And she threatened my kid with a fly swatter

For a long list of reasons that I really don’t need to or want to explain, Miss Sassy Pants had to go to daycare right after she turned two. I was back to work full-time, and she had to go somewhere.

The first morning I dropped her off, I probably cried more than she did. She was confused, and she looked at me with those big, beautiful brown eyes as if to ask where in the heck I was going.

It was the next morning that she hollered and screamed for me, and my heart broke in two.

As the days turned into weeks and then months, she got a lot better. She actually enjoyed being at “school,” and we would play in her room as she pretended to be Mrs. Bertha*.

One day, I pretended to be a bad student. I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t sit still. I kept screaming. Every time she told me to do something, I said, “NO!” and stomped my feet.

“If you don’t behave, I’ll hit you with my fly swatter.”

Excuse me, what!? What did my precious little darling just say to me?

I asked her to repeat herself. She did: “If you don’t behave, I’ll hit you with my fly swatter.”

Immediately, I asked her where she’d heard that. She said, “Mrs. Bertha.”

My blood boiled, but I calmly explained to her that hitting was not something we did to people.

I made sure to make it to daycare a little earlier than normal so I could speak with the director — who proceeded to defend the teacher and tell me my 2 year old was making up stories.

Let’s stop for a second:

She was 2.
Although she was/is very smart, this was quite the random tale to make up.
We didn’t even own a fly swatter (still don’t), so why would she even know what one was?
Really? You’re going to disregard a disgruntled parent like that? Oh no.

I demanded that I get daily reports from the teacher (which, I found out later, was actually a normal thing for daycares to do and this one wasn’t doing). The daycare director nodded and fake-smiled and basically indicated that she thought I was an idiot. I only received one week’s worth of updates on my child.

About a week or two later, I was dropping off Miss Sassy Pants for the day. Guess what I saw sitting behind Mrs. Bertha?

A fly swatter.

And that was that. Once I knew I had somewhere for her to be, I pulled my daughter out of that daycare. I wrote a long letter to the director explaining that there was a problem and that she had completely blown me off. I told her to keep my last two week’s payment. I didn’t care about the money as long as my daughter was out of there.

Miss Sassy Pants has heard the story many times, and we laugh now at the idea of her possibly hitting me with a fly swatter. That was my first real experience getting all mama bear on someone in defense of my babies.