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[quote=Anonymous]I agree with you that she doesn't seem like a natural AP, but I think you're blowing things out of proportion a little.

On #1, I think there are two possible benign explanations depending on the exact facts at play. First, I'm not sure what you mean by "settling the kids down first"? Do you mean she had food, but they did not? Or do you mean they had food, but she didn't physically sit them down with it, ask if they needed anything else, etc before eating? If the latter, she may not have realized they needed help with that part. My 3 and 5 year old wouldn't, for example, unless the set up was more complicated them I'm imagining an end of year picnic to be. Second, I think the "ignore the parents even if they're there" directive may have sailed over her head/she might have thought you didn't mean it in the context of your kid's end of year picnic. Like, I totally get that if you work from home, she pretends you're not there. You're probably physically isolated, out of sight, etc. At an end of the year picnic, unless your DW works at the school, I'm not sure what you mean by "DW who happened to also be there"? Like, assuming she was there to celebrate with your kids, I too would probably have assumed she wanted to actually celebrate with them and the working from home rules did not apply in those circumstances. It would be weird to pretend the kids' mom wasn't there for a kid-focused school event, no? What am I missing?

On #2, are you sure she realized she was on sub duty? I wouldn't actually expect my 18 year old niece to know to watch my kids when I went to the bathroom unless I explicitly confirmed that with them. I mean, to be honest, I wouldn't necessarily expect my parents/friends/siblings to realize unless I verbally confirmed it, but particularly not a young distant-er family member (as equates to an AP).

Finally, on #3, it may be a cultural/background thing. Is she from a culture or background where wearing "fancy" clothes to soccer would be impossible to imagine? If so, it may just not have occurred to her that that's what you would have expected at all. Also, was the crying soccer player your 3 year old or your 5 year old and are they otherwise prone to tantrums? I'm going to tell you right now that my 2.5 year old DD will occasionally cry/tantrum when she has to put on shorts under a short dress (our rule for going out since she loves to wear some actually-too-small-for-her dresses and we don't want her running around in public with her underwear fully visible) and I would expect our nanny to try to make her wear the shorts anyway. I also wouldn't think of wearing pants in hot weather for an hour as really a safety issue so long as the kid was otherwise appropriately dressed and hydrated. Also, presumably the crying/asking for shorts was pre-heading out, so she probably just thought he was being picky/may have panicked because she couldn't find what she thought were appropriate shorts... It's not like he started sobbing that he was overheated and feeling faint and she made him stay outside in the heat, right?[/quote]

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