A Florida day care worker has been fired after writing a reminder on a 1-year-old boy's stomach in permanent marker for his mother to provide diapers.
Heather Chisum, whose son and 3-year-old daughter attended Children's Center of the Islands in Sanibel, about 15 miles south of Cape Coral, sought advice in a now-viral Facebook post Monday on whether she was justified in being "furious" about the worker's actions.
The post has been shared more than 30,000 times and garnered 22,000 reactions as of Wednesday morning.
"I need opinions. Am I right to be furious about this? Or am I over reacting?" Chisum asked. "I really need your opinions guys, because I’m about to barge in this daycare tomorrow morning and have some words."
Chisum said the day care typically sends a daily report home in her son, Milo's, lunchbox informing her what mood he was in for the day, at what times his diapers were changed and whether he needs diapers or wipes.
"I’m a single mom with a full time job and two very young children," she wrote in the Facebook post. "SUE ME FOR NOT READING THE REPORT EVERY SINGLE DAY."
Chisum said that she must have overlooked the last report indicating he needed diapers, but that she sees several of the teachers at the day care when she drops her children off and picks them up who could have asked her if she had missed the report.
Instead, she wrote, "I change his diaper this afternoon AND SEE THIS WRITTEN ON MY SON WITH MARKER. You can’t even see all of it in the pic. It says, 'Mom I’m out of diapers pls read my report.'"
Chisum said she scrubbed his stomach several times with several wipes but the message did not come off.
"In the very worst case scenario, I can’t see anything other than 'need diapers' needing to be written," she wrote. "Why a big long message needed to be written across my son's stomach is beyond me."
She said she could understand had the day care worker written the message on her son's diaper and that this was not the first time this had happened.
She concluded her Facebook post by writing: "Help. Am I over exaggerating? Give it to me straight people."
Children's Education Center of the Islands did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. The director of the center, Cindy Carter DeCosta, told NBC affiliate WBBH in Florida, " It was a breach of our professional ethics on the part of the teacher."
DeCosta also said the school took immediate action to remove the teacher from the school. "We are reviewing protocols already in place to ensure that nothing like this occurs again," DeCosta said.
Milo's parents told WBBH that they have filed a police report.
