Friends And Family Daycare LLC

Tracy and her staff are excellent caregivers and helped us through a difficult transition raising our three granddaughters, I can honestly say I couldn't have done it without them, and appreciate their help so much. They really care about the kids and make it fun for all ages. Highly recommend!!!

The owners seem to be more interested in money than the well being of the children there. We thought things were good enough there at the beginning. After a couple of months, we had to start bringing water to pickup because our child was so thirsty at pickup. We made sure she had access to water and figured she was too busy playing. Some days, especially when it was hot out, she'd drink almost the entire water we'd bring.

Someone posted a negative review about Friends and Family on social media which had some (different) concerning allegations so my wife reached out to them. During their conversation the other party stated that they often withheld water so they wouldn't have to change as many diapers because they are short staffed, without my wife having even brought it up. We never went back.

There are always concerned parents but the owners seem to schmooze people, coerce and bully people into removing negative posts, and seemingly find endless people to write generic positive reviews.

I wouldn't trust them with my kid.

A warning to all parents!!! Friends and Family Daycare only cares about the money and not your child! Tracy, the owner of Friends and Family made it very apparent that we were replaceable as she has a waitlist a year long!

Backstory:

My fiancé Olga and I had our first child at the end of May. We were fortunate enough to be in a position that Olga could work from home and then work part time at her office after our daughter was born. Our lease was up in September and so we were looking to move to the Clinton, Tecumseh, Adrian area. Friends and Family came highly recommended by one of our close friends who currently have their son enrolled there. They did not have an opening in the infant room until the start of the year but that was fine as our schedules allowed Olga to continue to work part time in the office while continuing to care for our child.

At the start of daycare our daughter is now 7 months old and her and Olga formed a close bond, so we knew that starting daycare was going to be a big change for our daughter. Olga expressed our concerns to Tracy but was assured that everything would be okay.

On Monday, 1/2/2023 our daughter started day care and as suspected after a few hours was extremely fussy and we offered to come pick her up. Again this happened on Tuesday, and again we offered to pick her up early. On Wednesday our daughter immediately freaked out once she realized where she was but we left her hoping that she would be consoled and calm down after we were gone. Unfortunately this did not happen and again we picked her up. We tried discussing ways to help with the transition and how to make this easier for everyone and it was decided that I drop her off on Thursday. Thursday morning came and I dropped our daughter off and again immediately she began crying and we received message that she was inconsolable and that they have never had a baby be this fussy after 3-4 days in daycare. Again we picked up our daughter and Olga had a conversation with Tracy which left her very upset.

Please note at no point did anyone from Friends and Family suggest to just leave her for the full day and let her cry it out or figure out that being fussy is not going to get us to come pick her up. In fact, it was quite the opposite and we were told essentially that Val's crying was being very disruptive to the other babies in the room and Tracy was concerned staff would quit over having to handle a fussy baby...

After talking it over with friends who infants in day care, I reached out to Tracy in an effort to discuss the situation and how we can make this transition easy for everyone. During the conversation, Tracy' did make a few suggestions that could be helpful and we will be trying them, the overall impression I gained from the conversation was that my child is replaceable and if she does not become a model baby and not fussy within the next week we will be asked to leave. To quote Tracy during this conversation, "I have a wait list a year out and I can find another infant."

Following our conversation I sent Tracy an email expressing our concerns and that it was apparent that our daughter is expected to fall in line or we would be asked to leave and that Friends and Family would not be providing any extra help during the transition process and that ultimately we have decided to terminate the relationship. Within 11 minutes of that email Tracy simply provided the most apathetic response of "Sorry that we couldn’t work on this but with state guidelines we have to follow it was hard to do what Olga wanted us to do." We simply needed some guidance and asked for some extra help provided to our 7 month old daughter while she goes through this transition. We were not expecting such help to be provided indefinitely and if after a few weeks it was still a problem then we will look at other options.

To further solidify my opinion that Tracy only cares about the money and all our children are easily replaceable. Not only did they not offer a refund of our deposit but about an our after terminating our relationship with Friends and Family Daycare I received an invoice for the four, half-days that our daughter spent there.

Do yourself a favor and find another day care facility who actually cares about you and your family especially if you think your child transitioning to day care will be difficult or you might end up writing a similar email.