I am seriously shaking right now - with anger, with bitterness, with resentment and the fact that I feel like I need to replace before I can terminate, and I am not getting any bites.

Last night, I ended up texting her, asking her to call me when she had a chance. I said it was apparent that there were some issues, and we needed to discuss them. Her husband called me. He basically said - don't deal with her, deal with me. She is frustrated and it wouldn't be constructive to communicate with her right now he actually said "Don't poke the lion." WHAT!? I'm not 15. I want to deal with this in a professional manner and move on. I'm not going to tip toe around her and walk on egg shells. If she won't communicate, I have no other alternative than to communicate with her husband who also said "it's best to communicate with me because I won't get mad at stupid stuff." He asked me to send along the form, and I also made up a guideline of the instances where the daycare may unexpectedly close. She was also turning up late 9 days out of 10, so I sent home a late pick up notice.

Two hours later, I get an email saying things "Please note that....", "I want to make it perfectly clear that...", "And another thing...", "For your information..." I sent her an email back, and politely and calmly said I wasn't sure where all the hostility was coming from but her being so upset was being slightly unreasonable. Well, I guess I unleashed the beast. She started emailing me like crazy - two, three emails at a time. Attacking me, insulting the way I care for the kids. The ONLY thing is, she is Asian and just came here a few years ago so there's a language barrier. I'm not sure if she was being assertive or rude, just because I don't know her well enough, and it was over email, so I'm not sure what she was trying to accomplish. I kept trying to keep an open mind, but her choice of words were really difficult to overcome. At one point, she sent me some guilt email about working 7 days a week, and that her and her husband are a team and if he calls me, it shouldn't matter, that I should still communicate with both of them (which was always my intention). I ended up saying simply: It's clear that there is a miscommuncation somewhere and nothing constructive is going to come out of these emails. Please call me tomorrow at your earliest convenience. She just seemed SO angry and was pulling apart my emails and putting words in my mouse, and NOT ONCE was our conversation directed at the best way to take care of her son. She also said she was "disgusted" at how dirty her son was when he came home - paint or jam on his clothes. She said "I expect to pick him up in the same shape in which we dropped him off - I don't think that that is an unfair request." WELL ACTUALLY, kids get dirty, plain and simple. We do crafts, they eat and we play outside. I simply told her that and that there was no way she would pick him up in the same shape he was dropped off unless she wanted me to change his clothes right before he left, in which case she would have to supply a complete change of clothes daily.

Anyways, in reply to my last email this is what she said:

Anyhow, I wont be able to respond to anything after this email because as you know it has already passed our bed time. I will respond tomorrow but I would rather to respond to serious matters like when I should bring him the extra clothes and things like that. If you demand a face to face meeting, we prefer it to be related to future matters as there is no need to discuss the previous incidents. We were well-informed on the "whys" so there is really no need to elaborate, we get it and that is all.

Thank you.

So, she just went on and on, attacked me for 2 hours about trivial matters, and now that I am requesting she phone me, she doesn`t want to deal with it anymore. She was continuously contradicting herself and getting upset with me for things I didn`t say or do. She clearly wasn`t listening to anything I was saying. I was tempted to just email her and say don`t bother bringing you son tomorrow. She clearly wanted me to think she is the one in control.

i don`t know what to do! I really want to just let them go, today being their last day. But again, I am an open minded, understanding person and if it was simply the fact that emails was problem...I can`t help but feeling that if she had just called me in the beginning, this would all have been avoided. She was acting like SHE was in control, and that I worked for HER. I don`t do well with that.

Pay day was yesterday, so I am good for the next two weeks. I could terminate them today, or give them two weeks notice. However, I am just nervous that I won`t be able to fill his spot within those two weeks.

Thanks for the rant, but I needed to get all that off my chest before I could go on with my day. I am just SO angry. I even re-read the emails this morning to see if it was just my adrenline that was making things seem worse than they were, but they weren`t. She kept saying "Let make this clear." "To be even more clear..." Again, could be the language thing, but the fact that she was sending me 2-3 emails at a time showed me that she was angry. UGH!!!!!!