After looking at hundreds of pages of reports, what has emerged for me is a sense of how very, very complicated this quest to do right by our children is. How hard it is to know the difference between bad moments and bad care. How often we fall short of the perfect world we want for our children - both at home and at day care. My colleagues and I have read things that make us shudder. There are bad caregivers out there, and I'm grateful for anything the state can do to protect us from them.
Good people have bad days.
Good centers sometimes hire the wrong person - not a bad person, necessarily, but someone who can't handle a roomful of tots. If there's a simple answer, I haven't found it. We need to do our research when we choose care. We must spend time talking to our children's caregivers, week in and week out, and make time to visit the places where our kids spend their days. We can expect honesty from caregivers when bad things happen, and we can respond with the compassion and support we'd like in our bad times.