There’s no perfect childcare solution that exists. People always debate nanny vs. daycare. There’s also the idea that children are best at home with their mother (or father, if we’re choosing not to be sexist). But every option has its pros and cons. While I do prefer the higher level of accountability and levels of escalation with daycare vs. nanny, what is definitely true of both situations is that the end caregiver, whether it’s the teacher or nanny, doesn’t always want to take ownership for things that can go wrong.

In Kaia’s last classroom in her first week, I sent her to school with a metal fork in her lunch box. That fork never came back home. I asked the teacher at the time where it was. She got defensive, asked if I even packed a fork that day (that was a really fun response, especially since the photos from lunch that day clearly show Kaia using her fork), and said that she had no idea. She took no responsibility and didn’t even apologize. It’s clear that some careless teacher just cleared the lunch table and threw out the fork. Since then, I’ve never sent any eating utensil to school; there’s too much of a risk of it getting thrown away again, especially because of its small size.

Yesterday at pickup when I was gathering Kaia’s belongings, I realized that one of her two Stasher snack bags was missing. I went through her cubby, around the sink area, and into the fridge and freezer to see if someone had placed it in there. It was not anywhere to be seen. I asked the teachers in the multi-purpose room, who confirmed they never took the snack bag into that room. The manager tried looking for it and never found it. I sent a separate note in the daycare app to the teacher about it, who leaves each day before I pick up. She never replied to my message.

When Chris went to drop off this morning, he asked the teacher about the missing Stasher bag. She was nonchalant, saying she didn’t know where it was, and that maybe one of the kids took it and threw it out. Again, no big deal to her, and no apology or sense of accountability. Chris came home to tell me that we were unlikely to ever see it again.

Now, I have to spend more time and money replacing these items that these teachers take no responsibility over. I don’t even get an apology. Instead, what’s worse is that this teacher had the nerve to blame one of the other toddlers in the class! Every time they lose something, it’s more money that we have to spend, and since it’s not their money, they clearly don’t care at all. That was the same terrible attitude our ex-nanny had: every time she lost something, she would just say flippantly, “Just buy another one,” as though we had endless funds and could just spend on everything, any time!