Au-pairs and Holidays - Advice and experience welcome!

[singlevillagemum]

It's the time of year when I normally start thinking about next years holidays - Feb half term, Easter and Summer particularly. Now that I have the au-pair, what are the best ways of making it work? Are there any big no-nos I need to be wary of?

With Easter I am intending to take DS skiing. But I'm not too sure about the others. Generally me & DS just load up the car and go somewhere self-catering, normally France, Germany, Holland etc, we might even end up doing this with skiing. I am quite comfortable driving long distances [up to 12 hrs or so] and so is DS, but is it ok to ask an au-pair to do this too [as a passenger - not as a driver!]? Also, what type of accomodation should I consider, normally at home she has a separate floor with her own bathroom but is it ok to ask her to share for a holiday?

Any insider tips greafully received.

Normally I give AP her own room, but where that isn't available I give AP option of comign with us and sharing or staying at home and doing a few chores instead.

I would have no qualms about putting AP in the car for 12 hours, but I would give them the option of saying no thanks and staying at home.

When on holiday I always make sure that AP has spending money and plenty of time off to do her own thing. Other than that I use them exactly as I would at home - an extra pair of hands with babysitting benefits on top.

We've only gone on like four day breaks with our au pairs in the UK. Once the au pair had her own room the whole time, another time she shared with a DD for one of the nights.

Are you expecting her to babysit or participate as a member of the family primarily? We didn't pay overtime if she was coming around to see things with us - which invariably involves joining in with entertaining the children - but of course we paid entrance fees and meals. And asked her if there was anything special she'd like to see. On both of these trips we needed her to attend for some babysitting, for which we paid extra in overtime.

Probably once during their stay we go on another break where we can't take them for various reasons , usually because we're staying with friends who aren't set up for it. We encourage them to use this time to invite a friend over from abroad or have a local friend to stay for a dinner party etc. This has always been fine.

I would offer her the option of coming or going with you if you don't need her to babysit at all. If you DO, make sure that she also gets some time to do things just for her too. I think she'll be fine with this.

When would AP being having their holiday? Might it not work better to say you are off between x and y so that's z days off her 5.6 weeks?

If you want to offer her the option to come then explain the status quo and she can decide whether it's worth the shared room/whatever else.

If you need her to come then I think you need to provide own room and generally keep her working conditions as similar to home as possible.

Thanks for these comments.

I think I'm anticipating much more of just being being part of the family than any sole charge element. Although perhaps the odd half hour of amusing DS at the swimming pool so I can actually swim some lengths rather than just floating around being splashed.

Would your AP be 'on holiday' if they chose to stay at home, or still working?

I hadn't considered her sharing a bedroom, only the bathroom. DS mostly stays in my room when we travel [doesn't do well with 'not his bed'] so even in a 2 bed gite/chalet etc she'd still have her own room.

Has anyone skiied with an au-pair before? I'm assuming that IF she comes along I'd be paying for equipment hire, but would I have to fork out for her lessons [if she wanted them] or would it be reasonable to expect her to cover the cost, as this might have a large bearing on whether I can afford to invite her along.

yes you have to pay for ski hire and hte lift passes.

I would say if she is not going to be asked to supervise the children on the slopes for any period of time on her own, and doesn't ski, you aren't obliged to pay for loads of lessons. It's a big treat to be taken on a holiday like that if she is not doing loads of babysitting.

If she doesn't ski at all...I guess I would stand her a couple of group lessons and she can take it from there.

In my book if they stay at home it's holiday and comes out of their allowance.

If you're going down the part of the family route I think you would as Harriet said need to pay for a few group lessons.

as an aside, we try to tell our au pairs at the start of hte year if we have any holidays booked they - to put it bluntly - can't come along to if it's longer than a weekend. We tell them before they even accept the job that christmas with us isn't part of the package.

The Christmas thing is a good point, it hadn't even occured to me that they would WANT to stay rather than go home/be with friends etc.

Guess my handbook is getting even bigger in advance of the next one, and I naively thought I had planned for everything.

Christmas is a very particular time for my mother and things are done in the exact same way every year!!! Plus we travel abroad (at their expense). The stress of brining an outsider into that event (even we could even afford it financially) would be the end of me.

Worth clarifying though as you do have the odd person who's got a 'dickens christmas' in mind. We interviewed an au pair who thought she and her mother would stay at ours (only child of a single mum who also appeared on the skype interview in her bathrobe) for their own XMAS festivities (this was when there was a very remote chance my mum mgith have agreed to come here.) Noooo.

Argh - LadyHarriet, now I'm in a panic!

Just realised that VERY particular mother is indeed staying for Christmas and also insisted on cooking Christmas dinner, which can be an interesting, if peculiar experience [pickled parsnips anyone??] and does insist on the en-mass trip to church for the nativity, everyone sit around the tree for presents, stocking on the end of bed ensemble.

Time to get the dictionary out and explain EXACTLY what Christmas entails if au pair is planning to participate [minus any additional mothers in bathrobes - sounds very odd, need to go back through threads and find that story!]

don't panic! you need to be prepared to pay for their tickets home though. In reality we've only had to do this once, the first year. The second year the au pair's parents booked the tickets for her (without even checking dates with us - - she was otherwise great though). Current APs parents seemed to expect to pay to and did even before we had to offer.

We offered our AP earlier this year to accompany us on holiday. We did give her the option to refuse though. If she had decided to stay at home, we would have paid her holiday and extra for food etc.

When our AP came on holiday with us, she shared a room with ds, and DH and I shared another room with our dds. We paid for all her flights, meals, entrance fees etc in addition to her weekly pocket money. Essientially she only paid for her own souveniers and postcards. During the holiday, we gave her the option to spend the day with us, or she could relax and do her own thing. She ended up accompanying us for all our day trips and also our meals. She really was like a member of our family and we all enjoyed having there.

I think as long as you make your expectations clear to her, and whether or not you expect her to work, and what you will and will not pay for, it should work out fine.