In October 2025, the family’s three-year-old son was enrolled at a licensed child-care center in Texas City, in Galveston County. He was dropped off in the center’s care like any other day, entirely in the hands of its staff and away from his parents.
While under the center’s supervision, the boy suffered a severe laceration to his tongue. According to the petition, the wound was serious enough that it could not be left to heal on its own and ultimately required sutures to repair. The petition alleges that the center’s employees observed the injury and saw how severe it was.
Despite that, according to the petition, the staff did nothing: they did not summon medical care and did not promptly tell the boy’s mother how serious the injury was. The petition alleges she learned the truth only because she happened to call the daycare later that day about another issue and was told, in passing, that her son had “bit his tongue.” She rushed to the center, took him to an emergency room, and he received stitches to his tongue.
The center is a licensed Texas child-care center serving infants, toddlers, pre-kindergarten, and school-age children. Texas child-care rules require centers to supervise children at all times, keep adequate staffing, respond when a child is hurt, and notify parents. Those are the protections meant for exactly this situation. The petition alleges the center failed to supervise the child, failed to provide a safe environment, failed to summon medical care for an obvious and serious injury, and failed to immediately notify the parent of how badly her son was hurt.
A deep cut to a small child’s tongue is not something attentive staff miss, and it is not something a center should leave a parent to discover by chance on an unrelated phone call. We are pursuing the center’s staffing and supervision records, its incident-response and parent-notification policies, and the available footage and records, to establish how the injury happened and why a visibly hurt three-year-old was left without care.
We represent the family and have filed suit against the center in Galveston County. We brought claims for negligence, gross negligence, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including the failure to supervise, the failure to seek medical care for an obvious injury, and the failure to timely notify the parent. We are seeking the records and footage that show what the center knew, when it knew it, and why a hurt child was left without care.
A daycare does not get to take a family’s money to keep their child safe, let his tongue be cut badly enough to need stitches, do nothing about it, and leave his mother to find out by accident. We intend to hold this center fully accountable.
We represent the family and have filed suit against the center in Galveston County. We brought claims for negligence, gross negligence, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including the failure to supervise, the failure to seek medical care for an obvious injury, and the failure to timely notify the parent. We are seeking the records and footage that show what the center knew, when it knew it, and why a hurt child was left without care.
A daycare does not get to take a family’s money to keep their child safe, let his tongue be cut badly enough to need stitches, do nothing about it, and leave his mother to find out by accident. We intend to hold this center fully accountable.
