Daycare Dropped My Baby and Didn't Tell Us
What to do in Georgia when a daycare injures your child and staff never tell you what happened.
You dropped your baby off at daycare like any other morning. When you picked him up, he was inconsolable — arching, screaming, refusing to settle. Then you noticed the lump on his head. Nobody at the daycare said a word about a fall, a bump, or an accident. That silence is not a small oversight. It is often the first sign that something serious happened and someone decided not to tell you.
Trust What You Are Seeing in Your Child
Infants cannot tell you where it hurts. A baby only a couple of months old communicates injury through behavior — sudden, unrelenting fussiness, a change in feeding or sleeping, or visible swelling. Parents notice these changes because they know their child’s baseline better than anyone.
If your child comes home from daycare behaving unlike himself, and especially if you find a lump, bruise, or swelling anywhere on the head, get medical care immediately. A soft spot on an infant’s skull offers very little protection. A drop that would leave an adult with a headache can leave a baby with a skull fracture. Emergency physicians can order imaging that reveals injuries no parent can see from the outside.
Go Straight to a Children’s Hospital
Take your child to a pediatric emergency department. Facilities like Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta are staffed and equipped for exactly this — evaluating head injuries in infants and recognizing when an explanation does not match the injury.
Pediatric providers are also trained to report suspected abuse or neglect. In cases where a daycare has hidden an injury, hospital staff may be the ones who involve law enforcement. That is not something to fear as a parent who did nothing wrong. A police report creates an independent, contemporaneous record of what happened, when your child was hurt, and who had custody of him at the time. That record becomes some of the strongest evidence in a claim.
Cameras Change Everything
Many daycare centers install video cameras. When a facility tells you nothing happened — or tells you nothing at all — that footage can show exactly what did. It can show the moment a child was dropped, who was holding him, and whether anyone checked on him afterward.
Footage does not last forever. Systems overwrite recordings, and a facility with something to hide has no incentive to preserve them. This is why the timing of a lawyer’s involvement matters so much. An attorney can send a formal demand that the daycare preserve all video, incident reports, staffing records, and internal communications before any of it disappears. Once that footage is secured, the facility’s version of events becomes far less important than what the camera recorded.
Write Down What Happened While It Is Fresh
Document everything you can remember. What time you dropped your child off. What time you picked him up. Exactly what a staff member said — and what they did not say. When you first noticed the lump. What your child’s behavior was like on the drive home.
Keep every discharge paper, imaging report, and bill from the hospital. Save texts, emails, and app messages from the daycare, including messages sent that day that make no mention of an injury. Silence in writing is powerful proof.
These Cases Do Not Always Take Years
Parents often assume any injury claim will drag on for years. That is frequently true. But when the facts are undeniable — clear video, a documented fracture, a facility that concealed the incident — a case can resolve much faster. Some settle in well under a year.
The strength of the evidence is what drives that speed. Clear liability leaves an insurer very little to argue about. That is another reason to act quickly: the sooner the proof is locked down, the sooner your family can put this behind you.
Your Child’s Recovery Comes First
The best news in these cases is that many children heal completely. Infants are resilient, and a fracture treated promptly often leaves no lasting problems at all.
But a good outcome does not excuse what happened, and it does not erase a facility’s responsibility for hiding it. Follow your child’s medical care closely, keep every appointment, and let someone else handle the daycare, its insurer, and the fight over records. Your job is your baby.
Full Transcript
The parents took the child to daycare and the daycare dropped and dropped the little baby. He’s like a couple of months old. He ended up having a skull fracture. And like the daycare never told the parents, like they just didn’t say anything. And it was like, what is happening here?
The parents picked up the child and then he was being super fussy. And then the mom noticed that he had a lump on his head. They took him to CHOA and CHOA actually called the police. Come to find out the daycare, they had cameras installed.
It was shocking because, you know, normally they take a long time to settle, but this was a shocker. You guys, what settled in like less than almost less than a year. He’s fine. Yeah. No issues.