Baby club - negative experience

I’ve seen overwhelmingly positive experiences of mini club/ baby club online as well as from friends of ours and my family when they took me 30 years ago, but we had a bad experience on our trip.

The first day we dropped our 18 month old off we noticed the room was full of babies crying, with some strapped in strollers inside the room, almost as if to contain them. Our kid is a daycare kid and loves people, he went back no problem. We told them we would be picking him up after they fed him lunch and would have him nap with us just to make sure he got a full two hours at the time he usually naps, and confirmed the time we should pick him up to make this happen. We got there just before that time and asked for him, and they were in the middle of trying to out him down for nap (the nap room was full of crying and we could hear him). They brought him out but couldn’t find our stroller… took a little and they brought it out covered in crumbs which told me he spent lunch or some part of the day in the stroller. We wrote off the nap attempt as miscommunication between staff.

Next day we dropped him off and he was screaming and crying, which is unlike him but we sent him in anyway knowing he just needed time to adjust. We told them about the day before and asked again to not have him nap, to keep him in the main room if they started putting other kids down and confirmed the time we should be there to get him before naptime. When we got there (even earlier than they said this time) to get him, they said he had been put down for a nap an hour before we got there (after not eating his lunch) because he seemed tired and that we should come back at the end of nap time. We reiterated that we had wanted him to nap with us and didn’t understand where the miscommunication was, and talked to the director of the school to explain our frustration and hope that she could help with communication. When we came back for pick up we once again saw the majority of babies strapped in strollers in the room, and the director found us and said the teachers thought we were talking about a different child and so they didn’t put that child down for a nap and put ours down instead. Essentially telling us they mixed up children. I know they see many kids week to week and it’s a lot to keep track of, but this was unacceptable to us and we decided to not send him back the rest of the week.

I truly believe the older kids club is amazing and we saw so many 3+ kids out and about doing fun activities and enjoying themselves, and maybe I’m reading too much into the two days we saw and it’s not every child’s experience, but I wouldn’t recommend the baby club for your littles unless you’re ok with them sitting in a room crying all day. We decided we’d rather our guy be with us and have good memories instead.