TLC Academy for Young Children

My son has attended TLC for the past three years and we have had a wonderful experience. His teachers are patient, kind and wonderful with the children. In the pre-​k classroom the curriculum is fun, educational and age appropriate. Our son knows his letters, numbers and most importantly demonstrates a love for learning. TLC has been incredibly flexible with my fluctuating work schedule and my son can’t wait to get to school every morning. Not sure what we’d do without TLC!

Let me preface my review by saying that I do have high expectations when someone watches my child. I am happy to pay whatever dollar amount, but inconsistent care is not acceptable.
We moved in from out of state and I looked at 2 daycares. A national chain that used with a curricular approach and TLC. We chose TLC, because of the low infant to ‘teacher’ ratio, which is 3 to 1. The facility is nice and people were nice enough. Pricing was high for this market, but expected at that level of staffing.
The first week or so were a bit of a transition, which we expected. My son didn’t sleep well there and stopped holding his bottle and being as active as normal. I chalked this up to a big move and change of daycares.
After about 2 weeks things started to get a little strange, whenever we picked up my son he was either sleeping or being fed. We never saw him on the floor playing with other kids. The other kids were always being fed or sleeping. Granted we weren’t there long stretches of time, but I heard parents say the same thing to the workers.
In week 3, we showed up to drop off my son and the infant room did not have a normal teacher. The fill in from the toddler room stated she didn’t know where anyone was. She also stated she understood if we didn’t want to leave him with her. All of this struck us as strange. We decided based on gut to leave. I emailed the management and expressed my concern about a lack of backup and system in place to deal with this type of situation. The reply from management was ‘these things happen especially with bad weather.’ The problem with this statement is that day did not have bad weather.
We took the weekend to think about it and thought to give it one more shot. We tried to make an appointment with management and they kept pushing the date to later in the week. This should have been telling that they were not receptive to our concerns.
We took my son to the daycare and the lead teacher was in the room. She apologized for the lack of a teacher on the prior Friday. She said the teacher who is normally there had an issue late night at her apartment. We left our son and decided my wife would go back to check. She did and the normal early morning teacher was very sick and talking to the lead teacher. They both seemed surprised my wife showed up.
My wife found my son in the crib with a dirty diaper screaming. He had obviously been crying for a while. The two teachers had been in the other room talking evidently not paying attention to the crying of my son or other children.
Ultimately, the number of incidents in a compressed time made us switch daycares. For some reason the management decided it was necessary to write an email telling me why all my concerns were baseless after we pulled him. Additionally, they stated no other children had been pulled in the past 11 years. This is patently false. A child at our new daycare was originally at TLC.
I do not think they mistreat children, but in the week after being at TLC my son had reengaged with the new kids at his new daycare. He was scooting around laughing with the other kids and playing with the teacher. This is exactly how he interacted in his prior daycare.
I am sure this review will send them through the roof, but it is all true. I am giving it 2 stars, cause the facility is nice.