How to help ap 'understand' our toddler a little more

[deliakate]

We have a new-ish ap, and whilst she is fabulous with our baby and helpful around the house, she is struggling a bit with our 2.7 yo son.

At first she spent her time making a huge fuss of the baby, and pretty much ignoring our son. He noticed this of course, so I spoke to her about it. She said she found it very hard as he often rejected her attempts to play with him. I did say that she just has to persevere and since then there have been some breakthroughs. But she still becomes quickly cross with him, and can be quite petty in response to his typical toddler power games.

Of course she is not trained in child development and doesn't really understand about their stages. But I think a lot could be helped if she were more animated and expressive, making silly faces or something so she got a laugh from him. I have tried to explain, but..... if I was being unkind, I would say that she really doesn't like children..... But I'm not. Its more that she doesn't know how to relate.

During her off duty time, its very noticeable. She never really goes out, but hangs around downstairs in the house - which is fine, of course. But during that time, she is pretty much expressionless and ignores me and the children. I would love her to have a big smile for my son when she sees him throughout the day, but it just doesn't happen.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can help her? She doesn't have sole care of him or the baby. And he is not Damien, he's just a normal boy!! Her English is pretty

TBH I'm not really sure you can . This sounds incredibly similar to my AP and after 3 weeks I had to ask her to leave -she decided to go home instead of trying to find another AP position which is just as well because I didn't think she was overly suited to being an AP.

This is where a trial weekend would have been invaluable.

Maybe if you can spare the time from other duties ask her to plan a fun cheap afternoon of activities for the toddler give her an hr or 2 to plan it for later that week - should be easy enough with spring and easter around the corner - even if its arts and crafts, going on a treasure hunt in park - looking for leaves/pines etc or an early egg hunt in garden, or making cakes/biscuits just ask her to do plan an afternoon (so a few hrs worth) and say it needs to be pretty cheap but you will pay for some bits and bobs if needed, obv you will be there to supervise and join in but its all her work.

Then with her make a big thing to your toddler about how "a" has plan all this fun stuff for him etc etc.

Just an idea, plus she should show some enthuaiasm about it all and see the fun in it.

The way I understood it is that au pairs aren't allowed to look after babies. I would look into this.