I have a 21 month old girl in my care, & for the last while her mom has been really getting on my nerves. She’s the type of mom who asks for the most but has a problem paying what she pays (none of my other families ever have any issues). She’s the type of daycare family that is waiting in my driveway at 6:50am & one of the last to pick up when she isn’t working anymore & doesn’t need such excessive hours anymore.

With the weather being so nice where we are, we are out as often as possible (within safe conditions of course), & this 21 month old DCG has VERY sensitive skin & burns very easily at the mildest of conditions. I usually go by UV index when putting sunscreen on. This particular mom had sent me a very angry text at 7:30 one evening telling me I put too much sunscreen on her (it’s really not THAT much, she just provided me with the most gloopiest slimiest sunscreen) & asked me if I COULD NOT USE IT ANYMORE unless it’s “extremely hot” because she “is too hard to bathe in the evenings” since it won’t come off. I politely reminded her that when it is extremely hot we don’t go outside & to clarify if she doesn’t want it being used at all then? She said yes, she doesn’t want me using it anymore. So I stopped using it, & the day after she picks her up & her DCG is red because she didn’t have sunscreen that day. This particular day was not even remotely hot, it was a nice 19 degrees Celsius, & the UV index was at 4 & we were out for only 30-40 minutes & she had gotten so red. Then mom asks me if we can limit our outdoor time to accommodate her sensitivity & I told her I unfortunately cannot. We are inside when the conditions aren’t safe for the children to be out & all she said was “ok” with a loud sigh & was avoiding eye contact.

The day after she had ALSO sent another angry text asking if I could not take her travel wipes case out of her diaper bag because “I need it for when I’m out with all the kids”. So I again had to remind her that she didn’t send any wipes with DCG after I reminded her to send more & that case was the only one in her bag that I could use.

For the last 9-10 months I’ve had DCG there have been some occurrences of these types of instances, but they’ve been really increasing over the last month. I’ve been cutting her lots of slack & been giving her the benefit of the doubt because she just had a baby last month so I know her hormones are probably all out of whack right now & she’s probably just tired & exhausted.

What would you guys do?