This is a parent’s nightmare! After mum Leslie Meade would bring her baby home she noticed all he would do was sleep. One can only imagine her horror when the police started investigating her child’s daycare. The Bryant County Sheriff’s Office in Oklahoma, is investigating the owner, and employee’s at Sue’s daycare for allegedly drugging children to get them lethargic, and to sleep at nap time. This situation came to be exposed when a former employee reported it to the Department of Human Services, and since that time other employees have come forward. Jeff Wilson an investigator with the Sheriff’s Office is recommending that charges be laid against the owner for child abuse, and drugging children.
The drug the children were being given is called Benadryl, also called diphenhydramine, it is an antihistamine that is very well known for causing a person to become drowsy, and sleepy. It is NOT recommended for children under the age of two years old, or to make them sleep! It should only ever be given to small children when prescribed by a doctor because it can cause small children to stop breathing. There has been a case two years ago in Waco Texas where a daycare provider was arrested after she gave a 4 month old girl some Benadryl, and the baby died from the toxic dosage.
It is important to stress there are many excellent daycare’s out there, run by competent, good people, who really care, and we should not judge them all. However, our compassion goes out to these babies, and to parent’s who feel especially betrayed, because they were trusting their precious babies into the hands of people who they thought were properly trained professionals, only to find out, that they recklessly endangered them. At the very core of this is the daycare provider’s laziness, and wanting a quick easy fix to get the children to sleep. Parents it is wise, and prudent practice, to pay attention to what goes on in your child’s daycare, ask questions before putting them in there, get references, police record checks done, drop in unexpected, and follow up, if nothing is wrong they have nothing to worry about.
