My mom ran a home daycare while my siblings and I were growing up and every other day, at least one kid would be in a grumpy mood when their parent drops them off.
Most of the time it would be because their mom or dad just woke them up after they fell asleep during the drive from their home to ours.
Sometimes the parents would feel bad about waking their child up so they would just carry them into the house.
However, in retrospect I wish my mom made sure the kids were awake before their parents left.
A story from an unnamed day care worker, originally posted on Reddit, has gone viral after they revealed why a child care center she worked at had a policy to never accept a sleeping kid.
While both the former employee and other Reddit users initially assumed it's because it would disrupt their sleeping schedule, user 56149 explained that the reason why this rule was put into place is much worse than that.
"I used to think it was to help the kid be on a schedule then one day a grandma brought a baby asleep and he was not waking up at all," they wrote in response to a question asking "what was the most satisfying time where you caught someone lying?" "Just raise his head, whimper and go back to sleep."
It was what unfolded next that made the daycare worker realize just how important the no-sleeping children policy was as it protects both the child and the facility.
"Immediately my boss called 911 and grandma was trying to down play 'he had a rough night, he's just tired, etc,'" she continued. "I knew this baby, he wouldn't sleep if he thought he was going to miss out, we had music playing and kids loudly singing and dancing. In the chaos, grandma slipped out and at some point someone called the parents."
They later discovered that the grandmother "had a history of giving kids stuff to knock them out when she babysat but this time she did it to a 6 month old and that's why he wouldn't wake up [sic]."
Thankfully, the kid's stomach was pumped and after a stay at the hospital, he was able to recover. His parents took legal action against the grandmother and moved away from the area.
Had the daycare not put such a policy in place, the grandma could've removed herself out of the equation and blamed the caretakers for drugging her grandson.
Sadly, this wasn't an isolated incident. It happens more often than many people realize.
"To clarify, the policy was put in place because my boss knew abusers have been known to do this," the user explained. "They'd break the kid's arm, dose them, dump them with the sitter who lets the baby asleep all morning then because the kid was with the sitter all day, it's easy to blame them for the baby's injury. Or worse, the baby died and they do this to blame the sitter."
Even after leaving their position at the daycare, the Redditor applied the same rule whenever they took care of someone else's child.
"To this day if I'm babysitting, I don't accept sleeping children. I flat out refuse to watch kids at their home while they're sleeping for the same reason," they said. "I've pretty much stopped doing any child care because as much as I love kids, watching parents make bad decisions on purpose, when they know better, was killing my soul."
People took to the comment section to weigh on the revelation, many admitting that this is something they have never thought about.
"That's horrendous. I never would have thought to check for that :(" wrote meanotaur.
"Holy cow. When I read the first paragraph I was thinking that's a weird policy. I can totally see why. I never would have thought people would do that," commented Reallychelseawow.
One Redditor, opxum, was surprised to learn that this was a common thing because something similar happened to them too.
"Crazy knowing this is a common thing," they wrote. "Happened to me as a kid."
