a day care center and no one could explain exactly how it happened. I know of more than one baby locally who died of SIDS at a day care.
I am a fairly reasonable person. Don't get me wrong. Have my kids done disgusting things? Absolutely. Could they have broken a bone in my care? At least once a day. Would that SIDS baby have died at home? It's certainly possible. But the sickening thing is that those moms trusted the people who called themselves "child care professionals" with the most precious people in their lives and those workers let them down.
I think they should put that woman in the news story under the jail. I hope that she will not see the light of day for many, many years to come for doing such a despicable thing to those innocent babies. And I feel for the mothers of those children, who will feel guilty about trusting this woman until the day they die.
People often question my decision to stay home, both to my face and behind my back. (Yeah, I still hear things through the grapevine.) All I can tell you is that I walked into a local day care center when my girls were little and looked around. There were at least 20 kids in there being cared for at that moment by one adult. The thought of leaving my children there made me physically ill. I never considered it again. I love my profession. I enjoy people and their pets, and when my children are all old enough to go to school, I will revisit the issue of a part time job. But until then, as long as it is financially possible for me to not have a job outside my home, I'm going to be right here. Hope that judge throws the book at her!