In the first couple of months we were very happy with Maria’s setting as per my review above, and this is my review after leaving the setting almost one year later. As the months went by more and more concerns emerged regarding her being emotionally mature enough to work with multiple children without other adults being present hence the one star review as for me safety trumps all the other good (or great) aspects of this setting.

What drew us initially were the attention to detail in the toy/activity arrangements, the garden, the food, the small number of children (there were only 2 initially), the good relation between our son and Maria’s daughter and the parenting books that Maria read.

As the months passed by warning signs started to appear but we repressed them as we did not want to overreact and we were hoping for our son to build long term relationships with his caregivers which we genuinely hoped to see as members of extended family.

One of the initial signs was quite unusual inflexibility in terms of “the right” way to raise children, which I attributed to expertise and conviction which I respected at the time.

Then we noticed a worrying lack of true empathy and ability to read and acknowledge children’s change in behaviour as a consequence of illness or other symptoms such as teething. The expectation was that children would fit her planed activities unaffected.

There were also several weeks in which Maria said our son was pushing and hitting all the children without any reason and tried to convince us to be unnecessarily restrictive with him as a correction mechanism. For a couple of months we went into an internet rabbit hole and also watched Albert carefully in all contexts with other children and we never saw anything like that outside of Maria’s setting. She also denied to provide any context of what might have started the behaviour and suggested other children were never doing anything remotely similar to our son. We shared scientific research on the topic but she dismissed everything we suggested. Eventually one morning, and unsuprisingly for toddlers, I saw another child in the setting come to push our son in front of me. This is a perfectly normal development stage for toddlers and it is addressable but the focus was more on blamins us and our son.

It was common for our childminder to react with some type of relational aggression at the slightest suggestion of improvement of care for our son and sometimes even following a simple request for information which I suspect was perceived as a criticism. As you can imagine this kind of reactivity and deep insecurity is detrimental for the emotional welbeing and development small children given the challenges of taking care of so many at the same time.

With time Maria became so antagonistic, in particular against my wife, such that my wife stopped dropping off and picking up our son and also stopped replying on the whatsapp chat to avoid triggering her. I also spent a lot of energy taking responsibility for Maria’s emotions for fear of her finding subtle and potentially even not so subtle ways to react against our son while I was not present.

We did notice some behaviours in our son which with hindsight should have triggered us to move him somewhere else earlier like shame based reactions which he could not have learned somewhere else.

Trying to find (at least a short term) solution we decided not to take our son to the setting at the contractual 8:00am start to avoid the time when we saw Maria being most triggered by the requirements to be on time for school. Instead I brought in our son later, at 9:00am, when the school run is over. Our son became much happier after this change so we asked to change the contract as well to reflect this later start time which she refused saying she did not want to lose money. As you can imagine, alongside paying for care we did not receive this was also very difficult to organize with my work commitments as I would have preferd an 8:00am start if I could trust Maria to be kind with Albert during stressful times.

One morning my boss asked me last minute to come in early so at 7:40am I wrote to Maria as a courtesy that I would be bringing Albert at 8am. She replied that I cannot let her know like this and that she expects us to come at 9:00am and that I need to provide 24h notice. I replied that as per the contractual we pay for 8am even when we don’t get the care at which point she left our common chat. When I arrived at 8:05am I told Maria that I understand she could use more notice for breakfast preparation but I had been called to work early on short notice. She said that this is not her problem and that she has been disrespected so she is giving her notice of termination to us effectively immediately. I was in shock as I realised that all along I had ignored the warning signs and I had left my child alone which a person which is not emotionally fit enough to take care of children woth a poor grasp of reality when triggered. I felt it unsafe to leave our son with her so I took him home with me immediately never to return.

And so we were left with no childcare during an extremely busy time at work and we will be using our annual leave looking for childcare. But ultimately relieved for this to be over and very upset that me and my wife have not listened to our guts earlier.

• Overall
• Setting
• Cleanliness
• Food
• Communication