West Side Kids Inc

Highly recommend West Side Kids! They have been so great to our daughter. We switched from a larger center when she was five months old and I am so happy we did!

I whole heartedly support and recommend this place to anyone needing care for your babies or big kids. My daughters been through the rooms, and never had issues with any of the teachers or management, and my youngest can test my patience and make the days long, but the teachers are so great with her and she’s a stubborn little one and I have 5 children. And now she’s doing great and learning something new every day in the pre school room and excited to come to school every day, and other daughter loves it here and she was beyond ready to start kindergarten in the fall, trying read books on her own. Love, love, love this place. 😊

Love this daycare center! My son did great in preschool, he is ready & right on track for kindergarten! All the rooms my kids have been in have been great. All staff is friendly & caring!

*Their incident/accident reports are public. Take a look at the ones from 2019 before taking your baby here.* We do not recommend West Side Kids daycare in Waukee. For starters, we paid them a ridiculous amount of money for them to not even adhere to basic federal/state guidelines or AAP recommendations when it comes to caring for infants. I did speak to the director, and she did seem receptive to my concerns, however, I was told that their “best and main” teachers were in the infant room. Well, those “best and main” teachers are the ones not adhering to guidelines. So perhaps this is a supervisory or training issue. I will say the owners are very nice, and it sounds like my concerns are being taken seriously. Needless to say, my son will not be back as I worry for his safety, which I should not have to do as a first time mom sending my child to a daycare. He only attended for TWO weeks! TWO WEEKS! Here are my concerns from only two weeks of care: 1. My greatest concern is safe sleep. Most of the days that I picked up my son from daycare, he was in a swing, sleeping. Only once did I ever see him sleeping in a crib. And it wasn’t just my son, it was other young babies too. How scary. That brings me to my second concern: 2. I pre made all of his bottles every morning for daycare. He SHOULD be taking 3 bottles between the hours of 7:45 and 4. When I picked him up on Thursday of last week at 3:45, he was only fed once that day as I was handed back 2 of the premade bottles I had brought with me that morning. He was fed around 9:30am or 10 at daycare per the app that updates me on his care. So my son went roughly 6 hours without eating, after having slept through the night. I’m sure you would ask, wouldn’t he be crying because he is hungry? Yes. But that day, they had him fully SWADDLED, with his arms restrained, in a swing, with a loose blanket on top him. Of course he didn’t cry or wake up for food - they had him in a swing most of the day with him getting lulled to sleep. I was absolutely horrified. I did not provide that swaddle. They did not ask me permission if he could be swaddled. They just did it. My son is 3.5 months old and showing signs of rolling. He should not be fully swaddled, let alone swaddled in a swing, with a loose blanket, sleeping. I thought to take a picture of him because of how horrifying it looked, but instead I took him out of the swaddle and swing as fast as I could. This was done by a “main” teacher, I should add. 3. Often when I would drop him off or pick him up, I would catch the girls on their phones. Of course they would immediately put them away when they saw me. These 2 girls are caring for 8 babies, and they spend their day on their phones? While putting babies in unsafe sleep situations? Not okay. 4. The first week my child attended, he had a blow out. I’m not sure what time he had a blow out, but he did. Before I picked him up, I saw on my phone that he was changed 15 min prior, so I did not bother to change him when we got home. When I did finally change him a couple hours later, he had poop all over the bottom of his onesie near the snaps. I did not see this until I changed his diaper because he was wearing pants. He had a spare outfit there! So my child was sitting/laying in feces on his clothes all day? They couldn’t bother to change his outfit? Not okay. This worst part about this is we reserved his spot at this daycare while I was 20 weeks pregnant. Daycare is so difficult to find, especially in the metro area. We took him out due to our safety concerns, while not having a new place reserved. Thankfully we have prospects and are hopeful he will be in a safer one soon. I’m hoping that West Side implements additional training, as it is abundantly clear that their staff is not mature enough to be caring for babies.

Erika & her Mom are two of the nicest people we have worked with.Their facility is a model for daycare centers! Waukee residents are lucky to have them in their area! Thank you ladies!