To think my best friend is taking the piss

[Findingthisweekhard]

Me best friends daughter and dd are in the same year at the same school. I have older and younger children too and she also has a 1 year old. She’s got a 1 year old and has recently gone back to work full time, her husband also works full time.
She has no formal childcare. She was due to use the same childminder as me but changed her mind last minute as they didn’t want to pay for it.
Now almost weekly she’s asking me to pick up her school age dd and have her after school until she finishes work. Last week I had a day annual leave with my young kids at the childminder as some much needed down time, the night before she messaged begging me to have her little one for the day as she had no other options and had to go in to the office (she does twice a week). I reluctantly agreed and it was awful. My chilled day wondering the shops and lunch with my sister turned in to me rocking a buggy for hours, eating my lunch stood up bouncing him and just generally miserable.
shes just messaged me again asking to do the school run and it’s given me absolute rage.
ive dropped my hours to part time and pay for wrap around childcare on my office days and a childminder for all my working hours so we have less disposable income but live within our means. She’s taking advantage of this, to their benefit of 2 full time salaries and no childcare costs.
she really is my best friend but this can’t go on, aibu to stop collecting her child from school when I’m there collecting mine anyway?

Great message OP. If you don't receive a reply then that speaks volumes.

I think your message was heartfelt and sincere. Well done for not minimising or glossing over / telling white lies. You are rightfully angry and I wouldn’t hold my breath for a reply but agree with PP that this woman is no friend anymore. She’s a user and you’ve told her to sort herself out. You’ve offered an olive branch and I would leave it at that. Don’t bother worrying about her - the cheeky cow. She’s not worried about you or your kids, is she.

You’ve written a long, reasonable message but I think I’d have just told her I count longer pick up/take her dc to school as it’s never reciprocated and there’ll be no more days of looking after her dc. Telling her it was ‘a nightmare’ was possibly not the most diplomatic although good and direct.

She’ll probably deny receiving your message…

She’s not a good mate to you if Thomas how she treats you!!

I have a friend like this - as soon as she got a,whiff that I had dime 'free' time, I'd be asked to have her (then) toddler, I've even stayed over (with my, then, young kids) while she & her dh went away for a night, I've ba y-sat for all her 3 kids, and, as they started to grow up, I was still called upon in 'emergencies' to do last minute pick-ups, more baby sitting etc. Once I went back to work part time, it didn't stop and I was expected (& did) drive miles out of my way to pick her dd up from somewhere to take her home (as she realised my work finish time would coincide with time her dd needed picking up). On this occasion, when I dropped her dd home and the dd just got out of the car and didn't even say thank you, I thought, fuck this for a game of soldiers. So, even though all our kids are at least teenagers & early 20's now, when I get messages now asking for things, I 'pre'read' them without it showing I've done so & just don't reply until long after the time she needed me! I've also learnt to say no, I'm too busy. I would always help her still in a real emergency but, often, her emergencies had such obvious solutions that she could easily have worked out for herself with a bit of common sense! I have, on occasion, asked her to help je out, and she does/did, but 99% of the time, I found my own solutions without ever dreaming of imposing on her or anyone! She really is a wonderful friend but suffers from anxiety which I think stops her from finding her own (very easy) solutions. I would hate to hurt her feelings but I do sometimes feel my heart drop when I read another begging message. She doesn't seem to realise how much I value time on my own & I have felt very taken advantage of my kind nature.

Your message was totally fine OP.

You're not paying childcare for your own children to look after hers. That's madness.

Never fear, she'll find some other unsuspecting soul to take advantage of..
they always do.

I think it’s clear you’ve got to the end of your tether. I would have probably talked to her as your message was a little harsh for her to receive as words on a phone (ie calling her toddler a nightmare) but her only response now should be that she understands and is sorry.

Best friend? No no no she isn't.

I would never have agreed to take on someone else’s child on my day off. Especially when I had already made arrangements for my own DC to be with a childminder. Especially for a one year old, who is going to need a lot of care throughout the day.
I love my grandchildren to bits but I’d be hesitant to even take one of them on a day off if I needed downtime. Why on earth did you let yourself be talked into that and give up your day off? I’d rather be in work than babysit someone else’s baby for the entire day.

YNBU at all. Don’t give in for single more day for her.

I'm not sure I'd have lectured her on sorting her arrangements out, better to have kept to the I language about what you were prepared to do, as I think that may get her back up unnecessarily high, which if you value the friendship you'd want to avoid. I think you were right to tell her though. She is in the wrong here, and if it wasn't addressed it would have ruined the friendship anyway, so at least this is a shot as resolving things.

I think it was an ok message. She’s taken the piss. I suspect she’ll either ghost you and tell all and sundry how you’d left her completely in the shit or still ask ‘it really is an emergency’ with full on sobbing. Hopefully she’ll reflect and realise she’s taken the piss but unlikely.

Tell her you’re sorry if this feels a bit awkward but you’ve been really struggling with anxiety and stress lately. You’ve spoken to your GP and she asked you about your set up at home. The first thing she advised was for you to place boundaries and to focus only on your immediate family. Tell her she was shocked you’d had her baby on your day off and this mustn’t happen again. GPs orders I’m afraid. Might be easier conversation saying it came from your GP.

Your GP appt is also the reason you can’t help this week.

I had a friend like this. Makes you feel like you’re tight when you’re actually a giving person but some people take the piss. Give them your hand and they take your arm.

You will feel amazing when you have drawn your boundaries. 💪

That's a lot for her to take in, she's probs fuming but needed to hear it. It might take her a while to cool off before she responds to you.

She was due to use the same childminder as me but changed her mind last minute as they didn’t want to pay for it.

Wow!

I mean that was a reason to never give childcare if ever there was one!

Well done OP. Has she seen the message?

Has she got back yet?

amazingly well done @Findingthisweekhard that took some serious strength. You are protecting your boundaries and being authentic. It’s not my place but I am so proud of you

I’m glad you’ve messaged her and told her. I wouldn’t have said being with her child was a nightmare though, I’d be upset if someone said that to me. On your day off you should of just said ‘sorry I can’t I’ve got plans’.

I hope that you get a reasonable response, OP. If not, then I guess you at least know where you stand!

Good for you OP, that was a great message! I hope she replies with 'you're right, I'm sorry' but something tells me she won't.

Good for you, OP. It takes guts to stand up to a CF friend, especially when its DC-related. I'll never forget the thread about the CFers who'd asked the OP if she would have their DC on the first Monday of the school hols – then decided that meant she'd have them every single day for the entire six weeks. From 6am to 2pm! They were hilariously outraged when she said no.

You probably won't get a reply. Presumably she's highly embarrassed. Some people lash out defensively when they're embarrassed, instead of apologising. You'll know soon enough which option she chooses. You've done nothing wrong.

I think your message was good. It’s a shame it came to that but unlike so many posters I would not be so quick to write her off as a good friend even if her response or lack of doesn’t fit the bill of what you or people on here expect.
Good friends in life are not hanging off trees and if you have been friends for years then keep some context on this, yes totally cheeky behaviour but actually you could have said no to these requests from the start even if it meant fibbing about plans.

I know it was hard, but really well done. For context I was once in a similar situation. A friend was going through a difficult divorce, so I had her boys after school. This became 3x a week. Then 6-8 weeks a years so she could keep her job but not hire a nanny; then a further couple of weeks when her mum was ill (and dying) in France. Apart from the odd bottle of wine as a thank you, I never took a penny from her. It went on for 4 years.

them my eldest was diagnosed with autism after lots of distressing incidents at school and home and I asked her to explore with her boss more WFH/less travel as I wasn;t sure it ws fair on my child in the circumstances to have her boys with us so permanently whilst she was going through a MH crisis. I also felt it wasn;t fair on her boys to risk her having an incident while they were staying.

She had a strop about ‘this coming out of the blue’ (it hadn’t, she’d literally said that ‘if it was getting too much she’d speak to her boss). 6 weeks later we went into lock down. I never heard from her again. NOT ONE SINGLE TEXT during the following years to check on my child’s wellbeing. Or mine.

I’d never do it again, even though I know I have her boys 4 years of stability. It was her job to sort it out and, I have to say, even typing this message I am welling up as I a still so very, very hurt by the fact that, really, she couldn’t give a fuck about me and my kids. I was free, safe and met her needs.

Stay strong. And I hope that if for any reason your friendship hoes pear-shaped, that you can focus on your children and other friends in stead.

Time to tell her that your reduced hours are not working out as you had planned and you're actually considering approaching your manager to get back to being a full time employee and the sooner the better. Tell her that her failure to arrange suitable and appropriate childcare is not your job to fix for her. That is not her being a friend, that is her being a massive CFker!!!

Actually, if you know that the text/email is going to be landing in your mailbox, you could preempt it and get in there first saying "Hi CFker friend, I'm just letting you know that I'm no longer available for your childcare requirements. I didn't take a reduction in my salary (and pension when it comes to it) to just be your childcare. Please make alternative arrangements and set up permanent childcare arrangements elsewhere."

Someone like this is not the type of "friend" that I'd like in my life - all take and very very very little give.