daycare woes

I had D-R-A-M-A last night! Picked the baby up from daycare and she proceeds to tell me that Dana (cousin w/the convict hubby) spanked her at naptime bc she wasn’t asleep. I HIT the roof! First of all, DANA doesn’t have permission to put her hand on my child at any time, in any capacity. Not even at a family gathering would I say it was OK for her to hit my child. I don’t like her, I think she's trash, and I am very funny about who interacts with my children, especially on a punishment level. Not to mention the fact that in a daycare setting, its illegal. They do have a corporal punishment policy (which I signed NO to) but it clearly states that the director ONLY will pop the child on the hand. And that is only if you've given permission, and I didn’t.

I asked her what happened, and she said it was naptime and she wasn’t asleep so Dana spanked her. I asked her "did she pop you on the hand" and she said no, mommy she spanked my butt. So I asked her "with what, a belt?" and she said no her hand. I think if she was making this up, she would have made it as BIG of a story as possible. When preschoolers make up things, they go big! I really feel if she was making it up for attention/sympathy she'd have made it this big beating with a belt and blood and bruises etc etc etc. lol She's been known to exaggerate something that actually happened, making the punishment seem worse than it was, and that has only been in the heat of the moment, but NEVER has she fabricated a complete lie.

Anyway, my first reaction was BAD. I called everyone in my family, but no one would tell me where she lived after they found out why I wanted to know. I was SOOOOO going to her house to even up the score! After I calmed down a bit, I tried to call DSS but they close at 5pm and their recording doesn’t give you the # for the 24hr hotline. I tried to call the owner at home, got her answering machine, left a message. She never called me back. THAT ticks me off. I'm still considering calling DSS but I don’t want to make any moves that will cause my daughter to be even MORE mistreated, until I can get her out of there this summer. Anyway...

This morning, I wrote a letter specifically stating that NO one was to administer corporal punishment of any kind to my daughter, including people who may be related to me. Of course, after the director read the note, she vehemently denied anything of the sort happened. I calmly told her it was not an accusation towards her OR the other director, but that I didn’t think my 3-year-old daughter had the forethought or deviance to fabricate something of that sort, especially not as specific as she was about the entire incident. She then says to me "well some kids do". OMG did that ever hit me the wrong way. I couldn’t believe she was seriously calling my daughter a flipping liar! She's 3 for goodness sake, her brain is just not developed enough to think something like that through. Anyway, I left it at that, I reitterated that no one was to put their hands on my daughter, especially that lunatic. She said ok, and that was pretty much the end of that. She looked a little mad (she's friends with Dana) but I really didn’t care. It's far more important to me that my daughter be treated appropriately than it is that the staff think I'm their best friend.