Playground Safety

News4jax reported on October 25 that last year in December that a 3 year old was at daycare and picked something off the ground and put it in her mouth.The little girl's mother was on the playground at the time of the incident and was the one who saw it and told her child to take it out of her mouth. Once the child removed the item from her mouth the mother noticed that it was a used condom. This specific daycare is part of the Head Start program run by the Jacksonville Urban League on Ionia Street and is alsothe site of the city’s Robert F. Kennedy Community Center and Park.  This incident has resulted in an entire year’s worth of fear and worry for her mother that the child has a sexually transmitted disease or possibly HIV because the condom tested positive for gonorrhea and it can take up to a year for these kinds of diseases to show up.

During a interview the mother broke down because of the last year of fear her and her child have been through. The mother stated that if it happened to her daughter it can happen to someone Else's daughter.

“I lift up my head and I saw her put something in her mouth and I was like, ‘get that out of your mouth!’ And someone said see what she had in her mouth and that's when I found out she had a condom in her mouth," explained Sanders.

 During the interview when Adrienne asked Sanders what was going through her mind when she realized what her daughter had put in her mouth she said,

“Honestly, I was like what the hell is that? I was very upset, I was shaking, I was crying."
 

This is a very sad case. The mother had to experience her child in this situation and now her  and her child's life has taken a tremendous change. This mother doesn't know what to think. I've read this story and also say it on the news the day that it aired. I have now read the comments that's below this story where people saying that a 3 year old wouldn't put things in their mouth that the little girl would be out of that stage at the age of three and other things such as why is the child care facility the one to blame.

Number one I've worked in child care before. At the age of 3 kids actually do still put things in their mouth, they are still kids at the age of 3. The overall age for a child to be out of the stage of putting nasty things in their mouth is normally around the age of 3 or 4 but you also have to realize that a beginning stage of a 3 year old they aren't fully 3 yet they still have I guess you would call it a 2 year old mind. So yes it is possible for a 3 year old to still put things in their mouths.

Secondly I do agree that the daycare should partially be at fault for the simple fact of that after working in child care one of DCF's policy is to check the playground before taking kids out to play. When an employee inspect the playground they are suppose to search for everything from insects to trash. Apparently what ever worker, if any, that inspected the playground that morning either didn't do the proper procedures or really didn't do it at all because if they did they would have saw this condom and would have gotten gloves to remove it from the playground. And this particular daycare should have been very cautious because this facility is also open to the public.

To me there isn't an excuse in the world that this daycare can give to the news or DCF because this little girl's life can change forever. And now when she get older she'll have to live with that because a worker didn't do their job and DCF wasn't even notified of this incident. There has been so many different incidents at day cares lately some parents are going to be very nervous about putting their child into a daycare. I'm not a parent yet and I am nervous for the sake of my future kids,do nervous to the point where I don't want them in a daycare until they are old enough to actually know better and talk because this child care workers aren't paying any attention to the kids that's their responsibility.