Tuckaway Child Development

If you don't have an extra $400 sitting around, and you don't want your children watching 1-2 hours of extra TV every day, avoid this place.My two elementary age children went to Tuckaway Ellwood House for 3 weeks this past summer. The teacher was friendly but the front desk is horrendous. I gave them my credit card number to charge for payment. Apparently the either lost it or failed to charge it, but they never sent me an invoice or communicated that they needed payment (not by phone, email, or mail). Then, less than 4 weeks after my daughters left, instead of sending us an invoice, they sent our bill to a debt collector and tacked on a $400 "legal fee"! Yes, I received a debt collection notice in the mail (again, having never received even ONE bill or invoice) with an additional $400 added on! Unprofessional and disgusting.Adding to this, the weeks leading up to and during our time at Ellwood, communication was terrible. Emails inquiring about forms, dates, etc. went unanswered 3/4 times.
Nov 5th, 2021

Tuckaway-Ellwood is amazing. I enrolled my son there when he was 3.5 months and of course I was nervous to leave him in someone else's care. The transition became easy once I realized how much his teacher (Ms. Kisha) cared for him and treated him like her own. We unfortunately had to love out of state when our son turned 10 months old - leaving Tuckaway was one of the hardest things about our move! Everyone there loved our son so much. I can't say enough good things about Tuckaway Ellwood. While it was not the most polished daycare we looked at, it was the place where the teachers cared the most and we felt that every day.
Jun 22nd, 2021

Dec 11th, 2017

Jun 9th, 2017

We looked at a few day cares in Fall 2017. Almost in all higher quality centers were wait lists. We chose Tuckaway on Ellwood because a few people suggested it to us, and they had a plenty of positive reviews at that point. We waited patiently until  October 2018, but there were no notices about our enrollment though they said the wait list is about  a year. I called them up, and they said that we can start in 2-3 weeks. The girl who runs the enrollment process, Mary, wasn't friendly at all. She didn't reply on my emails on time, and she gave me dirty looks when I asked too many questions in person. Really?‍ I was already disappointed, but I decided to give it a try. Sofia was 2 years and 6 months when we started day care. First, she liked it a lot, but in a couple of weeks her teacher left, and they were struggling to find someone new. Instead, they were changing care givers every day because they were just sending people from other groups to help. At this point, Sofia didn't want to go there anymore. She cried at home at night and in the morning because she didn't want to come back to her day care. She cried hysterically at the moment when we were saying goodbye there. What can I say? It was very hard for all of us, but their care givers didn't care much. They didn't try to calm her down or distract her attention. They just kept playing with other kids. Once, my husband went to drop her off, and Sofia cried so hard that she threw up there. Can you imagine that no one even came to him to help to clean up and calm her down until he asked for help ‍. We tried for a week with all this crying, and we stopped. I took her out of there. This was the worst experience ever. After this child care, she even stopped trusting her babysitter for a few weeks. Then, Sofia calmed down, and she happily stayed with babysitter like she did it before. Moreover, we looked into reviews for this Tuckaway child care, and we realized that all the recent positive reviews were left by the people who work there‼This is crazy . For now, since December, Sofia stays at home with me, and I can see the difference in her behavior. She is a happy little girl again. Isn't that the most important for every parent? We will try to put her in another day care in Fall 2019 when she will be 3.5, and I hope she will enjoy it.
Feb 9th, 2019