Our au pair arrived mid September. French quiet and seemingly quite mature. We had a German au pair last year who was great - 19 and very mature.
This time round our au pair has less to do. She gets the children ready in the morning 6.30-8.30 but can't drive so I either do the school run or another mum who I share it with. Most of the time I use that extra time before school starts to either go into the office or work from home. Because my children have clubs on Mondays - she doesn't look after them from school, but does have to make sure they have dinner so I can get home from all the clubs and do an hour's work between 5.30 and 6.30. Quite often I will make their dinner during my lunch hour, ready for her to heat up at 5.30. On Tuesday and Wednesday my children are at after school club until 6pm. Those are the days I go into London to work and my husband picks up the children. I get home 6.30-7 and we put them to bed. On Thursdays I tend to be at home and give them dinner. Ditto on Friday. Anyway...
So our au pair is 18 just 18. She was a bit homesick and I posted here before. But she has settled a bit however I am starting to feel as if I'm doing all the work for her. For example she cleans her teeth with charcoal powder and leaves it everywhere (I also pay a cleaner £20 a week to do the communal areas in our house). During half term I said she could get up at 7.30am. I've been working from home. So she gets up at 7.30 and then spends half an hour in the bathroom. I discovered (after she had an accident) that she does 25 minutes plus of exercise in the bathroom every day. She barely eats anything, is constantly coughing and has very little energy. I also found videos on my iphone (children borrowed it while I was working upstairs) of her flinging them around our living room. I have another child in the house; albeit a child who has a 23 year old boyfriend and probably does soft drugs most weekends. She cried this morning because I had to knocked on the bathroom door (at 7.40) and ask her to look after the girls while I worked online. We have other children coming round today and I wanted to get an hour in before they arrived. She came out crying saying it was her period and she needed a shower. It's not working is it? How do I get her to leave without her feeling bad, she's only young. She can't cook at all and she put wet bedclothes on my children's beds. I can manage without her, because she's causing me more work. I have just had to scrub the sink again- the charcoal thing - I have asked her to clean it up many times.