To cancel my friend babysitting, and how to word it?

[gonerogue]

Hi,

I will start by saying that I know I should be grateful for the free childcare but want to know how best to say this..

We are going to a wedding in ten days time. It's on a Friday night and the venue is about an hour away from my house.

DS's godmother said months ago she would babysit. We told her it would be overnight and we said she should probably spend more time with the DC ( DD 3 and DS 18mo) in the interim. We have said that repeatedly since and she has been down once.

Today she says she can't come down before the wedding due to work, which is fair enough, and she needs to be at work on the Saturday at 1pm almost 2 hours away.

So, am I being unreasonable to tell her we will arrange other babysitters, because
A) DS is not settling brilliantly at the mo, and a virtual stranger might not be a good option to sette him. DD wakes in the night sometimes and screams for me too.
B) she has no DC and not a lot of experience with children under 3.
C) she will have it hard dealing with both kids if they start screaming at night/don't settle for her. I wouldn't enjoy dealing with children who don't know me well alone.
D) Selfishly DH and I want to enjoy the wedding and have a few drinks and not have to be sensible and stop drinking in time to be up at 8 to drive home for her to get to work on time.

My sisters can do the childcare between them so that's not the issue, but I can't think how best to word the conversation?

Why not just say something along the lines of "they're not sleeping that well at the moment and I would hate for you to have to be up all night and then go to work on no sleep - its really not an issue to ask my sister instead so lets rearrange for another time" - then arrange for her to come to spend some proper time with you and the DCs on another day?

Keep it light?
"Change of plan! Sister x has offered to babysit, which is great....it means you won't have to go to work knackered on Saturday! Thanks anyway!"

Ditto lunatic, I doubt very much that she will be offended, just say that your DSis has offered and it makes more sense, but could she come down on such a such date for a good catch up

Thanks guys, tbh I did think she might have been regretting it so I was going to go along those lines but didn't know how to word it or perky. Plus am a little disappointed that she left it so late and couldn't get my head around hw to put a sentence together. :-)

• Thank her effusively for saying she'd sit with the kids. Generous, thoughtful, a thing only a dear friend would do, etc.
• Tell her both dc are in really tricky phases atm, and even you are finding them challenging - especially at night with sleeping difficulties.
• Tell her dc don't respond well to people they don't know, and can panic/get hysterical/not be able to settle
• Say that, all things considered, for her own sanity, for the sake of your friendship and for the comfort of the dc, you think it is better if you ask family (who dc know well) to sit with the dc instead.
• Ask her what dates she can come to yours for a meal, and if appropriate, offer for her to stay the night so you/she can have some extended 'quality time' together (hate that phrase, but you know what I mean), as it has been far too long.

I think the going to work tired line might be good, thanks I hadn't thought of that.

Earlybrd I am going to copy and paste that post, line for line.

I too think she possibly wants out of her original offer

I wouldn't say anything about her not knowing your children well enough - as that could be read as a bit of a dig that she doesn't see them very often

I would say the bride and groom are keen to carry on the partying the next day - maybe a few lunchtime drinks? And your sister has offered to have your children until after dinner the next day/ a two night stay?

Really thank her for her kind offer but hope this arrangement will help her situation too ... and then throw in a date for a get together as others have suggested :)

Your friend is babysitting for free AND in the interim you wanted her to make regular trips to you so she could do this.

She's only come once despite you 'repeatedly' requesting she come more often to prepare for this.

Hi thepig

We live in the same town as her family and she s here every week at least one day so she sometimes comes in to us for a few hours when schedules allow.

I have also said we could come to her if she was free but her work patterns meant that wasn't always an option.

She is my son's godmother, and when she offered to do this we said she would need to try and build more of a relationship with him as he s too young to just leave him with a stranger (to him)