Antioch Childcare Center @ Brown Station

I toured Heaven Sent Early Learning Center (HSELC) in July 2025. During that tour, I was explicitly told that children must be 100% potty trained. This policy did not raise concerns for our family, as our four-year-old son had been fully potty trained for over a year prior to enrollment. He is also accustomed to age-appropriate responsibilities at home and demonstrated the independence and readiness we believed necessary for school. We enrolled our son in September 2025. This was his first school experience. Like many children born during the pandemic, he had primarily been cared for by family and required time to adjust to a structured classroom environment. Beginning school is a significant life transition, and for some children, that adjustment can temporarily trigger potty-training regression. That was the case for our son, who began having accidents during the two-hour classroom nap period. I proactively asked his teacher to prompt him to use the bathroom before nap time. I was informed that staff are not allowed to ask children to go to the bathroom, a rule that was never disclosed in the potty-training policy or during enrollment. This restriction feels developmentally inappropriate for three- and four-year-olds and creates a predictable setup for failure. In my experience—as both a parent and someone familiar with early childhood education—scheduled bathroom breaks are standard practice, even for kindergarten-aged children. Despite this challenge, our son continued to excel socially and academically. However, we began receiving warning emails regarding potential contract termination, which created significant stress for our family. We later learned that multiple families received similar warnings and expressed fear and frustration regarding the lack of clarity and support. Ultimately, our contract was terminated immediately before the holidays, leaving us scrambling to secure alternative childcare. This occurred after we had already paid substantial upfront costs, including a $250 nonrefundable administration fee, uniforms, school supplies, and required shoes. When I requested my son’s workbooks—materials that should reasonably be covered by the administration fee—I was denied. Leaving this review is not something I do lightly, especially regarding a Black-owned business. How-ever, I feel a responsibility to share our experience so other families can make fully informed decisions. Many families are already operating at capacity, and this level of confusion, rigidity, and lack of transparency feels unnecessary and, frankly, predatory. As a community—and especially as Black women—we must do better. Our toddlers are human beings not liabilities or line items. Families deserve compassion, clarity, and developmentally appropriate support. My son is a person, not a number.

A Truly Heaven-Sent Experience! I’ve been part of the Heaven Sent family for about a year now, and I can confidently say that enrolling my daughter here has been one of the best decisions I’ve made for our family. From day one, the love, care, and dedication shown by the teachers have been unmatched. The administrative team goes above and beyond to support families and create a nurturing, safe environment for every child. Before Heaven Sent, my daughter had a very negative experience at another early learning center—she was injured, and I was never informed. She wasn’t learning or developing the social skills every child needs. But the transformation since joining Heaven Sent has been amazing. She now knows her first and last name, her birthday, all her shapes and colors, and even the names of every one of her classmates. She is confident, happy, and fully comfortable with her teachers, which brings me so much peace as a parent. I wholeheartedly recommend Heaven Sent to any family looking for a loving, safe, and enriching environment for their child. When your child is here, you can rest easy knowing they’re in excellent hands.

Our experience at this daycare has been deeply disappointing and troubling on many levels. What began as hope for a nurturing, inclusive environment for our 16-month-old quickly turned into a pattern of unprofessionalism, poor communication, and alarming behavior by leadership. One of the most concerning incidents involved a completely normal sensory behavior our toddler playing with the patches on his uniform. Rather than working with us to redirect the behavior, the response was to suggest he be picked up from school. As involved parents, we attempted to respectfully voice our concerns, only to be met with condescending and dismissive responses from the director, including the implication that our child was the only one doing this. That alone showed a lack of understanding about age-appropriate development. The situation escalated unnecessarily when the director interrupted a classroom and began yelling at a teacher in front of children. When one of us calmly attempted to redirect the conversation, the director weaponized the harmful and deeply offensive "aggressive Black man" narrative despite the parent never raising his voice or showing disrespect. This is incredibly dangerous behavior, especially coming from someone who claims to be nurturing the next generation of Black children, including young Black boys. That moment alone was enough for us to withdraw our child on the spot. After sharing our experience with other families, we learned that we were not alone several others have withdrawn their children due to similar patterns of poor leadership and communication. Unfortunately, the issues didn’t stop there. The school has also mishandled payments and billing. They will issue an invoice with a set due date, then charge your account days earlier. When questioned, they deflect all responsibility and redirect you to their payment app customer service. We reached out to them directly and were informed that the school has full control over autopay, payment processing, and refunds. This means the school not only misled us, but doubled down on it instead of taking accountability. There’s also a troubling lack of transparency with school communications. They send out newsletters that are vague and miss crucial information like registration deadlines, dates and times for events, or links to purchase required items. You are expected to hunt down basic details, even as a highly involved parent. This lack of professionalism is a consistent pattern that actively hinders family engagement. The sick policy is another red flag. It has changed multiple times without any formal updates to the handbook or direct notification to families. We were told our child had a high fever and needed to be picked up. We rushed to urgent care only to find out he had no fever at all. This happened more than once. The school's thermometer clearly needs to be recalibrated. They often try to send children home for vague reasons like normal teething symptoms such as fussiness even when there are no signs of illness or behavioral issues like biting. Additionally, the school has taken days off for personal staff milestones, like graduations, with little notice and still expects families to pay for those missed days, even though they are not included in the original calendar or handbook. Ultimately, this is a place that does not welcome parental involvement, does not take accountability, and does not operate with the professionalism or transparency families deserve. We withdrew our child immediately and will never return. If you're a parent seeking a collaborative, developmentally appropriate, and respectful learning environment look elsewhere.

Our experience at heaven sent was unfortunately nothing to write home about. I removed my three year old from HSELC after less than three months due to disappointing communication and an unhelpful potty training policy. As educators, I expect them to recognize that each child develops at their own pace. Their potty training policy focused on eliminating children who struggled rather than providing support. Although my child was fully potty trained, they had accidents during nap time, resulting in a contract termination warning. Not once did I receive an email to get a meeting with management, to know how we can move forward, or how my child can be assisted. instead I got emails that only repeatedly told me about policies they had in place for children that are unsuccessful in their potty training journey. I am told that some parents have left the school due to this policy, which has made children and their families feel unsupported. Some parents are still in the school dealing with this, and wondering when they would receive their termination warning. The worse feeling any parent could have, is knowing or having that fear of your child being unsupported, especially where they spend majority of their day. I hope HSELC will review this policy and establish a transition class to aid children with potty training difficulties. This would help create a supportive environment where children can grow without undue stress and more focused on the learning experience.

As first time parents, we had A LOT of anxiety surrounding the need to put our son in daycare. After almost two years of interviewing other childcare facilities, we couldn't find any that made us feel comfortable..... that is until we learned about HSELC. We scheduled a tour and decided to enroll our son on the spot. HSELC checked off ALL our boxes! It has great security measures in place, it's always clean, and they put the children first ALWAYS. We LOVE that we can watch our son on camera throughout the day and that we can communicate with his teachers at all times. Ms. Vanessa and Ms. Tori are AMAZING! They're very hands-on and are on-site everyday. The curriculum is developed to meet each child where they are. It's tailored to each child, not a blanketed plan for the entire class. My son is 3 and is doing EXCEPTIONAL! He is way beyond other kids his age who go to other facilities. My son loves his teachers. He is always excited to go to school and always tells us he had a great day at pickup. Everyone at the center is patient, kind and cares for the children like they're their own. When we drop our son off each day, we are at peace knowing he's in good hands. Thank you HSELC Family for all you do! We can honestly say this center is a blessing to our family and we highly recommend them to anyone looking for childcare!