To feel really annoyed that our Italian au pair....

[Madonnasbiggestfan]

Arrived last Thursday and is going home on Sunday. Basically she's 20 and has never lived away from home before, including visiting anywhere else in her home country. She hasn't worked since leaving school at 18 (she has a £1k iPhone NOT that I'm jealous). We found out she has a serious dairy allergy (we knew from our Skype calls she had an issue with eating dairy) we only found out on Sunday that she carries an epipen and can't touch cheese.
She's decided to go back home because she just was crying all the time. She's not offered to help at all and I just had to ask her to clean up after herself when she makes a meal, i.e crumbs and washing up the plate. DH and I had to go to a funeral today (elderly relative) and I got dressed up with high heels some make up and a fairly dressy navy dressed compared to what I've worn since she's been here. Before we left she couldn't stop staring at me and I felt very uncomfortable, I'm in my 40s with two DCs for goodness sake! I've now got four more days of this, she doesn't want me to leave her on her own! Heeelp. I do want her to go. I feel on one hand a bitch for feeling like this and on the other very annoyed...

Strongmummy, yes, there will be issues. So I get rid quickly. The ratio of good aupairs to bad unfortunately has fallen quite a lot over the years. Good aupairs are out there, but harder to find. Am I allowed to say that?

However, you’re pretty daft to moan about how crap a student with no childcare qualifications, who’s in a foreign country, living in a strangers house and who’s never met your kids is!!! It’s obvious there’s going to be issues

No it's not. What bollocks. The au pair scheme has been going for decades precisely because if you choose wisely, more often than not it's a successful arrangement.

You don't need another child to look after OP, good that she's going.
We had these a few times when the dc were younger, basically big pampered babies themselves.

She is 20 poor girl, could have had no idea what she would feel. She is not a woman. She no doubt had thought how nice it would be. Many students have work exp abroad and are desperately unhappy. It takes a certain personality and maturity to do this. It was a bad idea. Employment is dire in Italy for the young, including graduates. Many au pairs are unhappy, often for good reason. In my opinion, it can be an exploitative arrangement. They are not qualified child carers so you get lucky if you get a natural. Her family will have thought she was being hosted in a similar family to their own. Not possible. I have experience of hosting young European girls and they need to be resilient but usually aren't. Be kind and let her go home. Maybe think about employing someone instead of au pairing

Par for the course I'm afraid. She's homesick, let her go home. Get another au-pair. I've had some disastrous au-pairs in the past but I've also had some excellent ones. I must admit I steered clear most of the time of any that had allergies or intolerances to food just to make my life easier!

What can you expect for £100 a week? She would be better off getting a nannying job rather than working for slave wages. A nanny has to be paid at least minimum wage, and you are only allowed to take off an offset of £49 a week for accommodation, even if you are giving her a "room in the commuter belt". The au pair system needs to be scrapped so that people are paid the minimum wage, and hopefully it will be scrapped after Brexit.
OP, why are you mentioning the fact that her phone is expensive? Is it that you feel that she is a lowly employee and should have cheaper things than you have? Many au pairs come from middle class families in their own countries. You sound jealous.
I do have some sympathy for the allergy part of your post though - if someone has a life-threatening allergy then they should have made that clear.

I am surprised at so many comments asking why the cheese allergy is relevant in this case. I assume all of you asking that don't have kids?? Diary is an extremely important part in children's diet, so very important that the person who is going to take care of them can touch it without the risk of dying!
Apart from that, it is only 4 days, I think it shouldn't be so difficult to deal with it.

Ooh can I share my pampered Italian story? We host Italian girls they are mostly ok. At the weekends the deal is I make them a packed lunch. One (aged 16) charged into our bedroom without knocking to declare that she did not like her sandwich filling and I had to make her another one.

DH, DD2 and I were sat on the bed in our PJs we were all . Her parents had truly created a Verucca Salt nightmare.

I disagree with a lot of what Irma la Fey wrote. Talk about a sweeping generalisation! Many young Italians I know are enterprising, adventurous and put in a lot of effort to improve their prospects by studying and working in shit jobs to pay for their studies. Yes there are some spoilt fuckers, as with any nationality (including some in my Brit family and others judging from some threads on here!), but there are many who are not. But then I live in a major industrial city in the north where there are prospects and a work ethic. Maybe OP's au pair is from a small town or somewhere rural? I've encountered lots of spoilt "born tired" youth from rural but well to do areas, such as Veneto or some areas in central/south Italy.

They are also more likely to be homebodies (my DD's nanny was the same, hated going on holiday without her parents and siblings, but then went on a big holiday to Asia with just friends and majorly got over it), but the younger generations in the big cities tend not to be, unlike their parents.

Also, most under 30s I know can manage a decent conversation in English, unlike many people in the UK in any other language.

All I can say is I employ a team of Italians of various ages and from a range of backgrounds and none of them fit Irma's description. Even my stepson has discovered the joys of independent living and standing on his own 2 feet (and I never thought I'd ever be writing that!)

OP, your au pair is just a wet fart. Send her home.

Surely there are good and bad au pairs from anywhere? I've heard all kinds of horror stories about au pairs from a variety of countries. This girl sounds immature and spoiled, but yes, just chalk it up to experience and try to find someone new. Hopefully you'll have better luck next time. I was an au pair in Italy when I was 19 and I found most Italians my age to be a lot younger than I was in terms of their maturity. Even the 31-year-old Italian guy I ended up going out with lived at home and that was considered perfectly normal and he had a well-paid professional job!

The life threatening allergy she didnt clarify up front is a huge problem in this environment. The children are old enough to help themselves to cheese and milk and leave traces of it everywhere plus not have washed their hands properly. It would be fine in a nursery/school with strict protocols in place or a work place where you have your own desk etc, this is jsut about the one environment it’s extremely difficult to manage!

She would be better off getting a nannying job rather than working for slave wages

For that she would need childcare training. And she’d have to work much longer hours which would leave less time for language school and socialising.

An au pair is a young person, often a student, who is here because they want to learn the language and experience the culture. Not because they are particularly interested in learning childcare.

They get to lodge with a family and take part in family life, in return for some childcare duties and modest pay.

We have a large house in central London, there is no way the average European student would be able to afford a double bedroom with en suite bathroom if they were on a bar or restaurant wage, for example. We took them to sites for free, we took them on holiday. When it works it’s mutually beneficial for both sides.

My friend had an au pair from Italy I’m sure she was a nice girl bu as an au pair she was useless. She tried to mop the carpet and had no idea how to be with children. Get yourself a new au pair if she’s not happy it’s too stressful trying to keep a family and a stranger happy all under one roof

A nanny routinely works 10-12 hour days often with sole charge. They have childcare qualifications and are proper childcare professionals, hence their nanny pay.

It would be living in cloud cuckoo land to think that OP's aupair would have any chance of (or interest in) being a nanny.

@blueshoes You can say what you like , just as I can say I think you’re pretty rich moaning like an entitled princess when you’re paying a student basically nothing and expecting them to act like s childcare professional!

I had a few years abroad in my early 20s. I remember being extremely upset and homesick initially the first time. By the subsequent times it was like water off a duck's back. You don't know how you're going to cope living abroad until you actually do it.

It's a shame it didn't work out, some you win, some you lose (I had one total nightmare family - I had to leave in the middle of the night!). I hope you get another nice one that fits your family next time.

If she's crying all the time and can't be left on her own, I'd be pretty worried about her. She might be depressed. Wouldn't be hugely unusual for a big life change to trigger that. A bit of compassion and get her back home, I reckon. She's obviously not coping.

Cuppaoftea I think the fact that she's happy to arrange to go out but is incapable of doing any work because she's so homesick, sort of proves the point that she's actually just spoiled and lazy!

At 20 i had worked my backside off for 4 years while still at school and upped sticks to Australia on my own. It never occurred to me i could possibly get to the other side of the world and freak out (i actually freaked out 3 months later when i landed back in England and hated it!)

Put yourself in her shoes - she's young, never been away from home and suddenly she's in a foreign country, alone, no family or friends, no places really to go and chill or find her feet, probably not the foggiest how to look after kids..... How would you feel in that situation? She probably thought it would be brilliant and never thought she would hate it.

As for the dairy thing... I have a severely intolerant (not as bad as allergic, but the reaction is projectile vomit, cramps, projectile poop, face rash...) probably being a nanny isn't the best choice of job, strange choice on her part, as there tends to be yogurts, cheese, milk, ice cream pretty much daily and as a mum managing a dairy free 5 year old - dairy is in bloody everything! Even things that dairy really shouldn't be in.

Also as her employer that puts you in a bad place as you cant ask her to be around any dairy. Probably should have asked how serious it was before taking her on?

She's only human though - treat her with some heart. Yes it's a pain in the butt, but the poor girl is affraid and homesick. Imagine that's your child, away from home, alone and affraid - how would you want them to be treated? She's not just the hired help, she's someone's daughter, she's young and vulnerable and you are being pissed off she isn't looking after your kids (that's supposed to be what mums do, not young girls from abroad who are total strangers)

It's obviously not going to work out but just to say, the reason she's never worked at 20 will be because she only finished high school last June and has probably been looking for work ever since.

She was only working 10 hours a week for £100 and free board and lodging in London?! Good grief! That’s a bloody good job!!

blueshoes and pigmcpigface

Quite interested in your points about less robust 20 year olds today. Was just talking about this with my DH. My oldest ( 34 year old) daughter had her first “job” when she was about 14 - collected money and timed kids on the local pubs bouncy castle! Was travelling in Australia at age 20.
My 20 year old daughter seems so much less resilient than her. She works quite hard but will easily crumple into tears if things not going her way or some one has been critical. Perhaps explained partly by personality, they were brought up roughly the same way although she is the baby of the family. Many of her contemporaries like this and worse.
The only thing I can think of is the social media thing. She had a phone from a fairly young age ( 10 - too young I know but she had after school activities, then a bus ride home. I felt it was safer). The influence of her peers was therefore much greater I feel than for the older ones. If I disciplined her for instance by grounding her she would get a lot of support via social media “ OMG babe that’s so unreasonable of her”. To me it reinforces that self entitlement thing you both talk about.
School also became much more “every one gets a prize” so didn’t meet with failure as much. Just had a sneaking suspicion they might not be as good at maths as everyone else.

It’s a whole other thread isn’t it?

Why did you employ a 20 year old who has never had a job to look after your children as any more than an occasional baby sitter? How was this ever going to pan out well?

Have you got any au pairs who work for friends etc who could mentor her in some way. If its her first time living in a new country she is bound to be scared.

nursy1: It’s a whole other thread isn’t it?

God, yes. Social media has a lot to answer for. It is so intriguing how you are seeing the social media generational divide in your dds who are 14 years apart in age.

When my first aupair arrived (bless her, so spoiled we were to have her) in 2007, she did not even have a laptop and we lent her one. Subsequently, our aupairs all had their own laptops even from the remotest parts of Europe. Then a few years ago they stopped having laptops and only had mobile phones. Needless to say the not-so-good aupairs were glued to their phones.