Kiddie Junction Day Care: Child Care Ethics at it’s worst

Unethical behavior does not require the situation to involve the illegal transfer of millions of dollars, or bribery or fraud or even vote swapping. It can involve something much closer to home. In fact, it can be a simple breakdown of trust and a lack of awareness that bad choices can lead to serious consequences.  Just ask the folks at Kiddie Junction Day Care.  I’m most certain that the owner would say that they are horified at what took place and the negative attention it has caused.

Kiddie Junction: Overworked and Overlooked

We live in an age where everyone is overworked and overbooked and often the obvious details are overlooked. An example might be retrieving your child from daycare, and believing the child is tired and lethargic after a day of heavy playing, running and jumping. This often occurred after parents picked up their kids from Kiddie Junction in Des Plaines, Illinois. As the scandal unfolds, the children seemed “worn out” for an entirely different reason.

Three, day care “teachers” who worked at Kiddie Junction were charged with giving melatonin laced gummy bears to the two-year old children before their naptime. The only good news, initially, has been that the management of the daycare center alerted the police after they learned what their staff members had been doing.

Obviously, the parents of the toddlers never gave permission for their children to receive melatonin. Ironically, the workers did not think they had done anything wrong. They explained that melatonin is a natural substance and that it is sold over the counter so there couldn’t possibly be any problems.

By the way, the teachers were hardly kids, as the oldest was 32. Each teacher has been charged with two counts each of endangering the life or health of a child and two counts of battery. As I studied the mug shots of the teachers, the youngest, a teenager of 19 had a frightened expression as she realized the possible consequences of her actions, while the oldest had a bit of a smirk on her face. It seemed a joke. I can assure her that ethically, it is hardly a joke.

Harmless? Hardly!

Melatonin is a hormone that is normally produced by the body. While under normal circumstances it generally isn’t considered to be a harmful substance. It is not without side effects such as causing nightmares, depression, lethargy and exacerbating bipolar disorders. While the natural health claims on the melatonin bottle extoll its virtues, it must be noted that in many countries it is not a supplement but a regulated prescription drug not to be administered outside of a physician’s care.

From an ethical point of view, handing out melatonin gummy bears to two-year-old’s to get them to quiet down, is a dangerous and slippery ethical slope that needs a lot more discussion. If melatonin was OK to dole out to “calm” the children, why not other supplements or even prescription drugs?

Any case of bad ethics involves three facts: opportunity, need and rationalization.

In terms of the opportunity, it would seem apparent that the three teachers came to an understanding. Under the nose of their supervisor, they would hand out candy in the form of gummy bears, and it would look like innocent fun.

As their supervisor turned them over to the police when she discovered what they were doing, it was obviously not condoned. It was a game whereby the teachers could “knock the kids out” so they could go on to do other things and not be bothered with baby-sitting. It is no different than other scandals I’ve recently encountered where elderly in dementia were kept dangerously sedated, or patients in VA facilities were fed opioids to keep them drugged.

Need in this scandal might take on many forms. For the youngest of the teachers the need might have been to fit in with the 25-year-old teacher and the 32-year-old. The oldest teacher, the one with the smirk on her face might have had a need to “get back” at the parents who have dropped off the kids in her care.

As far as rationalization is concerned, they obviously rationalized that since the bottle said melatonin was a natural supplement, that it was harmless. They rationalized the statement on the bottle was much more important than the wishes of the parents, the supervision of their boss or even the opinion of the medical community.

“I didn’t know”

Perhaps the defense of the teachers might be, “Well, we didn’t know it was a bad thing to do.” In one sense, it is a predictable argument but in another, it is an ethical failing where no one wants to claim responsibility. No one outside of the teachers thought that drugging the kids was a good idea. It was a made up, and an unethical illusion. The only thing that might have short-circuited their reasoning would have been ethical training.

It leads to a final and important point. Why is there no continuing program of ethical training for aides, teachers and those entrusted to care for very young children? There is no doubt the parents would appreciate if not insist on such programs if they knew those programs were being offered. Sadly, they are not. There is however, an unlimited supply of melatonin-laced gummy bears. Think about that when handing off your children.

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