We've had au-pairs since DS1 (now almost 2) was a few months old. At first, we just needed an extra pair of hands around the house as DW and I (DH) both work from home and run our own business. We're always at home but need to be able to dip in and out of work to keep the lights on, so to speak. Most of our AP (au-pair) experience has been great and we still speak regularly to two of our three previous APs. Our second AP wasn't ideal as we didn't feel we could fully trust her (she would lie about little things) so we gave her several months notice and supported her finding another family.
Our latest AP started with us about a month and a half ago. She's been taking care of DS1 and occasionally DS2, who is now 5 months old but rarely both at the same time as DW and I have been balancing DS2 with work most of the time but this has started to get very difficult for us to manage. The few times our AP has had both, it's seemed like she was struggling and in general, it's seemed lately that she's been struggling with just DS1 on his own a little. We've been considering our options lately for additional childcare as we've realised two young kids is too much for one AP and so have been looking into local nurseries and childminder services for DS1 so that AP would just need to take care of DS2, who at 5 months old, is a lot easier to take care of than a full-of-energy 2 year old.
However, DW started to get little worried earlier this week because she noticed that DS1 seemed to be a little afraid of AP at times. He wasn't going to her for hugs like he does with us, our previous APs, helpers at creche etc. On top of this, his language development seems to have slowed down a bit - that could just be from a cold or sore teeth (rear molars might be coming through). During term time, he usually has a couple of hours at a creche several days a week but that's not been happening lately. We were worried that he was missing out so contacted the creche and they put us in touch with a girl that's been doing some babysitting during the holidays. She took him out every day for a couple of hours and he seemed to love her. DW asked her about hugging and she said he'd been really warm and happy to hug and be picked up. This worried us even more in regards to our AP.
Sorry for the long background info but I felt it was necessary as, as a result of the above, I decided to hide a camera in our lounge, just to be on the safe side. I had a spare one that I'd been meaning to mount on the outside of our house a while ago, so I balanced it on a bookshelf and semi-hid it with some cards that were already on the shelf. I've never felt the need to monitor the insides of my house before and I feel uncomfortable with recording anyone surreptitiously but the odd behaviour of DS1 convinced me it was worth checking. I figured I'd run it for a few days or a week, to get an idea of what was going on when we weren't looking and then take it down or, if there was anything concerning, consider wall mounting one properly and telling anyone that comes in that there's a camera there. The camera covers the play area in our lounge and the dining area part of our kitchen. I put it up overnight on Thursday but only set it up digitally around midday on Friday so it's not been running long and has only recorded half a day of her working. I scanned through that briefly on Friday night and, although she was glued to her phone and barely interacted with DS1, I didn't see anything outright alarming. DS1 was happily running around playing and she was sometimes out of line of sight for longer than I'd like but it seemed ok. She did come over and smile at him at one point, which set my mind at ease a little as I'd been worried she might have been cold with him as she's often quite negative (glass is half empty kind of person).
Anyway, tonight I thought I'd check the camera again to make sure it was working properly, ready for the first full day tomorrow. I glanced back through today (Sunday) and saw that there was some motion detected around the time DW and I took DS1 and DS2 out for about half an hour. I thought it would just be the dogs pacing, upset that we were out but I saw AP come in, look around to see if anyone else was around and then reach up to the bookshelf the camera was in. My heart froze for a second because I thought she might find the camera but then I saw that she'd picked up some cash we had lying on a high up shelf further down the bookcase (from when DW sold a baby rocker and some other baby things that we didn't need anymore). She rifled through it and took what looked like to be £10 and pocketed it. From her behaviour, it didn't look like this was the first time she'd done this and before taking it, it looked like she double checked that we weren't in. I don't know how much she's taken in total but I believe it's more than £10 that's missing but not massively more.
Again, sorry for the long story, but I needed to write this down as I'm not sure what to do about it. I've not told DW yet as she's asleep but I'm all wound up as a result of this all. It's not about the money, it's about the act. I'm just shocked that she would do this.
As I'm sure it'll be asked; we pay what we believe to be above the going rate for APs, based on what we've seen on other family's profiles and AP told us that we're paying her about 50% more than she got at her last family. We live in a nice location, our AP's room is a lovely room (freshly redecorated two years ago) with a nice double bed, lots of light, new TV, air con unit and we gave her a new iPhone to use with unlimited data, all the entertainment subscription services. She has one of our bank cards (for an account we set up just for AP needs) that she can use for buying groceries or any food she wants, we prepare her food most evenings and we buy her takeaway most Friday and Saturday nights unless she's out and we've always welcomed our APs to spend time with us, watching shows and films with us if they want, that kind of thing. Of course, she doesn't have to pay for any bills. She works for about 7 hours a day Monday-Friday with no evening or weekend work (starts at about 8 and finishes at 5 but has a 2-3 hour break when DS1 has his nap). We don't ask her to do any cleaning (we have a weekly cleaner) but we'd expect her to do normal household things like loading or unloading the dishwasher, wiping down the surface after use, that kind of thing. I don't think we're asking too much and we've always tried to be as welcoming as possible.
Has anyone gone through anything remotely similar? Any advice on what we should do about this? It's complicated because she lives with us and it's going to be hard living with someone we can't trust. She's not mentioned anything about needing extra money or having any debts etc, so I'm not sure what to think. I think we need to let her go, as you can't get that trust back, but this is her home at the moment, so just knee-jerk reacting and kicking her out doesn't seem right as she'll have nowhere to go. Although we've started looking into alternative childcare already, we're in very early stages right now as we were planning a little further ahead and we haven't worked out all the details on cost etc. I plan on keeping the camera up and watching it more carefully over the next few days and will obviously discuss all this with DW tomorrow but I'd value any input anyone might have.
Apologies for being so long winded - I'm a little worked up right now and wanted to be clear on the facts and what led us here. First time post on here so have done my best to get the abbreviations right.