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?

If the Dad is the one who is paying, I'd be more inclined to contact him. They are absolutely taking the mickey here -expecting you to work for free and then cancelling the actual lesson. If he is a decent person he'll be mortified the exw is dicking you around.

Going forward you need to issue terms to all your customers with full payment if cancelled within 24 hrs. The reality is you can be flexible with decent clients and good reasons.

She is taking the piss.

id send a message bs k saying that unfortunately the full lesson fee is payable for such a late cancellation.

Ask them to pay for the cancelled lesson. If they refuse then terminate your services. You can find other clients, they won't find another muggins.

I would just get rid!
Let someone else take place and start as you mean to go on with proper terms and conditions
£x per hour
Cancelled lessons are paid for.

If contract is with Dad then any additional requests need to come through him and you agree the fee at that point

You are being taken for a ride.

Bill them for all the additional time and the cancellation. If he's nice, he'll pay it, but without a clear written contract you don't have a leg to stand on. Get this in place now.

I think you need to prepare some terms and conditions and make sure they are stuck to.
I would first get the payment for the additional work.
Then set some boundaries with them. Include a cancellation policy.

At this stage I'd probably cancel any further tutoring. It's more trouble than it's worth and unless they are willing to pay for every hour you put in and put some boundaries in place with regards to contact/out of hours then I'd move on.

Awful behaviour. Clearly you now need boundaries. The work you did for free yesterday could have been done today in your lesson.

This - with bells on!!

We had a maths/science tutor for DD in secondary school. I never felt it was his responsibility to go through DDs homework and help, instead he would go through any topics covered that week that she hadn’t quite understood or wasn’t confident in.
If all had gone well all week he would start to cover some new work that would be coming up.
They NEVER sat and worked through her homework.

If the dad is paying the mum likely isn’t bothered. Do you usually deal with dad or mum? You could just reply that you need confirmation from her mum, and then say to the mum that the lesson has been planned and that you can’t just be available as and when, or have planned lessons cancelled because you made yourself available at a time that was less convenient. Then make a plan for going forward.

So I do not understand why this is just homework help. My experience of tutoring is that tutors come with a lesson plan that is linked to the subject they are tutoring. You may have a question such as, we were looking at algebra today can you just explain this…. But you stick to your lesson plan.

cancellation within 24 hours is full payment.

I agree that you can find better clients. You need to set your terms and be assertive.

See, I don't get the helping her with her homework.

Surely you should be going over the topic that she is studying and reinforcing/clarifying the teaching

Then she does her homework on her own

If you go over the specific homework then how does she get it wrong? How does it tell her teacher anything? You're teaching to the test

End the contract

If it's dad who pays then screenshot the message and send it to him. And bill him. If they're not together is he even aware of what's going on?

It wasn’t supposed to be help with homework, it was maths tutoring to help with maths and I’d reinforce what was covered in the lessons if she was struggling.
I replied to the message (half an hour before I was due to be there) asking if I could speak to the mum…as in message the mum, not the child, I don’t think it was appropriate for the child to *Let me know she didn’t need me 🤷🏻‍♀️
The mum sent me a voice note saying that the daughter said she had no homework or tests coming up so really there was nothing for her to do (No because I’d done it all the day before!) Then she said but if you want to come to help her with the future test..she said it with no real effort etc. I said now I’d told my Dh he didn’t need to be home and he was working late, (I’m not just going to now get ready and rush to them) I said that I had prepared the maths work for the lesson and asked her if she still wanted to stick to the original plan of maths tutoring on x day and x day. She replied back that she was so sorry (sounded genuine tbf) and that she did want to continue like this etc.
I then messaged the dad and explained the situation last night and today (nicely but quite to the point) and asked that this please be included in the pay at the end of the month and we continue now as agreed before, he said of course and apologised and thanked me for the work so far.
Next time I go I’m going to reiterate to the child to send me any homework/problems in advance, but that she also has to try herself and explain to the mum that it’s about tutoring the subject so that it supports her work and then she can work Independently on her homework etc
Feel better but also feel she shouldn’t just let her 12 year old decide and teach her that that’s how you treat people.

Well done

Well done, OP. At least the dad seems reasonable.

Feel better but also feel she shouldn’t just let her 12 year old decide and teach her that that’s how you treat people.
The parents shouldn't, but you also need to remember this is your business and react to people accordingly. A child tells you they are cancelling a lesson.... you talk to the adult, who is your client, to discuss cancellation fees. A child tries to get you to do out of hours work... again you talk to your actual client to discuss additional fees and terms. You're letting the kid dictate the situation as much as anyone else if you allow them to lead the situation.

I think they might have difficulty finding someone willing to drop everything to provide correspondence tuition for free at all hours.

If the twice-weekly sessions are not enough, you might be able to offer another regular session. But you should not allow them to see you as a 24/7 resource.

Approach it as "I could see your daughter was desperate for help with the maths at the weekend, but it ended up taking 3 or 4 hours of my Sunday, and that is just not fair on my family. I'd also prefer communication to be by email, as that gives me a better record. I'm quite happy for you to email through any requests for each session, and if you need an extra weekly session, we can discuss that."

Next time I go I’m going to reiterate to the child to send me any homework/problems in advance, but that she also has to try herself and explain to the mum that it’s about tutoring the subject so that it supports her work and then she can work Independently on her homework etc

Well done on standing your ground, but I honestly think this is a conversation for you to have with mum. She’s your client, you shouldn’t be negotiating the manner and means of your work with a 12 year old. Your agreement was maths tutoring, not homework support - homework is supposed to enable the child to work independently to evidence their learning which isn’t happening if the daughter is doing it with tutor support.

I think you’ve been drawn into a situation and need to now reset the boundaries. Arrange a meeting, or send a joint email to mum and dad reiterating the purpose of tutoring, setting a boundary about homework (which means your tutoring prep is meaningless because your adjusting to her homework instead of your planned lesson) and agreeing cancellation fees.

My kids tutor is an absolute godsend, I’d never treat her so disrespectfully and my children wouldn’t have the opportunity.

You need a meeting with the parents to talk about if what you are offering ie 2 sessions a week is what they need. If they want daily contact then this has to be planned . If you can't do what they need end the involvement. It's only going to crank up. If they want you at the drop of a hat they'll have yo pay ££. But seriously they all need to learn some basic skills I think about mashing homework and expectations. I'd bin them off if I had other work..