cm club what would you do? sorry long................

[dmo]

i have a child who comes to me before and after school mon/tues/fri i charge £3 per hour
she came to me a few weeks ago and asked if i could be flexable with his hours as her days/hours are changing at work so we agreed that i would give him a full week and she would use 3 days.
now at end of term school closed on a thurs so natually she didnt need me fri so used me mon/tues/wed that week (so she didnt need to pay for the fri she didnt use)
during the hols i charge £20 per day and he is here for 11-12 hrs a day (mum is off today) and he has been coming mon/tues/fri but today i got a note saying last week of hols she needs me tues/thurs/fri (this is to get out of paying for bank hol mon)
plus also sent a letter out at beginning of hols saying where we are going what hours we will be out what the child needs ie swim suit and if any spends are needed, well today it was swimming with £1 towards a swim, boy brought swim things but no money (hasnt brought any at all so far and this is 3rd week)
what would you lot do?

i pay for toddler groups in term time as there only about 50p a session
dont mind paying half in hols but it does get expensive

Having said that, when I sign up new parents or get the guts up to review contracts with current ones I'll be making them pay full for outings - I think I'll say it'll be a max of maybe £8/£10 a week during the holidays, any excess I'll pay. I'll make it sound all optional etc, but it really does add up and somehow I'm not actually earning enough to cover it!

I think a minimum of 50% is very fair.

Although I am a childminder, I wanted to say - in defence of parents - that unless we actually spell out exactly what we expect from them (be it money, lunches or whatever), then they may not know!

I don't think that they necessarily know that changing hours might be inconvenient, that arriving 10 minutes early is a bit of a nuisance (my particular bugbear!) or that providing juice and free-range, organic, additive-free snacks is actually costing us money. We might know that other local minders charge more per hour, charge for each outing plus petrol, but the parents might not.

i charge £2.50 per hour plus £2 per day for food, i pay for toddler groups which costs about £5 per week (i go to 3) then i charge whatever it costs to go on a trip for eg strawberry picking is £5 a basket therefore it is £5 for mindee to have their own basket and they take it home with them. occasionally i will take them to soft play and not ask for the money as i only ask for money if i write to them in advance and soft play can be spur of the moment if its miserable or the kids need to let off some steam.

mum i talked about came this morning with money she owes me plus flowers, cards and lanterns for my garden, in the card she writes that i'm the best c/m in the world and son loves it so much he wants to come on days off

well thats nice and it must make you feel better!

it did
feel guity now asking for money as she was so nice (always remembers all my familys b/days)