Nona’s Little Bits of Heaven

This review is one that I have waited to write for a long period of time, because I didn’t really understand the full scope of how underwhelming this place was until we switched day cares. My daughter attended Nona’s for one year when we first moved to the Memphis region, and on the surface, it seems to be a fairly nice facility with average to above-​average teachers and personnel. Honestly, there aren’t too many choices for day care in the area, so this is what led us to choose Nona’s to begin with. After 10 months of substandard education and services though, we had enough.
Below I will breakdown our experience at Nona’s into a few different categories, based on their relevant importance to me as a parent. You will note that I will be doing a lot of comparison between this facility, and my other two experiences with day cares to try and impart to you a more vivid scope.
Education: First, as an Education major in college myself, I firmly believe that every child grows and learns in vastly different ways. This is one reason why I am against such strict standardization of our schools and education facilities in this country. I say this, because I guarantee you that just as every child learns differently, every daycare/​school teaches a little differently. For my daughter, prior to coming to Nona’s she was regularly scoring very high in all of the core areas (cognitive development, motor development, fine-​motor development, social development, emotional development, etc.) as evidenced by her pediatrician and previous scores given by her previous day care. When my daughter attended Nona’s, all of this started to change.
Prior to Nona’s, my daughter was enrolled at Apple Tree Day Care in Helotes, TX (where we used to live). We absolutely loved this facility, and the teachers because they were genuinely looking out for our daughter’s well-​being in all of the aforementioned core areas. From day 1 at Nona’s we noticed that their curriculum was lacking in a lot of different ways. My daughter’s learning plateaued, and we found that she was not exhibiting as many new skills and abilities as she once was. As a parent, you notice every little thing that your child learns, and prior to Nona’s, it seemed like our daughter was doing something new every day. This slowed quite dramatically. (³⁄₅)
Staff: This is the the biggest point of concern for me. My daughter was in the same class as the Assistant Director’s daughter (The Asst. Director is also the daughter of the owner of the center). They did not get along very well. Mind you, they were two years old. Whenever there was an issue, where did my daughter go? To the Assistant Director’s office. Every time, we were told of a situation, it was something that my daughter had done, and not the Asst. Director’s daughter. Things were happening that were waaaaay outside the behavioral pattern of my daughter, and were completely inconsistent with behavior she exhibited everywhere else.
This quickly became a concern for us. The behaviors that the Asst. Director were alleging happened in the center, were never anything we had witnessed at home. So for a long time, we kept an open mind because we did not want to be those parents that assumed that ‘oh, it could never be our child’. Months went by, things seemingly got worse, teachers were shifting around from classroom to classroom, teachers were resigning, and we quickly realized that there was a cancer in that place, and it was not our daughter. We promptly switched to Bright Ideas Enrichment Center in Cordova, and oh … my … God — the difference!
Our daughter immediately began regularly exhibiting new skills and abilities again. Not within a few weeks, within days. All of the ridiculous things that the previous Asst Director alleged my daughter did (hitting, biting, pushing, screaming, etc.) have never been reported to us here. We regularly ask because we seriously want to know so that we can take measures to correct any bad behavior. She has never exhibited any of the things Nona’s claimed she did. (Staff ¹⁄₅)
Price: For what I paid, I would have expected a premium center with good quality staff and an excellent learning environment for my daughter. This was the complete opposite, and I firmly believe was, in-​fact, a hostile environment for my daughter — caused by the Asst Director. (Price ²⁄₅)
Final Thoughts: I am not a big fan of giving 1 star reviews to places, but Nona’s is as close to 1 star as it can possibly get without actually getting 1 star. The Director (Nona) was a really sweet lady, but if she cannot see what issues are festering below the surface at her facility, than someone else may need to step-​in and take charge. It has been 16 months since my daughter attended Nona’s, and I am still enraged when I think about this. They were messing with my daughter’s life and her well-​being. That is some serious stuff…