This feels like a silly question, but i need to handle this situation delicately because it involves a family who are our friends and next door neighbour.

My daughter goes to the same pre-school as our neighbour's son, and we arranged for them to do drop-offs and us to do pick-ups. It makes sense to just carpool since we literally live next door to one another. At the beginning it was great, and their son would come over to our house and hang out for 30-60 minutes. But now almost 2 months in, DD isn't so thrilled when he comes over and i feel so frazzled dealing with 3 kids while trying to get dinner ready. Also when i pick them up in the double stroller, they almost always start fighting - he is super sensitive and DD loves to provoke him. I always feel like i need a stiff drink by the time i get home!

Since i'm still on maternity leave, i would like to just pick up DD early so we can hang out together but then that would mean he would be at home with his sisters until his parents got home. His sisters have a hard time looking after him (he can be a handful) so i'm not sure if his parents would be on board with him being home so early.

I'm sure the arrangements will change once i'm back at work, but i'm wondering how to bring up making changes to our current arrangement? I wouldn't mind having 1-2 days during the week when we are just responsible for our own kid. But i don't want them to get the wrong idea and think it's because of their kid.