Little Owl's Early Learning Center

We’ve gone back and forth about posting this, but we believe other families deserve to know what happened to ours.

We enrolled our youngest child at Little Owls Early Learning Center in Oakland, MD, trusting them to provide safe, attentive care. What followed was one of the most stressful experiences we’ve ever faced as parents.

Since November 2024, we had been quietly collecting information and our concerns grew—many of which came directly from our own observations. Among the most disturbing:

I personally witnessed multiple toddlers unbuckled in their highchairs, while the teachers had their backs turned, conversing with each other. One of the children (who belongs to one of the teachers at the center) began to throw a fit and I physically had to reach over the bookshelf to prevent the child from falling out of the highchair on their head.

After I repeatedly said, "Be careful buddy, you're going to fall," a teacher finally noticed, and instead of showing concern, told the child (who was under 18 months old), “Your mom said to ignore you when you're throwing fits like this and to come back when you're calm.”

On a separate visit, my husband made a light joke about a child having a goose egg, and another teacher replied casually that her own child rolled off the changing table that day and got a goose egg too.

There were numerous occasions when employee spouses—who are not staff, but were fathers of children there—were found sitting in rocking chairs in the childcare rooms, around children, during operating hours.

If you know our son, you know he's been talking for over 6 months and his sense of understanding is scary. With that said, he needs direction and interaction, something he wasn't receiving there. When left to just play, he would climb or act out to get the teachers' attention. In response to his actions, the owner told me that she couldn't "legally" kick him out for his behaviors until he was 2 and then requested a mental health evaluation on him through Child Care Choices.

After multiple observations, the Child Care Choices specialist determined that there was nothing wrong with our child. In fact, she concluded that the teachers were not building rapport with the children and noted multiple times that instead of engaging them in real physical activity, they were being placed in front of a TV playing a “move and groove” follow-along show. In the end, there were no developmental or mental health concerns for our son.

Despite these red flags, we tried to give the benefit of the doubt. But things escalated when the daycare filed two CPS reports against our family in a short span, alleging child abuse, questioning our children’s hygiene and our parenting. We believe these were retaliatory, perhaps because we began asking too many questions to other parents or because they were trying to get us to withdraw him from their care...

The emotional damage these reports caused was devastating. Our children were scared. Our family was shaken. We were forced to take our toddler to a hospital an hour away for full-body X-rays, even though there was no injury requiring them. It cost us lost wages, travel time, and peace of mind.

Thankfully, both CPS investigations were fully closed. Abuse was ruled out. There was never anything there. We knew it—and now everyone else does too.

We ultimately withdrew our child permanently. It was the only safe and sane choice.