Family shocked by daycare's call to child protection without warning, question if discrimination at play
CBC
In the fall of 2021, Nathaniel Lowbeer-Lewis and Racquel Smith's son was going to a community daycare near their home in Montreal's Plateau neighbourhood.
He seemed to be integrating well and Smith said the staff's feedback about him was positive.
So it came as a surprise when the centre called her in for a meeting last November to discuss the three-year-old's "troubling behaviour."
At first, Smith thought it might be about strong language, as he'd recently discovered the F-word.
But at the meeting, Smith was told he had been making increasingly violent and graphic comments. Until this point, Smith said no one had raised any concerns with their family.
Smith told the daycare staff her son could be quite dramatic. He'd also been telling far-fetched stories at home and his older brother had gone through a similar phase at that age.
In addition to his brother's influence, Smith mentioned he'd spent time with his older boy cousins that summer. She assured them she and her husband would keep a closer eye on what he might be picking up from TV shows.
But at the end of the meeting, Smith was told the daycare had reported them to Quebec's youth protection services, known in French as the DPJ.
"I nearly fell off my chair," Smith recalled. "I was so shocked."
Smith quickly got her son from his class and ran outside to call her husband, who hadn't been invited to the meeting. His disbelief turned to fear when he read Quebec's Youth Protection Act.
"Once you're reported, the powers the department of youth protection have are extremely scary," said Lowbeer-Lewis. "They have the right to come in and take your children based on any report."
"You never know if someone is going to barge in."
The couple immediately withdrew their son from Le Carrefour des Petits Soleils. Lowbeer-Lewis met with the director a few days later.
She told him a trainee in his son's class came to her with concerns in mid-October and had then documented what the little boy was saying over the next six weeks.
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