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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was in a similar position twice. The first one was with last minute cancellations and 'oh so sorry forgot to ask you if you could do tomorrow night' and once I got pissed off enough, I sent a short and polite email to the mom saying that while I love her children and am always happy to babysit for them, the last-minuteness of booking my time and cancelling is preventing me from earning enough, as I rely on the extra income from babysitting, and that I was unhappy with the situation. The next time I saw her the mom was very apologetic and said she did not fully realise the implications and merely saw it as me having a free night, but that she'd be better about letting me know in advance from now on. Which she has done, and this has not impacted out close friendly relationship in any negative way at all.

The second time was with constant mess and letting the kids run wild on the weekends and then expecting me to crack down on them during the week. A lot of it went to the fact that the mom worked insane hours and sometimes only saw the kids in the mornings and two or three nights a week right before bedtime, so she didn't want to spend the precious weekend time she had with them arguing. Which I understand, so we had a family conference with the kids (they were 8 and 11), parents and me, and we established rules that we all had to follow in regards to making messes, which was helpful for a few months. Thankfully they had a cleaner though! I got a bit of what I wanted and it wasn't awkward to speak to them.

I've always helped with the kids' parties as well, for free and for a long time, too, but I was always profusely thanked afterwards. Boo to your bosses.

In both cases I had very friendly relationships with the families and we had very open lines of communication, which helped enormously.[/quote]

OP here. Thanks so much for this! Its nice to know that it can be done without hurt feelings. I would generally feel comfortable discussing any big issues with them, but these all seemed kind of petty, but added up together had me feeling pretty crappy yesterday. I try hard to be an above and beyond kind of nanny, and I think I just need to scale it back some. I won't be volunteering my time any more, that's for sure! Thanks! And thanks for the other responses as well![/quote]

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