Speak the truth before ill-intentioned yeses become a bad habit

Q I have made a lovely friend at the nursery school gates and our sons have become firm friends. I have a newborn too and am a "stay at home" mum. She just has the toddler and works from home, trying to start a business I think and she is always complaining about how tough it is with her little boy at home.

The problem is that after having her boy over for one playdate after nursery, she has asked me to do this at least five times since with no return favour and I feel as though I am being used as free childcare.

I don’t want to upset her and I don’t want anything to come between our sons’ friendship (he is a lovely boy and they play beautifully together) but I feel I have to say something before this gets out of control. How do I approach it, grit doctor?

A Firstly, rest assured that you are not alone in the "playdate-as-free-
childcare" debacle that has sucked many a kindly new mum into its dark web. There are some super assertive mums keen to take advantage of any opportunity to offload their kids so they can get some work done and the kindliest "stay-at-home-mum-type" is the most obvious target.

I feel for every mum trying to juggle the demands of a toddler and work – without childcare – because it is almost impossible to accomplish anything “adult” with a toddler in tow.

It is also incredibly unfair that childcare is both ludicrously expensive and inexplicably inflexible, so much so that it puts many women either out of gainful employment because it becomes a “loss-leader” for them to work (on account of the cost of childcare) or into the unseemly position of begging like crack addicts at the school gates for playdates, or preydates, as they might be more appropriately known.

The thing is, who can blame this woman for taking advantage? I certainly won’t. You have been expecting her somehow to climb inside your mind and work out how you are really feeling about all this when what you have been giving out are smiles and yeses time after time after time. I bet she can’t believe her luck.

At least she has been honest about her position: trying to work, no childcare, no help, having the toddler around making it impossible to get anything meaningful done work-wise. You, on the other hand, are not making yourself clear to her.

Saying no
You should have said no ages ago or, when she asked you the second time or at least the third, said something like, 'Hey wait a second, it's your turn this time, isn't it? thus making plain the reciprocal nature of all legitimate playdate arrangements.

So, bite the bullet and speak to her: be direct about it, no fannying around and most certainly no apologising as you have absolutely nothing to be sorry for. Three potential ways of tackling the conversation are:
a) "Listen here honey, y'know playdates are a reciprocal thing, and on my last count you owe me four." Making her laugh is a great way to start on a potentially awkward topic provided she "gets" that you are not, in fact, joking.
b) "Listen, I know you are trying to get some work done, but I am starting to feel like a free childminder, and I don't want to let it go on without talking to you about it, because it is making me unhappy and I really like you and I love our boys' relationship and I just want us all to stay on track. So please understand that playdates must be a two-way street, I have X and then next time, you have Y." This is so crystal clear that it leaves no room for any misunderstandings.
c) "This isn't a playdate love, it's a paydate and its gonna cost you €8 an hour." Why not? If you want to make a bit of extra cash and you would be doing it anyway and your toddlers love it, and so on and so on.

The Grit Doctor's favourite solution
The third solution solves the problem of inflexible childcare for your friend because you can do it whenever on an adhoc basis (possibly check the legality of this beforehand), and you get something out of it too: money in your pocket and the possibility of a new career in childcare.

Whichever option you choose, she will understand if you put it to her plainly enough. If we allow ourselves to be taken advantage of, we can hardly blame those who are savvy enough to exploit the opportunities we hand to them on a plate.

There is nothing more debilitating and suffocating than yeses meanly given. It saps you of all your mojo, festers and generates ill feeling where really all that was needed was for you to tell the truth from the outset.

The Grit Doctor says: We must take responsibility for all of our choices. A one-off ill-intentioned yes has a habit of becoming a bad habit so watch out. Be honest. Be upfront. And you won't go far wrong.

Ruth Field is author of Get Your Shit Together and Run, Fat Bitch, Run