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My 18 yr old canadian au pair is wonderful. Unfortunately her nan is ill. Her mum has emailed me to say she will allow her to stay until Xmas but she wants her to return home and she will not be coming back as she wants her at home. I feel so sorry for my au pair and am confused as to why this mother is demanding she goes home. Does anyone have an au pair who they could recommend on?
Are you sure that the grandmother is really ill and it's not more that the aupair doesn't want to stay any longer and doesn't want to tell you so has drafted her mum into the tale? Sorry to sound depressing but the ill grandparent is a pretty standard excuse for aupairs who don't want to stay any longer.
I had a severly depressed/homesick AP (when she arrived, not because of us ) who pulled the sick granny story a few weeks in. Being as green as grass, I immediately booked her a return flight (at my expense)so she could go home for a week to see said granny. She settled down after that, realising that we were in fact a very kind family.
Well, my Kiwi nanny abruptly went home last year due to a grandparent with cancer. But in our case there was a bit of a build up, and other details which I won't go into here, so I didn't feel any reason to doubt the story at the time. Although now I'm a bit [hmmm] !! Some people's parents can really be that controlling and not all 18 year olds can fend it off.
Wouldn't risk marmaduke's strategy lest she take you up on it!!!
Try to find out more about the circumstances and have a good chat with the AP. At the end of the day, you odn't want to be mediating between the two of them, if she genuinely does want to stay.
Harriet, it was a easyjet flight to France, I wouldn't have funded a return to Canada!
I booked it because I believed her (she was only my 2nd AP), I realised some months down the line with no mention of Granny's health/death I had been had, as it were!
Yeah, I had a French AP who, 3 weeks after arrival, told us tearfully that father had been in car crash & punctured lung. I paid for her taxi to Gatwick (probably as much as Easyjet flight!) All her mail stopped abruptly except from 1 letter from Mum, which arrived day after she left. Guiltily, I opened & read it - unfortunately for AP French is the 1 foreign language I was in with a chance of understanding. Sure enough, Mum was trying to persuade her to stay "remember (cheapskatemum) is pregnant, at least stay until after the birth of the baby", no mention of critically ill husband! When she phoned to say she wanted to stay with recuperating father, I was cool to say the least!
) who pulled the sick granny story a few weeks in. Being as green as grass, I immediately booked her a return flight (at my expense)so she could go home for a week to see said granny. She settled down after that, realising that we were in fact a very kind family. 
except from 1 letter from Mum, which arrived day after she left. Guiltily, I opened & read it - unfortunately for AP French is the 1 foreign language I was in with a chance of understanding. Sure enough, Mum was trying to persuade her to stay "remember (cheapskatemum) is pregnant, at least stay until after the birth of the baby", no mention of critically ill husband! When she phoned to say she wanted to stay with recuperating father, I was cool to say the least! 
