Need advice on asking for a higher rate now that school is out
Hi everyone,
this is going to be sort of a long post and I apologize for that. I’m in need of some advice/reassurance on how to proceed. I’m currently working for a single mom, with a 2 year old girl (NK1) and 9 year old boy (NK2). I started with them in February/March and was only working maybe 2 days a week, and sometimes not at all. Just as of May(ish) has it become every weekday (or sometimes 4 days a week if the weather is bad). Their mom works in construction so her hours are all over the place and I am basically considered on call until the night before when she gets her call on if she’s working the next day. She doesn’t usually know if the shift will be short/long so some days I’m there from 4:30am-9pm and some days it’s more like 7am-3pm. This doesn’t bother me and it works better for me as I tend to get really anxious when I have a “normal” or “set” schedule. I currently don’t have much going on in my personal life so I don’t make a ton of sacrifices there.
Now, here come the hard parts 😭. When I first started, I told her $10/hr would be fine but would be more if there was more than one child. She said I would primarily be taking care of the NK1 and with NK2 it would just be drop off and pickup at school and that he didn’t really need someone to “watch him.” This arrangement was fine with me because I usually only had about an hour before and after school with NK2. And given that NK1 is still on a pretty routine sleep schedule of fairly long naps, I didn’t have a problem with it. I had a LOT of downtime, I don’t have a TON of experience, and I start my ECE course (if I can afford it) in September, so the pay truly felt fair to me. Now, however, summer vacation has started and I have both kids full time. It feels hard to say but honestly the NK2 is significantly more work than NK1 and especially with the long hours, I am just exhausted at the end of the day. NK2 does not have a lot of independence and struggles with playing by himself or being alone, etc. I don’t mind doing activities with him often and spending time with him, of course, he’s a really great kid. But he is a LOT more work. And I truly believe mom thinks he is capable of being independent and probably has done a better job at setting boundaries. NK1 is also now going for shorter naps now that she knows her brother is home. She is not sleeping for as long so I’m providing a lot more care to her, as well.
I know (now) that this happens a lot and that I’m not the first person this issue has happened to. I know I should know better but I do sometimes have a hard time standing up for myself (I’m working on it!!! 😭). But of course, I need to ask her for higher pay (honestly even if it’s $15/hr lol), and I have no idea how to do that. I’m worried about hurting her feelings if I discuss that NK2 is a lot more work than she let on, and I’m of course worried just in general because I’ve never had to ask for something like this.
Does anybody have any advice for how I should handle this? Or what I should say/not say? I’ll take any validation anybody has to offer but please know this whole thing has been eating me alive so I am feeling very tender and sensitive about it lol 😭
Advice for setting better boundaries/encouraging independence with NK2 is also very much welcome and appreciated. Thank you if you took the time to read this!!!! And of course thank you for any responses.
TLDR: I need to ask for higher pay now that school is out and I’m caring for two children full time. How do I go about it?
EDIT: thank you everyone for your replies and advice ❤️ i asked for $15 and she said she couldn’t do it. i appreciate everyone who helped me feel confident enough to even ask ❤️