Is This A Red Flag For A Psycho Parent?

[Nickel]

Did you meet with her? Interested to see how it all played out

[Sprouts]

No I didn't arrange an interview, I don't have space for infants so I told her I will put her on the waiting list. She told me she lives across the street so she probably sees us regularly. If she does have OCD then maybe she should say sorry to call so many times, I'm not a psycho , I just can't help it but I don't know...the fact that she just shows up, and then calls like crazy...already helps me picture a stressful future. She did sound nice over the phone butttttttt yeah not good feeling about it....

[brookeroo]

Disorder or not do you really want to deal with that?

I had a lady from Craigslist email me once and call me. Very similar situation. She emailed me from my Full Time (only) posting and said that she was looking for a "part time sitter to watch her two kids every day for 6-7 hours a day." She also said that her current sitter only charges them 75.00 a week for both so she was needing to pay that or less. (Ahem... B.S. :::::

I told her that would fall under full time wages and if her daycare provider was charging her that she was getting a deal of the century. She said she was looking to leave because one of her sons were getting bug bites and one of the kids there was biting her other son.

So after I said I was sorry I would not be able to help her.. she decides to call me a couple days later. She doesn't tell me that she emailed me before but gives me some other line of excuses why she's leaving and tells me that she's currently paying $90 a week for the same amount of hours. I was in the middle of something and didn't even think about what she was talking about very thoroughly and she had asked me to set up an interview for the following monday (it was a Friday). After thinking about it and researching the emails over night I realized this was the same lady and she was feeding me crap to get a low rate and on top of it she was looking for part time and my posting was for full time only so I called her and left her a voicemail. I told her that I was not able to help her since she was looking for part time and I would not be able to financially help her with the rates she was looking to get. I said she would have to pay me full time for both children and if that sounded good to give me a call and let me know she was going to come but if I didn't hear from her I would not plan on seeing her at our scheduled interview time and good luck with her search.

Monday rolls around. I never heard from her but she showed up. Said she never got my message. I explained everything I said in the voicemail and apologized and she got so ticked off and literally sat there are argued with me. She ended up leaving after I apologized and she text me after she left, "Your ad even says that you offer multi child discounts. What is that discount if you don't discount?" I responded that I do offer multi child discounts to full time clients and that the posting she responded to was a FULL TIME posting only. Even said it in the title.) She didn't respond but she literally called me 3 more times and left me messages a few days after. Crazy people... :confused:

[daycarediva]

I once interviewed with a woman that lives up the street from me. She had three kids, two young SA kids and a toddler. (I had no SA kids and have 2 spots and one full time opening) Kids were soooo sweet, Mom was professional & thorough. Interview was in mid-January. She needed care when grandma was going to stop watching them in February due to health reasons. I gave her all required paperwork and told her that I couldn't hold the spot without a deposit. She had my business card, contract with hours and rates written in, list of references and my menu for Feb, etc.

Fast forward to Feb. No call, no email, nothing. I get another interview in mid Feb with a Kindergartener and a 12m old. Interview went great, they signed on the spot, put down a deposit and started two weeks later. The DAY they started I get a phone call from lady up the street asking if I still had space available (no). Apparantly my new clients were her cousins, and she gave them my number! OMG! She went NUTS screaming and yelling on the phone. When my DCM showed up, I told her and she brushed it off. She said her cousin was VERY high and mighty and to not worry about it. I ended up having to block her phone number (S) she called from three different phones and called and complained to my registrar.

Dodged a bullet, three years later I still have my 'normal' dcf, from her reference! ::

[momofthree211614]

Wow

I really hate parents who wait until the last minute. It can be a major pain trying to get paperwork from them!! She to me seems...trouble.

[Blackcat31]

Ok, once again I am going to be an odd duck here and go against the grain.

I see situations like this in a completely different light.

If I had a parent call that literally screamed "high-needs" or "special" I would take that as an opportunity to lay it all out there and state my rules and policies under NO UNCERTAIN terms and discuss right up front how I don't let parents bend the rules nor do I let them tell me how to run MY business.

I present my program and my rules and say take it or leave it.

I have had a couple families call me looking for care that I had been warned about by previous providers and I have 3 out of 4 times enrolled the family and had the above discussion with them during our interview and enrolled them. All 3 have turned out to be golden families for me.

Now on the other hand, if an interested parent actually called me 13 times in a row, I would probably have called her out on it and asked her what her problem was.....or I might have called her back 14 times and hung every time except the last time.

[Sprouts]

Ok, once again I am going to be an odd duck here and go against the grain.



Now on the other hand, if an interested parent actually called me 13 times in a row, I would probably have called her out on it and asked her what her problem was.....or I might have called her back 14 times and hung every time except the last time.

Lol...after reading that I had one of those moments where I wished I would have said something a little different, yeah maybe I should have mentioned the many calls and called her out on that...I was more subtle with that and just said I saw you called quite a few times!

But yeah I have had high need parents, one in particular has helped me revamp my contract and make sure everything is covered, she also taught me how to enforce my late fees and turned out to be a great family as well...she was just the type that needed her boundaries explained and enforced....but she would never have called so many times!