To expect the au pair to eat breakfast in her own time?

[Mammagaga]

The au pair works from 8-10 every morning AIBU to expect that she feeds the baby at 8am instead of leaving her screaming while she makes and eats her own breakfast?!

In fact using engeika's figures including travel /room etc (I suspect £400 is an underestimate too) she gets the same as I do after tax a month. For working 3 days plus on call shifts a week, average 31 hours. As a surgeon.

Ffs she doesn't know she's born! Can I have her job please?

OP, you would have been better off listing in the childcare topic, and, within that, home childcare. Everyone posting there is a nanny, childminder or au pair, or employer of one. You would get a more reasoned response.

I don't understand why the OP is getting so much abuse from people.

My baby starts shouting at me in the seconds between me giving his older sister her breakfast and me giving him his, not because he's hungry - but because she has food and he hasn't. Babies can be quite unreasonable!

If I lived in London, I'd want that job. I'd be happy with just the £12 p/h let alone any of the rest of it! 2 hours a day?! She's going to have fun in the real world. Surely she can find time to eat in the 22 hours a day she isn't working.

And I never feed the baby breakfast, he feeds himself, but that's irrelevant. If I was paying someone to do it, I'd expect it done.

Of course YANBU. She sounds bloody useless. Just fire her and find another one. I know how awful it can be sorting out adequate child are, but it is much better to do it now and get it out of the way, rather than fume as she continues to do a rubbish job. There are good, switched on APs out there. It will work out. Good luck.

maybe you need op, to start the morning routine a bit earlier and wake up 18mth at 7,30am and have all 3 children sitting down eating breakie for when the ap starts at 8am

Why on earth should the OP and the children change their morning routine so that the OP is not inconvenienced?!! OP pays the au pair plenty of money for very little work so the least the au pair could do is get herself up a bit earlier and have her own breakfast before the children are eating.

Yes, maybe the au pair needs to start her morning routine a bit earlier if she's so hungry in a morning that she needs to eat as soon as she starts work.

Yanbu - how difficult is it to give an 18 month old a piece of bread to munch on while you're fixing your own breakfast? The fact the au pair does not feed the baby at all before dropping her at the childminders is grounds for dismissal in my book. Tell her "please finish your breakfast before 8 or after you've dropped the children off; please give the baby her breakfast yourself, don't ask the other children to do it".

I wouldn't leave an AU-pair with a baby. I didn't take on that level of care until my children could speak. Au-Pairs have no idea about babies as they are usually young and unqualified.

It reminds me of my friend and her sister( who was 18 at the time). They had come to visit me and my new born baby. I put the baby down in his cot in a next door room. Shortly afterwards he started yelling. The friend's young sister got up and I thought she was going to get him but she closed the door firmly, and turned and said to us' now we can't hear him!

I think that sums up the attitude of an untrained young person to other peoples babies. DANGEROUS, unless you are supervising.

I second what Hiawatha said. the nannies board is very helpful and measured (usually).
Love the suggestion below that OP should get up early so she can have accomplished what she employs the au pair to do in time for the au pair to roll out of bed and make breakfast I think her T&C sound very generous. Sounds like she's not cut out for the job to me. And good on OP for batting back some of the silly comments on here.

YANBU

I thought that (non-EU) APs came in on a particular visa, which does not allow them to work (other than AP?)

maybe you need op, to start the morning routine a bit earlier and wake up 18mth at 7,30am and have all 3 children sitting down eating breakie for when the ap starts at 8am

Yes, that's tantamount to me saying "maybe my boss should get up a bit earlier and do some of my work for me so that I don't have to".

And also, yes, she doesn't sound very caring in general tiwards kids - get rid.