Bright Horizons at Sudbury

Our experience was very similar to Zara S.‘s – said all the right things, but their actions didn’t match up. I think that they just don’t have the experience or expertise to work effectively with children who may need a little something different.
As for the actual day? It’s very structured, with very little outdoor time, and high staff turnover. In the three months we were there, our sons had three different primary teachers for the classroom. I wonder: if we had been there for 12 months, would our sons have had 12 teachers!!!
Bright Horizons had come very highly recommended to us, but we were terribly disappointed. We’re now in a preschool with a play-​based curriculum, plenty of outdoor time and teachers who have been with the program for several years, and our kids are thriving.

On first look the facilities look amazing — a great indoor place space, a fantastic art studio but the place the kids spend most of their time is the classroom that we had 2 independent experts tell us it was small and cramped with furniture for 9 kids 2 teachers and parents coming and going all day.
Our son didn’t last even 3 months in the toddler program because they deemed he was ‘aggressive’. Yet he has displayed none of those behaviors at his new, more spacious daycare. So much time is unstructured play that if kids don’t yet know how to play on their own they end up a bit lost. At least that’s how Early Intervention explained their observations of BH Sudbury.
Bright Horizons say all the right things but in our experience rarely actually followed through on the things that were going to make a difference. When an action plan was put together the staff were 3 weeks late putting together a cozy corner to help the kids have a relaxing space for when they got distressed. That was what upset us the most they didn’t seem to put the action that would have benefitted our son first. We care that other children were being affected, which is why we acted immediately upon being informed it was a growing concern. Initially they said it wasn’t a problem and deemed just toddler behavior between the children until the center could not cope.
It felt like that they had decided that he became too much hassle and because they can fill the available space ten times over it seemed to us they just couldn’t be bothered.
They asked for our agreement to bring in 2 outside agencies, Early Intervention and Enable who could not start with the center until Dec 4^th and yet he was asked to leave on Dec 11^th. Enable had not even completed their assessment of the situation or plan to support the center and our family. Early Intervention had been only twice.
When we offered to pay for an additional teacher to support the center it was deemed not necessary in the early stages and we should wait for the intervention of the supporting agencies. But they never gave the experts the time to help.
All this coupled with the fact that we signed an agreement the week before our son was due to start and the center director got the price wrong on the contract and she also told us she had made a mistake while we were on the wait list and that the place she had reserved for us was no longer available makes our overall experience of Bright Horizons Sudbury very unsatisfactory.
It’s not like we are biased against Bright Horizons our son went to Bright Horizons Wellesley for 3 months while we were on the wait list for Bright Horizons Sudbury and we can’t fault them.
During the process we would have done anything to keep our son at Bright Horizons Sudbury, in the end you couldn’t have paid us to keep him there.

We enrolled our son in the infant program several months ago and we could not be happier with our decision. We visited most of the other local options and this was the one that just «felt right.» The teachers are so caring and great with the children AND the parents. I’m sure I’m not alone as a parent of an infant where I’ve had so many questions for them. They are always so patient and supportive. I feel lucky to have found such wonderful people that take such good care of our child and enjoy it. The administrators that run the facility are wonderful too. Always helpful, supportive and very responsive. Some additional pluses are the art projects and baby yoga. so cute!