Scene A: You have two school-going children, a new baby - and, for the first time, a live-in au pair. She is wonderful with the new baby, loving, attentive, and careful.

With the older children, she is not quite so good. You have a quiet, yet positive word with her - and she asks them the next day why they are complaining about her to you.

Scene B: Your sister's friend is minding your eight-year-old every day after school, an arrangement that everyone is happy with.

Except the eight-year-old. You think he's unhappy because all he really wants is to be in his own home, the way he used to be when you could afford a live-in nanny. Now you can't, and you're reluctant to offend your new minder - and your sister - by raising the problem.

Scene C: You have a perfect childminder. But now, suddenly, she's had a series of days or mornings or afternoons when, for perfectly valid reasons, she just can't work.

Do you grit your teeth and say "Fine", because, God knows, a good childminder like her is hard to find and your children love her, or do you try to resolve the matter?

When parents work outside the home, they are completely, often slavishly, dependent on the smooth working of their childminding arrangements. Your heart sinks if, all of a sudden, the childminder needs extra time off. Or she gets ill frequently. Or if one of your children suddenly has minor but persistent complaints about the minder - or somebody/ something else in her house if the minding takes place there.

We've all read (some of us have even written) the articles that tell you what you should do about all this: have a contract, don't walk away from the problem, tackle it head on, etc etc.

It's the right advice, especially if you're worried that something may be seriously amiss. So how come so many of us stick our head in the sand and just hope the problem will go away?

One mother who recently suffered a bout of her minder suddenly needing a lot of days off, joked: "What will I do? Say `yes, yes, yes', of course." In this case, she and her child had been happy with their minder for years, and couldn't contemplate losing her.

The relationship between parents and childminders is quite unique, and certainly different than most other employer/employee relationships because of the intensely personal nature of the work - minding a child, your child. Yet, paradoxically, it's work that is frequently (if not always) seriously underpaid and undervalued. (Interestingly, it's also nearly always a woman-to-woman relationship: in many, if not most, families men leave it to their partners to interview, hire and sort out any problems with the minder.

And many of us - childminders as well as parents - just haven't got the hang of how to sort out problems if they arise. Certainly many parents sometimes put the need for steady, continuous childcare ahead of our children's needs.

We tell the kids "The au pair's going in two months, just hang on 'til then." Or we hope that an unhappy incident is a one-off that we can all forget about.

There are all sorts of ticklish problems in this kind of employment. One, for example, that's not often talked about is how children can outgrow their minders: a minder who was ideal for your baby and toddler might not be the right person to provide after-school care for your seven-year-old. You're upset, she's upset - but if your child isn't happy, shouldn't you do something about it?

If it's a relative, a neighbour or a friend who is minding your children, it can be doubly difficult to tackle problems.

Regulations - if and when they are finally introduced and enforced - will bring a greater degree of professionalism to the business of childcare, but they won't change the personally sensitive nature of the job. Patricia Hayes Murray of the National Childminders Association has a blast of common-sense for a parent agonising about how to tackle problems with a minder - or indeed, a minder worried about how to confront a parent.

"A weekly review should be part of the structure for a child who's in full-time childcare, right from the start," she says. A parent and minder should agree that once a week they will have a regular five- to 10-minute chat - perhaps, say, a phone call on a Saturday morning. During the chat, both parent and minder can raise any problems, discuss matters to do with the child's development and physical wellbeing or explore issues about the arrangement itself. The important thing, Hayes Murray says, is that this weekly chat should not take place when you're delivering or collecting you child, and it should be uninterrupted. By establishing this "review" from the word go, before problems arise, both people can subsequently air their concerns in an unthreatening - and less defensive - atmosphere.

If such discussions are not regular, it can be really hard to raise matters. "It's very threatening if someone says `I'd like to have a word with you' - it's like being back in school," Hayes Murray says. It's always better, she adds, to raise issues before they turn into a series of minor irritations that can sour the relationship between a minder and parents. Although her association mainly represents childminders working in their own homes, she suggests that the weekly review is appropriate to all full-time childcare arrangements, including live-in nannies and au pairs.

It really is important to establish good communication, based on mutual respect, right at the start, she says, so that issues can be discussed without either side getting defensive. Many parents and childminders let problems fester. "Parents are afraid to say something in case the arrangement breaks down and they won't be able to go to work on Monday."

Minders, on the other hand, might be getting angry about the way they're being treated - but genuinely love the children they're minding and don't want to upset them.

The point of addressing issues should be to solve them. "Changing the childminder isn't the first resort, unless the matter is something really serious."

Of course, in the end, "it's down to individuals, and if the person you're dealing with gets up on her high horse, then you might have a problem."

She points out what parents might rather forget: that childminders certainly have problems too; their most common complaints are about parents who are consistently 15, 20 or more minutes late to pick up their children - usually without ever offering to pay for the extra hour(s) a week this might add up to; and about those who fail to pay the childminder the agreed amount on the agreed day. "It's denigrating to carry on with `Oh, I didn't get to the bank this morning'," Hayes Murray says. "It makes childminders feel as if they have to beg for their money, and that's wrong."

Parents and minders who attended last weekend's agm of the National Childminders Association had a chance to air mutual problems behind closed doors. For £15 a year, parents can become associate members - and many do when they're looking for help finding a childminder in their area.

The association can be contacted at 10 Marlborough Court, Marlborough Street, Dublin 1 (tel: (01) 287 5619).