My childminder is also a friend of some 20+ years so advice would be appreciated.
She looks after my 8yo DS before and after school, inset days and some school holidays.
So here goes:-
- More or less every night, when I collect my son, there are the childminder's friends at her house having coffee and a chat. This would be ok if the children were in the same room but they are often in the garden or another downstairs room, unsupervised. More often than not my son, who is the eldest, is reading to the little ones or playing with them in the back garden. This has become more frequent in recent weeks. My previous childcare was a day nursery so I don't know other childminders operate. Is this normal?
- My ex usually picks our son up from school on a preset day during the week. Last week he contacted the cm directly to say he wouldn't be picking our ds up and could she collect him from school. Neither of them told me until half past five that the arrangements had changed. I had to cancel what I was doing (work related) to collect my son. I told both of them that I was not very happy about the lack of communication.
- Yesterday one of the other parents shouted at my son and was quite nasty to him. I was there when this happened. I did tell my childminder that I did not expect other parents to shout at my child. Discipline is one thing, shouting is another. I am reasonably strict as a parent and my son does get told off when he does something wrong. But I would expect the childminder and not another parent to hand out any discipline if it is required.
All of these things are reasonably minor in the scheme of things and seem a bit trivial when I have typed them out. But I am feeling a bit annoyed and I wonder if IBU to feel like this.