I’ll try to be brief. We have a mothers help 20 hours week- all in the afternoons. It took me 3 months to find her and My life would fall apart without her. I work FT. She does the cleaning, meals, School pick ups, some childcare and runs any errands. She has limited initiative. I write her a list and she does what’s on the list but If the washing machine is full of washed clothes, but I haven’t put ‘hang washing out’ she’ll leave them in the machine. There is minimal attention to detail- no hooveringninto corners, doesn’t wipe the table, makes minimal effort to put laundry away correctly ie named clothes end up in the wrong kids rooms….. that sort of thing. I always let it go. The past couple of weeks there have been a few important things that on the list that she hasn’t done- she’s had plenty of time, and none of them are hard. Just before half term she went to pick the kids up at the wrong time from school -early by 75 minutes. We don’t live close so she spent the time in a coffee shop. She said I hadn’t written a time so she presumed normal time. Normal time is 5pm on that particular day and I had written the time. I need her to know that this, and not doing stuff on the list isn’t ok without risking that she leaves. I am dreadful at managing this sort of thing……wise MNers please tell me what to say.