Is she a CF - childcare related

[Keepgoing88]

A friend of mine works part time but is often asking for her kids to play at mine or others houses. I totally get that emergency situations / childcare is needed but the reasons for help picking the kids up from school / minding them is often pretty lame… like hair dressers or she’s out with a friend etc. I have started saying no on principle as I feel a bit taken advantage of but at the weekend her partner text to see if her daughter could come round as he had some errands to run. We were out for the day so I said no but when I was on instagram later I see she had posted a story about having a day to sort the house out (cleaning etc nothing major ) so I don’t even think she was out!! She will often (I have observed) ask others to have her kids so she can have a break. I have 4 kids of my own so feel it’s a bit cheeky! She works 2 days a week with 2 kids at school. I don’t know why I’m posting I guess but just wanted to vent and also if others ask other people to have kids. I’m no saint but I would only ever ask someone to pick my kids up in an emergency or I use paid for childcare / family. I’ve bought this up with her a while ago and she was like ‘ why don’t you ask people more’ and I kind of thought well they are my kids and I try to plan my day around them / use childcare. My kids have play dates but I wait to be invited . Do others ask - maybe I’m just being a bit funny about it but I always thought you don’t invite yourself over (obv not including families) .. u wait to be invited?

Such a useful article @Papillon23 - thank you.

I would take it a bit further - you can divide the Askers into true Askers who are genuinely just “information finding” and are not expecting a yes every time and CFs who will continue to ask, who dont care if its inconvenient and are really just “boundary finding”.

I find other mums who are very vocal about “all helping each other out” but what they mean is that they want you to look after their kids…it quickly palls.

We did it for a long time with one kid who was good friends with one of mine and it genuinely was a pleasure to have him for the day but I definitely noticed the CF/Asker mum was planning her social life (nails, coffee trips) on the assumption that we would have her kid for the day…I started to say no even tho the friendship was good.

This!

It's not reciprocal because she's not having your 4 back is she?
And watch out for the reciprocal angle anyway.

I had a school mum who started asking for "help" every single week, always at the last minute, always an emergency... in return, she'd offer at the last minute to pick up my DC maybe once a term, on a day that she knew we couldn't do it. But because of this rare "offer" she felt fully justified in constantly asking me to do
x, y, z.

The style included asking by email late the night before or early morning on the day, to say "Quite by chance, I'm working tomorrow ..." As if I'd want to be checking my email at 11 pm! Also hard to believe her boss gave her such short notice (every week) to work the next morning. She presented it as an "emergency" every time to make it harder for me to say no.

Your CFs have started with small asks - the thin end of the wedge - and now they view you as a prime go-to resource - the demands will grow - hence her DH getting on board now because he has "errands".

Massively cheeky

"Sorry, that doesn't work for me" usually works a charm