Quote Originally Posted by samantha3 View Post
Hi Alphaghetti,

I feel I am underappreciated because today for example, at 930am I had two children (waiting for three) and in my contract there is a policy about letting me know if you are coming in by 9am. So I left the house to go and take a letter to the mail box with the two children in my care because I assumed they were not coming in as they did not contact myself. I then get a text msg from one of the parents saying she is on her way and I did not hear back from the other two. When I arrived back to my place two families were waiting for me (one just arrived and made the comment 'oh do I have perfect timing today'.

I have already sent out a reminder email about two months ago reminding families to review and acknowledge this policy (it was great for about two weeks). Now it is back to them coming anytime between 9am and 11am. This makes me just want to take whoever is here at 9am, hop on a bus and be very far away just to prove a point but I just cannot bring myself to do it.

Do you think I should send out another email reminder?

Thanks for all your help
I'm sorry but why is it your problem that the parents come at the wrong time? It is their problem! I think it is awesome that you were out of the house when the parents wanted to arrive at the wrong time and I think you should do that more often. I'm serious, I did that when I was having this problem with one family and it worked wonders.

In my case I made a rule that the family had to arrive before 9am because we leave to go to parks and the library and etc. at 9:30 quite often. I will not wait around for people because I make plans and stick to them.

As far as quitting this career choice, NO, a big NO! But I've been doing this for 4 years now after working outside the home all my life and that is what I would never do again. I will never work for somebody else again.

However, I do get really tired and burned out so I take a week vacation near the beginning of the year, a week vacation in the summer and a week vacation in Oct. and a week vacation in Dec. Every 3 months I know I have that week to look forward to so that I can recharge my batteries and come back fresh. It's working for me.