Reddit Stories

By: Sad-Negotiation-1489

I've been working at a daycare for a few years now. The entire time I've worked there a little girl has been attending, she's now 4.

In the past few months her personality has shifted. She's been more emotional, quick to get upset but also being very mean to other children both verbally and physically. I talked repeatedly with her mother about this and took steps to help her work through her big feelings. But, her parents are going through a messy divorce and I assumed she was acting out related to that.

But then the behavior took a distressing turn. She would try to hold hands with the little boys and then try to get them to put their hands in her back pockets when they stood together. She started making a really big deal of being in a swimsuit and asking boys if seeing her in it made them happy.

She started trying to play doctor with the other kids trying to convince them to take their clothes off, and when I told her that sort of play was not allowed at daycare she started trying to hide and do it.

I mentioned these behaviors to her mom and she apologized but brushed it off with "Well she's got a lot of cousins."

But then the other day she was playing house with another child and held up a baby doll. She pointed to the doll's mouth and told the child "Kiss her here." Then ran her fingers down the doll's body and touched between its legs and said "Now kiss her here. "

Combining this with her recent behavior shift had me very concerned and I felt like I needed to call cps.

Once I did so, the person taking my call asked if I'd talked to the parents about this and asked them why it was happeninga. I explained that it was my understanding from my training that we should not be investigating ourselves in cases of suspected abuse. She told me it was wrong of me to call and potentially ruin a family's life without doing more to make sure something was wrong, but that she guessed she'd have to fill out the report anyways since I called it in. The Director of the childcare is furious with me.

I feel so sick to my stomach, it was not my intention to ruin anyone's life. And I had agonized over making the call. But I genuinely thought we were supposed to call if we had reasonable suspicion, and that we weren't supposed to question parents beforehand.

Did I do the wrong thing? What should I do for cases like this in the future?