New/Our first AP is ‘spacey’ and texts too much...

[Anonymous]

[flash]
Hello, our first AP started late last year and I’ve already had a lot of great intel and tips from this forum.
We like having someone in the house with us and AP is very good at sitting and engaging with our kids, who are 3 and 5yo.
AP works a split shift, 7-9am and 2-7pm.

AP is very spacey, some days she’s fully functional and on the ball, other days she’s really dragging and can barely get through the day. She forgets stuff and misses all the details, forgot to pack kids lunches this morning.
Also she pulls out her phone a lot, almost constantly. We asked her not to do so, now she walks away from kids into another room or gets startled if we come home unexpectedly as she’s texting. She very often talks about the texts...my sister just said...

My husband thinks she’s too up and down to safely drive our kids. Im on the fence.
How do we handle this?

Thank you

[Anonymous]

A lot of young women are glued to their phones. I'm not sure what you can do about that.

She's tired and spacey because she's up all night texting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of young women are glued to their phones. I'm not sure what you can do about that.

She's tired and spacey because she's up all night texting.

Yes I think this is exactly it, what do I do?
rematch? Would you trust her to drive your kids?
Can we tell her she needs to get more sleep, I'm not sure how best to manage.
Thank you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of young women are glued to their phones. I'm not sure what you can do about that.

She's tired and spacey because she's up all night texting.

Yes I think this is exactly it, what do I do?
rematch? Would you trust her to drive your kids?
Can we tell her she needs to get more sleep, I'm not sure how best to manage.
Thank you

All you can do is call her out on it, give her a deadline, and then go to rematch. There's no magic.

Frankly, I wouldn't trust her to not text and drive, given what you describe here.

[Anonymous]

Have a sit down.

Sandwich the conversation..

Start with what she is doing right and what you like about her.
Then talk about what you don't like...aka the above.

Give her some goals and a timeline.

You may have to micromanage her if she isn't getting tasks done.

Give it a week or so and no improvement, call LCC.

This generation is very addicted to their phones. Is it her phone or your phone that you give her?

Talk about safety and good sleep habits.
Let her know that if she does not stop (staying up late, or texting) she will lose personal driving privileges.

[Anonymous]

The above advice is really good! You may also want to make a morning checklist, so she has a visual of what she needs to get done to get the kids out the door with everything they need!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The above advice is really good! You may also want to make a morning checklist, so she has a visual of what she needs to get done to get the kids out the door with everything they need!

We have a checklist but if she's not engaged she'll put the wrong stuff in the wrong bag, my son was not happy with the Elsa water cup yesterday.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have a sit down.

Sandwich the conversation..

Start with what she is doing right and what you like about her.
Then talk about what you don't like...aka the above.

Give her some goals and a timeline.

You may have to micromanage her if she isn't getting tasks done.

Give it a week or so and no improvement, call LCC.

This generation is very addicted to their phones. Is it her phone or your phone that you give her?

Talk about safety and good sleep habits.
Let her know that if she does not stop (staying up late, or texting) she will lose personal driving privileges.

Thank you, right now we don't even want her to drive our kids to school.
She also has an apple watch so the texts keep coming, can I ask her not to wear it when she's working?
Sorry for the naïve questions, I've never dealt with this before

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of young women are glued to their phones. I'm not sure what you can do about that.

She's tired and spacey because she's up all night texting.

Yes I think this is exactly it, what do I do?
rematch? Would you trust her to drive your kids?
Can we tell her she needs to get more sleep, I'm not sure how best to manage.
Thank you

All you can do is call her out on it, give her a deadline, and then go to rematch. There's no magic.

Frankly, I wouldn't trust her to not text and drive, given what you describe here.

Yes, I've had a few gentle conversations with her but I think she just doesn't take it seriously.
We do like her but our kids safety is critical, also she just started and I don't see this getting better with time if she didn't want to make a good first impression.

[Anonymous]

You can ask anything you want. She is not going to like it, and potentially will just hide it in a drawer or put it on as soon as you leave. One advantage to making this drastic a rule would be that it may upset her enough that she cops to the amount of texting she does and admits she's not willing to give it up.

If she's texting this much, I have to wonder if there's a boyfriend back home or if she's seriously homesick, or if she's just unable to detach from her home life. She's probably texting at night because of the time change.

I agree with the advice to have a blunt talk with her about expectations, both for phone use and being rested enough to work. And then get the LCC to talk to her. And then see what happens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can ask anything you want. She is not going to like it, and potentially will just hide it in a drawer or put it on as soon as you leave. One advantage to making this drastic a rule would be that it may upset her enough that she cops to the amount of texting she does and admits she's not willing to give it up.

If she's texting this much, I have to wonder if there's a boyfriend back home or if she's seriously homesick, or if she's just unable to detach from her home life. She's probably texting at night because of the time change.

I agree with the advice to have a blunt talk with her about expectations, both for phone use and being rested enough to work. And then get the LCC to talk to her. And then see what happens.

Thank you, one thing we've noticed is that she's an anxious person. For example the snow has really thrown her off, she texts with her family nonstop about the weather. They tell her not to drive if the road are bad, she gets in a tizzy, we didn't have school late last week so there wasn't going to be a reason for her to drive. I guess she's young/immature too.
She's great on some days, but totally out of it on others.
I do want to get rid of the apple phone when she's working, she can't concentrate on the job if she's messaging nonstop and it's right there on her arm.
But she also sneaks her phone out, after we asked her not to use it so much she's started going to the bathroom every ten minutes, I assume that's to check her phone, kids are unattended

[Anonymous]

Leaving the kids unattended so she can check her phone is inexcusable. I would tell her absolutely no personal texts/calls during working hours or you’ll consider rematch. She’s not taking you or your children’s safety seriously.

[Anonymous]

You need to have a reset conversation, and let your LCC know about it. You need to be very clear with your expectations, and let her know that you mean business when you say that if she does not improve xyz behaviors, meet xyz goalposts, and stop doing xyz things in the next two weeks, you will go into rematch.

You should probably write these things down on a piece of paper to hand her, as she may not fully absorb what you are telling her in a conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need to have a reset conversation, and let your LCC know about it. You need to be very clear with your expectations, and let her know that you mean business when you say that if she does not improve xyz behaviors, meet xyz goalposts, and stop doing xyz things in the next two weeks, you will go into rematch.

You should probably write these things down on a piece of paper to hand her, as she may not fully absorb what you are telling her in a conversation.

Thank you, she's so anxious I'm afraid this will make it worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need to have a reset conversation, and let your LCC know about it. You need to be very clear with your expectations, and let her know that you mean business when you say that if she does not improve xyz behaviors, meet xyz goalposts, and stop doing xyz things in the next two weeks, you will go into rematch.

You should probably write these things down on a piece of paper to hand her, as she may not fully absorb what you are telling her in a conversation.

+1. She does sound really immature. She may be testing you (unconsciously) to see what she can get away with. I'm guessing she has been a fairly sheltered child who always got away with not quite finishing things or living up to her promises. The enormity of this role has probably come as somewhat of a shock. She probably expected it to be more hanging out and less packing lunches at 7am.

I see this going one of two ways: 1) She decides that she actually does want to have a growth experience, become a responsible person and take her job seriously, or 2) She continues to want to be treated like a ditzy-but-beloved older sibling, and you have to go to rematch. Her real parents can indulge that behavior, but I wouldn't.