P*ssed off with au pair - am I overreacting?

Obviously there was a lot more behind the original post & now I don't find you quite so unreasonable!

I hope the new Nannies fabulous in every way!

an au pair itsnt suppsoed to look after a child for logner than 4 hours a day i thought

FWIW she may not have intentionally stayed shorter than she agreed (though agreeing to 2yrs is very rare), sometimes things change & perhaps she realised she wasn't cut out for living-in.

It takes a lot of qualities plus give & take from both Nanny & Employer to make live-in work, especially with a more mature Nanny.

Mumpbump, good luck with your Nanny...I assume she's live out?...If your Au-pair only been with you 8mths & already annoyed you thus far I guess it's not a bad thing she's leaving.

I think you and she are just a bad match.

She sounds a bit too slack, and has taken advantage where you've been generous.

You may (to her) come across as controlling which, as many of us agree, has brought about the lying.

At least two of us have said she may have misunderstood when the last train was, Aloha has posted some very wise words, and my latest thought is that if her English isn't all that great, perhaps she was unable to text accurately: I am going to miss the last train because I am at the pub and it's rammed, I'd like to finish my drink and then go back to my boyfriend's house.

I think you've been very calm and gracious where some of us have disagreed with you, fwiw. Really wish you the best with the nanny. If she can start now, yes, ditch the au pair.

mumpbump, hope you don't feel too hounded by this thread. I can read from your posts that your aupair's heart is not in her duties - esp the stretching of her intentions regarding the length of her stay. Her lying is just a symptom of the problem. She does not sound like she takes your family seriously. The sooner you see the back of her, the better.

In loco parentis of a 27 year old - har!

if she turned up on time, what does it matter where she spent the night? agree with Aloha, you are setting up a situation where she will lie.
It might be a good idea to pay the fare home next time, then you can decide. APs v rarely stay 24 months ime

I think the problem here is that you are unsure on whether you want an au pair or a nanny. I would be dubious of getting an au pair who was 27 as far as I am concerned an au pair is someone on a gap yer from school generally foreign and coming to the UK to study English and earn pocket money/allowance in return for a pre-agreed amount of work within the family houshold whether that it cleaning or childcare.

She may be unsure of what you expect of her and if you have no contract unfortunalty you are on a hiding to nothing as the rules of the household and hours and your expectations of what are expected of her are not clearly laid out. I personally have been a nanny for 13 yrs and have always sat down with employers and agreed terms and conditions of work and household rules before even agreeing to work for them.

sadly there are many girls out there who will push the boundaries and it is difficult to come back to a previous verbal agreement especially if that agreement sounds like it has been changed several times to suit differing arrangements.

Perhaps this is the time for her to move on but I would make sure that you know she has somewhere to go, although she is 27 with a boyfriend and was leaving anyway she may still view your house as her home.

Good luck with whatever you decide and I hope that your next childcare arrangement works out better.

She's not really an au pair in the traditional sense. Firstly, they never come for 24 months. More like six. Basically, what you have is a foreign national for whom the easiest way into the country is via domestic work.

Secondly, as you've turned a blind eye
to lateness, cancellation etc, she's probably got the idea that you are pretty flexible.

A text is the coward's way of delivering news that is likely to be unpopular.

Message withdrawn

Oh - and obviously I meant to call you mumpbump, rather than my previous mis-spelling!

Mumbimp, be aware that if you do use an agency, the period during which they are contracted to find you a new aupair at no cost is usually very short (like maybe 4 weeks!)

MB I can totally see your point but I can also see au pairs veiw that the reason she lied is she KNEW you would say not to bother coming in the morning when she has never been given the chance to show you that she can stop out and still arrive for work in the morning.
she has now shown you that she is capable of doing both.

I would just assume next time she stops out that she will arrive on time in the morning - if she doesn't, fair enough rip her head off and dock her wage.
just make it clear to her next time that if she does stop out all night that you expect her on time the following morning for work.

Haven't read all the posts (so am prepared to be shot down in flames!)but it seems to me that there are a lot of mis-understandings here. If this girl is genuinely an au-pair, then she is not an "employee" and talk of giving her written warnings, following disciplinary proceedings etc are not relevant. Calling the money she receives an "allowance" is completely correct as au-pairs are not employees and the money they receive is normally below the threshold for paying tax and NI.

I have only employed nannies, and live-out ones at that, but if I had a live-in nanny of 27 years old, I would not expect her necessarily to inform me that she was going to be out all night EXCEPT that as she would be living in my house, if she was not coming back, I would need to know to set the alarm. Similarly, if I thought she was going to be out all night and she suddenly turned up at 3 a.m., she could probably be wrestled to the ground by dh. However, if I had an au-pair I WOULD expect her to tell me if she was going to be out all night because I see an au-pair as someone younger, less experienced and who is in my home to provide an extra pair of hands for a small amount of money and the chance to learn English and be part of our family. I wouldn't employ a 27 year old because I think it would lead to just the kind of difficulties described here and while I would feel fine about telling a 19-year old whom I was paying £60 a week that I needed her to be home on weeknights, I would find it a lot more awkward to say that to someone older, presumably more experienced and more worldly-wise.

this thread sums up for me the problems with au pairs - you talk about "allowance" rather than "pay" because it's a sort of family arrangement where she helps out in exchange for living with you and pocket money. But you then talk about her "contractual hours" which imply something rather more formal. I don't mean this to be a criticism of Mumpbump - she doesn't seem to have behaved unreasonably given the house rules - but more an illustration of the issues that arise where you don't have clear and identical understanding of the deal. They almost all seem to end with both sides feeling taken advantage of.

MB - I would ask her to contribute towards the plane tickets, especially since it was mainly her decision to leave and when to leave. In fact this alone would have made me very annoyed, even though I can see how at life circumstances can change. She's probably no different to how she always was, but you feel "used" now and less likely to let anything go unnoticed.