How many guests do you allow your au pair to have?

[rosetintedglasses]

We have a fab au pair - we all get on well with lots of flexibility on both sides. She is great. She has a schoolfriend who is also au pairing about an hour away - this friend often stays the night with us at weekends as we are in the city and she is not, so they can go out together in the evenings and get back here safely.

It's the au pair's bday next month and she has asked if another school friend from France can come and stay for three nights for her birthday. I said that was fine. She has now asked if the local friend can stay those three nights too - so there would be three of them in her (double) room.

I'm a bit uncomfortable with this - two of the nights are school nights for my primary school DD, and it's only a small house with me and DD - noise travels and my DD has several times been woken in the night by au pair coming back late or late-night chatting with friends. I'd feel a bit outnumbered by three teenagers too! I'm tempted to say yes for the weekend night but no for the school nights, but she is really pleading, and I'm not sure if I'm being a bit mean and petty! Any thoughts?

Is she kidding? You are not running a hotel here! She is lucky that you are happy for her local friend to stay over often. Asking you to put up two people for three nights is too much. Are you expected to feed all these people as well?

I think the while she is great that is a bit much. Surely there is local accommodation they can pay for! Do you have to provide breakfast etc for them too? It's pushing your goodwill I think.

If its her birthday I would let her, she is an au pair not a nanny so supposed to be like one of the family.
When your dc's are teenagers surely you would let two friends sleepover on their birthday.

I would let her. Just for a birthday, not a regular thing

Thanks for your thoughts - all really helpful, especially as I was expecting to be told how unreasonable I was being! I will have another think but it sounds like a compromise might be to say yes to one or two nights, but not during the week. I don't have teenage DCs but I can't imagine I would be too happy with a three person, three night sleepover during the week, birthday or no birthday!

Rosetintedglasses hi,

I have always been very relaxed with my au pairs, let them have friends, boyfriends over for weekends, long weekends etc. But I have to say I would not allow a three nights long sleepover with two people if it falls on your child's school night. I think two nights over the weekend is more than generous.

No to overnight guests during the school week. And as for what you'd allow a teenaged daughter to do - my answer to that would also be no. So, that's why our family is like.

The trouble with saying yes this one time (although I wouldn't allow it anyway) is that it does depend a bit on whether it really is a one off or if she is likely to push the boundaries again. Once you say yes to something like more than one guest at a time or weeknight stays it becomes very hard to say no the next time. We were completely taken advantage of on the guest front by two previous au pairs (prior to this one) so my spin on this does reflect that. But it's not something I woudl allow to happen to us again.