Sorry - I have been out. I've read all your messages.
I don't feel resentful towards my friend, I feel sad that I seem to be struggling so much with them all. I do want to help her but I think 5 days a week is too much for me to cope with. I made the offer, she didn't ask, I clearly didn't think it through and I am dissapointed with myself for not doing so as it could really drop my friend in it.
The children are not naughty as such, and although I typed earlier that I ask them to not sit on the arm of the sofa etc, believe me, I say 'oi get off' and am very firm with them. I made the 2 year old boy cry yesterday because I refused to let him sit on a chair my 4 year old normally has, I literally shouted at him and physically picked him up and put him in the chair I wanted him to sit on. The 8 year old does as she is told 90% of the time but as another post said, a little boy of nearly 3 is going to be challenging and won't just sit still watching the TV for an hour.
I feed my children breakfast at 8 and it is very hard to say no to food to 2 other children when 3 others are eating. I can't do it, I just can't. But that is why I am doing toast in the morning as it is the cheapest and easiest and least messy option! I also don't want them to feel like they are 'second class' somehow in my house. I think my friend gives her children breakfast before they come here anyway - however, she is more a handful of jaffa cakes for breakfast mum - whereas I am more of a boiled egg and soldiers kind of mum (read into that how you will).
My friend has a physically demanding job. She walks 10 mins from her house to my house to drop them off at (ahem) 7.30am. Then walks 20 mins from my house to work to start at 8am. Works a 6 hour shift. Then walks the 1 1/2 miles to the nursery to pick up her son. Then walks a mile from nursery to school to pick up her daughter. Then walks the 10 mins back to her house after school. She is exhausted, but she is a grafter.
A bike would make it quicker, but because she has to pick her son and then daughter up at the other end of the day, she can't get her children on the bike - unless it was a bicycle made for 3!
She works so hard and wants to get herself out of the benefit system so she can have a career. She is 28, by the time she is 40 she could have a good career and decent wage. Her daughter's father is nowhere to be seen. Her son's father is in and out and lives nowhere near us - totally out of county, sometimes out of the country as he is African and comes and goes.
I have had the whole childcare issue myself. With 3 children, childcare is a bloody nightmare. There is only 1 option in our rural village and they do everything - nursery, breakfast club, after school club, holiday club etc. all in the same building. There are no childminders at all. And as she lives and works in the village she can't use alternative childcare nearer work - as her work is in the village.
I know for holidays my friend is playing it by ear. She knows I won't have them as I only look after her 2 because I am taking my children to school anyway. I'm not too worried about her asking me - I am sure she won't.
As far as I see it, she can ask the nursery to open half an hour earlier - which is highly unlikely. I know them well and there is no chance of that happening.
Or she can ask to shift her hours half an hour so she starts half an hour later and works half an hour later. However, I know that before she started in September she asked for this and they flatly refused. Basically the care home employs a huge number of mums from the village and everyone wants to work 8.30 till 2.30 so they can drop off in the school playground and ask other mums just to watch their children for those 15 mins, yet still pick their children up after school. They don't want to offer it to one mum and set a precedent, so they have refused everyone those hours.
Before I offered to help, she had asked all the teenagers in her street and a few surrounding streets, if they would walk her children to the breakfast club/nursery (about a mile) and she was prepared to pay them £20 a week for doing so. However, she had no takers at all.
The reason for no takers is that whilst the breakfast club/nursery building is opposite the secondary school, the teenager would need to get to my friend's house for 7.40am (when she would leave for work). No teenager wants to commit to 5 days a week, and broken down into £4/day it doesn't seem worth it to them for quite a lot of responsibility and a bloody early start. But she can't afford any more because she is on minimum wage. She can't even claim her 70% back because it would be 'unofficial' childcare.
The nursery building is a good 20 minute walk from my friend's house too - but in the total opposite direction to her work!
I am going to plod on with it for the next months - till end of term, then if it is still a nightmare I will have to tell her it is too much for me and she needs to find another mum or two who is willing to take them so that I don't have to do every day. There are loads of other mums doing the school run in her street/surrounding streets, so she just needs to ask. If they are only asked to do 1 day a week, that would seem much more of a reasonable request and mums are more likely to agree to it. Then it would only be 3 days a week for me.