Creating boundaries with pupil

[Soggywetleaves]

I do private tutoring and one of my pupils is a 12 year old girl, she’s lovely but very anxious about her homework and getting everything right. I go to her home twice per week at set times to help with her homework.
She’s quite disorganised and often loses text books and doesn’t know when her homework needs to be in by.
A couple of times she has Whatsapped me in a panic, often late at night, because she has realised she has homework to be in the next day. I’ve helped her by going through the work etc, but I’ve said she needs to send me the homework on the day she gets it so that we can go through it during the lessons.
Yesterday afternoon she messaged me in a panic again, with four pages of maths homework, I said to her I was away for the weekend and would be happy to go through it with her tomorrow during our lesson (I wasn’t away, but was having a lazy afternoon doing Halloween crafts & baking with my 5 year old, plus making a roast etc)
She melt whatsapping me saying she’d really appreciate any help at all etc. I felt bad so gave it a couple of hours then started writing out all the explanations for the sums and examples etc. It took me a couple of hours, in between cooking and so on. I sent it all, told her I was doing my Dds bath and bedtime and said we’d go through it further at her lesson tomorrow. I sorted Dd and got into bed later-9 ish and she texted me her answers for me to look at, she did well but some corrections which I had to correct and text back and explain to her etc. This went on for a couple of hours, then she had finished, she was very grateful and thanked me. I’m happy to help her, but not great with boundaries and can find it hard to say no to things.
Dh says I must draw a line on this or if I’m happy to do it, to at least say I want to be paid for it?
Would you expect to be paid for this, would you say no to this?
They pay very well for lessons, I enjoy the job and helping her so don’t want to lose the work, but I’ve never had this situation before
What would you do?

@Cosyblankets Sorry? Yes, I am.

I spent two two hours prepping for revision and practise tests before her Science test…as I said. It was all the areas they’d covered that term in Science and then practice papers based on this, so yes, it did take me a couple of hours, to ensure it was thorough and covered all areas and that I was organised for the lesson.

It was initially four hours per week tutoring with Maths. It has now occasionally starting moving into
other curriculum subjects and help with homework in these.

Good advice from pps.
Yes, from now on, you'll do extra, but it will be arranged in advance, and it will be paid whether it's in person or online help.
One of my tutees has a fixed lesson every week. She would often call me and say "I've got a test tomorrow can you come today"
What I've said is, I will do extra lessons when I can, but she needs to give me 48 hours notice. I give a £5 discount if it's an online meeting (for the same time)

@TheLongGloriesOfTheWinterMoon Yes, this is it, last minute before a test isn’t acceptable, plus it’s stressful for both her and I

Another thing is that there is apparently a free small business whatsapp account you can set up and you can put an out of hours auto reply on it. SO you set the times when you are available to read and respond to messages.

This really isn't normal.
How many tuition pupils do you have? This is not sustainable.

You are doing far too much for this child unpaid.
You need to talk to the parents about it. Either the help is restricted to the lesson times only or you can offer help outside of the lesson times but it will be charged at the same rate as lessons.
I am also a private tutor and I've had similar before and have since become more strict about things like this.
Pupils and/or parents shouldn't be messaging with questions late at night or at the weekend and expecting an immediate answer. They certainly shouldn't be expecting you to produce pages of explanations which take hours without payment. They possibly don't realize because you haven't said anything, but you should say something.
Also, the parents need to help her to get more organized.

1. She needs to send you the homework as soon as she receives it. If she hasn't sent it to you in adequate time (you can decide how much notice she is), you won't be able to go through it with her.
2. Parents are made aware of your "working hours". Any messages received outside of those are ignored until your working hours begin again.
3. Parents need to be made aware that you have been doing hours of work for free and that from now on they will be billed for those hours OR they can decide that they don't wish to pay for that much extra help and then you simply don't do the extra work.
4. Consider updating terms and conditions if you have any, or putting some in place if you don't, to make it clear to all new pupils and parents in the future what is included in the price of the lessons (ie. the lesson itself and preparation for that, but not endless hours of extra work or last minute homework questions)

I’m at a loss as to why you’d respond to a business message at 10.00pm on a Sunday. That speaks to your own poor boundaries, I’d have left it and replied on Monday saying you don’t work on Sunday so didn’t check your messages until this morning.

Stop working for free.

I agree with all this except point one. I don't understand why you would need to prep to help a child you are being paid to teach to help with her homework.
If a child said to me at the start of a lesson that they needed help with homework I'd talk them through it.

Rather than writing explanatory letters and why you need to charge extra, put all that charging stuff and hours etc in a more formal, less personal form.

Thus write to the parents saying that it is timely to bring them up to date with developments and review progress in the light of recent experience.

"Attached brief Review and Progress Report summarises matters for your attention and updates you on developments concerning current arrangements."

Structure it using whatever headings you think you need, including the key issues that you want to bring to their attention and clarify for future handling.

For example (just some suggestions - you might want to simplify or shorten):

Current Tutoring hours and subjects / content
Overview of progress
Matters to address (lack of organisation etc)
Additional needs
Requests for extra guidance - detail the extra work done at the weekend
Scheduling arrangements for lessons and extra guidance online or otherwise
Estimated teaching needs and focus for future work
Out of hours work - availability and communication
Schedule of costs for lessons and additional support.
Billing and Payment

You might think it is too formal but it does take it out of the personal, avoiding the danger of being apologetic / making excuses / over explaining yourself for asking for the money for the extra work done at the weekend or at short notice.

You need to raise this with her parents. If she needs more tutoring then they need to pay for extra sessions. Tell them you cannot continue to respond to ad hoc WhatsApp messages asking for help as this takes a substantial amount of time and is impacting your home life. If you are happy to be contacted then set a boundary eg I can be contacted between 3pm-5pm on Mondays and Wednesdays for additional support but this will be chargeable. If the request rubs over 5pm any time after 5 will be charged at time and a half.

Can you do some kind of formal report as she would get at school as regards to progress and future steps?

Then you can put recommendations in with optional input from you with associated charges?

And agreed times so that you are not contacted in your own time? That might also help with her organisation

You complain over something you have complete control over. You choose to do this. Why on earth did you answer on a Sunday??

How often are the late night / last minute / weekend requests for help happening? Are you able to quantify anything beyond your agreed tutoring hours in the past month? At least then you have a ballpark. Although you've really created a rod for your own back here if you've been letting this go on a while without tackling it.

When will you next see the mother in person? I think you need to arrange for a "meeting" with her before your next lesson and come armed with a written list of acceptable rules and accompanying charges. Essentially write down your boundaries - advance notice of x amount of days if she wants to go over any of her homework in lesson time, no texts will be answered between x and y hours and anything done outside of your tutoring timetable will be billed at X amount per hour (I'd charge 1.5x your hourly rate)

It's up to you to be a bit assertive here as you're going to end up having this girl - with her mum's blessing - intruding on your personal life forever more.

Help/advice needed…! 🙏

I’m supposed to tutor at her home at 5.45 today, came in around 4 from
a dog walk to a WhatsApp, from the mums phone, but written by the pupil, saying very sweetly that she doesn’t need me to come today as she has no homework or preparation she needs help with…!
We set for two days per week to tutor in maths essentially, not just when she has homework or not just when she needs to revise for a test. She’s told me 1.5 hours before. We’ve both cancelled before if one of us is ill, which obviously can’t be helped, but this feels like a piss take! She got all the help yesterday as it needed to be in today, so today i’m not to bother?!
I tutor two other pupils on different days, so have agreed these days with her, I think unless there is illness, these should be stuck to? So I lose out on todays money, have made preparations for Dh to come home a bit earlier from work (to take over being with our Dd) and it’s from the pupil, so I don’t feel I can reply properly to her if that makes sense? I haven’t replied to it as i‘m just 😡
Definitely billing for yesterday (I was going to anyway, but it’s cemented it now) I thought of replying ‘Ok, I will message with your mum later’ then saying to the mum that I thought we were tutoring x days in maths, not when there’s just a test or a rushed homework to be done?
What would you say/do?

What does the contract say about cancelled appointments? You follow the contract.

They’re taking the piss here. You’ve provided all your work for free so now now they won’t pay for the booked session. A hard lesson to learn but now you must put proper boundaries in place and value the service you offer. Put proper contracts in place for all your pupils and act more professionally next time.

No presumably you have a cancellation policy ie full payable less than 24 hours notice? No? Now you know next time to say no and you should invoice for your time,

Message back and say you had prepared a lesson as usual, to consolidate her schoolwork.

It’s also pissing me off that she’s messaging that, obviously the mum chickened out of it

No, we don’t have a 24 hr cancellation policy, in part to be flexible both ways in case of illness etc. I didn’t mind this as sometimes my Dd is sick etc. But not to just cancel lessons for this reason

@LIZS Yes, I will say about preparing the lesson as usual, thank you. I can see it’s becoming about the pupil deciding and the mum being ok with this (so wrong, the dad wouldn’t be) so now I’ll just be there as and when they need??

You need to ring the mother, the daughter may be trying it on! Say you will assume payment as usual. Your contract is with the parents. Illness might be an exception, or just a cost they need to bear.

Of course they need to pay you.

You need better boundaries, you’re at the beck and call of a 12yo!

@LIZS She won’t be trying it on, the mum lets her decide, plus she used her phone. I’m leaving it as late as possible to reply (The notification was up on my screen, so I haven’t actually gone on and looked at it, so they will see I’ve not seen it)
Feel like it’s such a piss take, from the mums side! She’s 12, so needs to be taught how to act