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Dear Miss Manners

For the past two years I have hired a "Mother's Helper", an 11 year old girl who helps me manage my 3 children, ages 5, 2.5 and 5.5 months. For the past few months she has come to the neighborhood pool, so she can swim with one child while I play with the other and hold the baby. She has a number of friends in the neighborhood, and today 3 of them were playing with her and both the older children. This turned out to be essential, since I can't find my swimming suit, so I was not in the water.

On the one hand, I feel a little awkward about having her hang out with her friends while she is watching my children. They were talking about all sorts of middle school things (the older of the friends was sort of flirting with some middle school boys) and could have been distracted. It shows how responsible the helper is to say that I always feel like she is watching the girls, making sure they were safe and having fun. (On a side note, seeing the middle school experience through her eyes is quite instructive! =)

On the other hand, everyone involved seemed to be having fun. I do not want to lose this girl, and making sure she can talk with her friends makes her more likely to want to watch my kids. My daughters definitely had fun being made a fuss over by the older girls. The friends seemed to enjoy my kids---they especially liked the 2.5 year old who is remarkably cute.

Finally, I don't want to take advantage of this girl's friends. Without their help, we would have had to go home because of my missing swimming suit, so they really made a difference. I do pay the mother's helper a small amount (about 1/3 the going rate for high school babysitters). I would like to do something for the friends without making it seem like I will always pay them for work I didn't actually ask them to do... Today I offered to buy them sodas, which they rejected (which was just as well, because if I had bought them sodas I would have had to pay the regular babysitter later).

We go back in a week. Do I tell my mother's helper to leave the friends at home? Do I bring cookies for her friends? Will this all work itself out---the friends will come again if they had a good time, and skip it if they didn't? I need some advice!

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