APs and visitors

[HarrietTheSpy]

Hi there. Our second arrives next week. I am having another look at our 'house rules' and need to talk to her about visitors I guess. What do people do? She is coming from a European country which is well served by low cost airlines (i.e. not from OZ/NZ where if people come to visit it really HAS to be for lengthy period of time.)

Is it unreasonable to limit visitors to either side of the weekend if they are staying with us, i.e. Thursday night to Monday night? I chose to take this on a case by case basis last year rather than laying down a blanket rule, but in the event our AP went travelling and her mates couldn't make it.

Note: As DH is a teacher with quite a lot of holiday I thought it was reasonable to say anyone coming for longer stays has to come at the school holidays. When they can often have the place to themselves.

This is so tricky because if someone said: what would you rather have, a week long visitor twice a year or friends at the weekend only but every other week I would prefer the former.

I don't want to be unreasonable - can people tell me about what they do and how they make it work.

We just put in something like "visitors only allowed with prior permission, and with at least 4 weeks notice".

And then we vary the permission we give, depending on the circumstances and behaviours of the APs

Yes, agree with Squiffy (as usual ) - for the contract, occasional visitors, agreed with reasonable advance notice, allowed at the employer's discretion. You don't want to be giving anyone a contractual right to bring people into your home.

You can then ask her if she is likely to want to have anyone over to stay and discuss together what would be best.

She's already indicated 'all of her friends' are making plans to come, which did result in a somewhat sharp intake of breath on my part but trying not to overreact I have no idea whether they plan to stay with us. Which they may well not be seeing as we are not in central London. SHe has some friends in the UK too.

It's more that I'm interested in what people DO in practice - what they allow, how often seems reasonable and for how long, even things like food and picking up from stations or airports etc.

We have a "overnight visitors only with prior permission" rule. Our contract also states that the au pair is responsible for any damage caused by her guests or visitors.

In practice our first au pair's parents and boyfriend came over and stayed at hotels (and sometimes they booked accom for her as well). We later offered to let her sister or boyfriend stay for a few nights, as we had met them and they seemed nice and she was a lovely, responsible person. Our second au pair had her brother to stay for a week which felt too long (she had said for a "few days" but he had booked flights).

Food: They pay for guests' food and they collect/meet them at airports or give them directions. Again sometimes we invite guests to join us for a meal.

Where we can be flexible we have given au pairs extra time off when they have vistors.
HTH

What would you do if it was your daughter - away at uni and asking if she can bring a friend home for the weekend............?

Should be the same with your au pair. some families will be relaxed about it and others not.. Every family is different - and possibly different au pairs and their friends are different..
Consider who it is and how long and make your mind up.

Always had the view that things like this don't belong in 'contracts' or anything written down beforehand.

If it's not discussed your au pair is more likely to make the assumption it isn't expected, and should obviously ask you well in advance if they want it to happen.

If you bring it up or have it written down then you are only creating an issue out of something that is probably not likely to happen anyway.

If it were my daughter I would be telling her friends for the weekend only, at the family's convenience, make sure they bring a small gift, send a thank you note, she buys the friend's groceries and makes sure they are entertained and out of the family's hair. Then if the family wanted to include her in some sort of activty, that's a bonus, but it's really nice they're putting the friend up at all. Under no circumstances would I encourage her to have a friend for the whole week.

I am not saying I expect this, but it is definitely the advice I would give one of my own daughters.

This is why I am asking what other people would do.

I don't agree it's the same as my daughter bringing a friend from university and I wouldn't expect my daughters to take that view if they were an AP at someone's house.

This kind of posts makes me wonder why some people on here constainly! looking for nannies or au pairs. I think they know the answer!

If I was the au pair it would put me off coming to your house as it seems you are a control freak type of women who wants to control everything even before the situation is aroused!

Thanks for your helpful remark. It's always good, I find, not to lay out expectations and fly by the seat of your pants when someone is coming to live in your house.

Anyway, re everyone else, particularly Constantly Cooking et al, thanks for your advice.

when my lovely newish ap mentioned that she had a friend from home who was going to be an ap in a town about an hr away I said 'how lovely, she could squeeze in here if you wanted to go out in the evening at weekends'.

When the same lovely girl mentioned that her dad and his wife fancied popping over ( from Germany) I said 'how lovely, there is a great hb nearby, let me know when and I'll phone and book them in for you'.

I'm happy with the odd teenaged girl but we really don't have the space for lots of people and I don't have the inclination to entertain them.

She hasn't asked about her boyfriend yet but I'm trying to work out what I'd prefer in advance. The house is small and her room is next to the kids and I don't want to have any chats about enthusiastic 'noises'!

I would put something into the house rules. Our rule was that we needed to know in advance about friends staying overnight. We had 2 very polite lovely au pairs who had guests stay over, took them out for meals and guests were polite and said thank you to us. We really enjoyed meeting their friends and still send cards to one au pair's parents whom we met.

We also had one au pair who took advantage (in many ways), had best friend, sister, mum, and boyfriend come and stay for between 4 and 8 days each (in a 5 month stay here), fed them from our fridge/cupboards, no thank yous, and guests didn't even say hello to us. That's the one that made us put a rule into the au pair information folder.

Agree with most of the comments here. We have had several au pairs where no one came to visit and then one who just had her sisters for 2 days and they were absolutely lovely. then the most recent one (who was great btw) said she wanted to have brother, boyfriend, parents and friends all come to visit. We ended up saying brother could stay for about a week while parents stayed in a nearby b&b. Boyfriend stayed while we were away so that was fine. We made friends stay in local youth hostel except for 1 who just stayed 1 night and was a very close friend. You do have to be clear about it up front though and of course it depends how big your house is, where you are, your tolerance for visitors in your house, how considerate you think your au pair is likely to be etc. We also say no visitors for the first few months to discourage people from thinking of our house as a convenient crash pad for all and sundry (we live in a big tourist destination town). We would also not be comfortable with regular overnight stays by a boyfriend and I wouldn't allow that. But then our house is not that big and the au pair's room is very much right in the middle of it - I could see if you had sort of separate accomodation for her as some people do, then it wouldn't be an issue.

better to have something in your contract, that you can later rfer to, rather than nothing

harriet i think your right to sort out now and imo i would prefer friends for a weekend every other weekend, so the latter

I agree that it is much better to have something written so you don't have to sort out misunderstandings later. FWIW I wouldn't set out when she can have friends - just decide on a case by case basis - as it could get complicated with school hols, weekends etc. Also if you say every other weekend -you might start to find that a lot if her friends are not considerate and won't be able to back out as easily. Obviously if they are nice and it works out well you might decide that more often would be OK.
So much depends on your relationship with your AP and you won't know that until she starts. Good luck. Our third starts in a month!

Thanks for your messages. I've been travelling but the other stories people have posted were great in terms of what they have experienced. Last year we knew about half a dozen families with APs and we were the only ones whose AP didn't have at least one visitor come so I think it is a matter of time. Parents stayed at the BB and sisters/friends slept on the floor which I think is a reasonable arrangement and it sounds like it's what other people do too, so that's reassuring. For parents/relatives/ close friends I had envisioned them entertaining themselves but then doing say a Sunday lunch before they go. This also sounds liek it's it's PC enough in AP Land.

What makes a during the week stay complicated is that for three days a week we are in a mega nanny share in the afternoons so the AP has to really be on her toes to help the nanny out. I think I am going to say no guests at our place on the days the other family is involved in the childcare arrangements. This does conveniently work out as either side of the weekend in fact.

I agree we have to meet her and see what the vibe is. But I also feel the need to gently clear up arrangements at the outset as she has already mentioned visitors to us - I don't think it would help our relationship if I later had to backtrack on what she had gotten used to being able to do. RE what Treesa said, I probably would have been tempted to leave it if she hadn't.

I think what Ecoli said could be a pattern - if they're cheeky with visitors then maybe they take advantage elsewhere too...