Sacked the AP, atmosphere in house.

[BoffinMum]

Just that, really.
Bit stressed.

I agree that it is probably the Sunday night thing putting them all off. I would get a special babysitter in for Sunday nights, maybe from an agency, and make the AP job just two nights babysitting plus the other stuff. In terms of the pets people are right, just say that the AP needs to check it's done and nag kids if not done.

at small furries.
We still have the cage if anyone wants it, BTW. No sign of former occupant.

SpiffingNanny seems to be doing well so far. Good vibes. Smallest child couldn't get enough of her yesterday. Waited for her in great excitement outside loo saying, "Are you ready yet? Can we play some more?" to which the reply came, "I am just washing my hands!" and then he clung to her leg in affection as she tried to escape at the end of the day. Hopefully she will take both of those as a compliment .

She really is lovely.

GreenMonth, one of my nannies gave away a PERFECTLY SERVICEABLE washing machine destined for our rental house to some people - SUBCONTRACTORS OF JOHN LEWIS! - who fenced it to scrap metal dealers. Cause a great deal of excitement, their unofficial 'recycling' scheme.

Well, giving away a washing machine is careless, annoying and expensive (had you told her they weren't to take it?) but giving away a car is in a league of its own.

I have now had a few replies so feeling more hopeful. Looked up the AP Regs and it says they have to have one full weekend off a month. I will make sure that I get a babysitter for when they want their full weekend off if I cannot get son to do it.

What sort of references do you ask for? I don't need childcare ones as the role is more of a big sister in the house. Asked two for references but they don't seem keen.....

Hmm Clareysage I don't really understand the hours you are looking your AP to do. If you need overnight cover on Sunday I wouldn't call that 3 hours babysitting. Do you really mean that you'd leave the AP in sole charge of your children from 7pm on Sun till 7am on Monday? Or you mean AP would babysit 7pm till 10pm on Sunday and then can than leave the house ( stay with friends) and just be back for 7am on Mon to start their work?

He was a lovely au pair, sweet, happy, great with the kids. But as for English? Oh my word.
So anyway, one day car a dealer stops to admire our classic car on the drive. It's beautiful, but needs taking to garage for engine repairs, which DH and I had been discussing in front of au pair. Apparently the conversation went..
"Nice car, ever think of selling it?"
"Si, si" (big smile)
"Really? I'm a car dealer, I'd love to sell it"
"Si, si" (more smiles)
"Um, ok. Here's my card. Call me when you want to sell it"
(Looks at card. Lightbulb moment) "ah! Garage! Momento!". Runs into house, gets car keys and gives them to dealer. Then waves goodbye and heads off to school to pick up kids. Dealer calls out tow truck and heads off with car....

Could happen to anyone, really.

Postscript, by the way. We call up number on card and very nice car dealer returned it and told us the whole story.

swlondonnanny I would want to know they are in the house on Sunday night as would worry they would not be back by 7 am on Monday morning. Both me and DH have to be careful as we have had childcare fall through on several occasions and we both had big problems with work. We may also need overnight care some Sundays. I was hoping an au pair aged about 27-30 could do it otherwise will have to get an overnight babysitter for those nights. We have just laid our cards on the table as we really need to be careful with childcare now. Friends have suggested my sensible 19 year old could babysit them overnight but I am not happy about that.

A friend of mine is a nurse and her au pair does overnights when she is on nights so did not think it would be a problem.....

Finding a 27-30yo AP is pretty rare though. Some APs will do overnights but they're fairly rare too, although your DC are teens. It's bit that it's an unworkable situation but you really will need to find the right person. PhD student?

Clarey: you are asking for a lot of things that would normally be a minor compromise on a normal ap job, that's not to say that nobody will do it, but you'll really have to work hard to find them. I really don't think that your teens need as much babysitting s you think they do at that age, they are old enough to cook, care for the pets and so on. A helping hand in the house maybe and somebody to keep the peace, but not a full on childcarer.

Most ap would be back on Sunday night for a Monday morning start, if the overnight isn't often then maybe you could ask them to do it occasionally and pay them extra for it? Your 19yo should be able to hold down the fort occasionally too.

By limiting your age gap for the ap you are shooting yourself in the foot as that is a very limited gap.

Clarey - majority of au pairs are 18/19/20 years ie same age as your son. So could end up engaged to your son tbh :)

A 28-30 year old who wants to stay working with children usually started as au pair at 18, and at 30 years has over 10 years childcare experience so likely to be getting paid highly as an experienced nanny

I can't imagine anyone wanting to babysit a 19 year old

Anchorage pmsl @ car story- was funny - though tbh why did the garage then drive off with the car, esp without payment, or did they pay the ap thousands?

Car dealer confessed he suspected it was a massive cock-up but had been about to put in a request to DVLA for ownership details in the hope that he had indeed come across a bat-shit bonkers owner happy to give away his car for free...

at Anchorage's au pair. Did his English get better?

love that story!

Thanks everyone your advice is really helping me put other things in place so will be attractive to an au pair. 19 yr old son is not around very often so he would be in the house sometimes but not require any help. He comes and goes and just eats lots of food and does his laundry then off again to uni.

Think I will maybe say 24+ so a bit older than 19 yr old son so not too awkward when he is here.
I think paying extra for an overnight is a good idea. It is not often.
about becoming engaged to the au pair.

Anchorage lol!

As for clarey I'd just leave the teens with an emergency number. Admittedly my DS is only 2, but conversely I'm barely past that age myself (and have DBs younger than me). It would certainly be fine by NSPCC guidelines to leave the 19 or even 16 yo in charge.

Clarey I would definitely be considering a Granny Au Pair in your position.

Incidentally we are on day 3 of the SpiffingNanny and it's really ace. I also gave SpiffingHousekeeper a trial today and that was equally wonderful. I am cautiously hopeful my luck has changed for once.

Sacking that miserable grasping sod was the best thing I ever did.

I took a nanny job having only had one conversation on the phone. I moved 300 miles to live with them. Kids were 2 boys ages about 2-4 and names I couldn't pronounce. They asked me to sit down and when I did the seat fell through and they all laughed. Around midnight the mother went out having had some visitors. I wasn't spoken too all night. There were beds everywhere. "My" room was tiny, literally a single bed with a tv balancing on the end of it and iirc some drawers. I decided I couldn't stay. I sneaked one bag out and when I went back for the other the man asked me what I was doing. It was about half past midnight and I said I was going to look around the area. I got my other bag and did a runner. Bit of a drama to get home which led to more unplanned life choices and I never went home again after that. Makes me a bit emotional actually.

Thankfully I have had some great jobs since. One family was so great I stayed for four years and only left as they moved away. The dad gave me away and his son was my page boy. My next family was great too.

I quite miss nannying.

When I was an AP in Switzerland, I made friends with a lovely Aussie girl. She arrived from Australia only to find that the "converted garage accommodation" she had been promised wasn't converted at all. It was drafty, and had a bare concrete floor, and a bed in the corner! She also had to share it with family German Shepherd dog!

She packed her bags and left in the middle of the night three days after she arrived.

Clarey - maybe it's the pig bit in guinea pig that's putting people off. We put feeding the hamster occasionally in our ad and no-one queried it. You may have lots of potential applicants imagining they will have to feed an actual pig!

I'd consider just putting small pet feeding in the ad and then translating Guinea pig when you contact people.

I still think your children should be capable of feeding a gp

Do you do it now?

Make them

It's a responsibly and one that teenagers can do easily

Bet if you banned phones internet tv time they would manage it

And boffy glad spiffing nanny is working out :)

Good grief, some of the horror stories on here beggar belief, and make my problems look minor.

I offer up the following (rather less) salacious offerings:

AP (age 22) arriving with hand luggage only (HINDSIGHT ALARM BELLS) and then refusing to do her jobs after day 5, but thinking she could keep living with us for free and eating our food and just do bits and bobs of work when she felt like it. Like an hour every day or two, or something. If she could be bothered to get up. Er, no. We are not your parents and surprise, surprise, we do not have to house and feed you for free if you want to opt out of all community responsibilities.

AP (19) being delivered by her mother (HINDSIGHT ALARM BELLS) with two massive suitcases, and then more or less lying in bed for a fortnight skiving off. She then decided she was going and rang some friends of her mother who live near me and whom I had briefly met, and much to their surprise announced she was going to stay with them for a three week holiday 'as she was so exhausted'. They refused on the grounds that they were not a hotel, but said she could go over there for a day or two and then go back home once a flight had been booked. On the day she left me, I got up, got the kids ready, and was ready to leave for work at 8am as usual, and she was not up. I knocked on her door and she was asleep. She eventually surfaced and said she didn't feel like getting up and she was going to have a leisurely morning and surface about 11am, and make her way to the other house around the middle of the day, while I was at work. Shall we say I disabused her of the idea that I was going to leave a relative stranger with a work ethic problem to lock up my house in my absence, and within 30 minutes she was in a taxi to the other place with all her luggage. To her credit on the driveway, she said, "I haven't been much help to you really, have I?" I suppose for her that was the first inkling of self-awareness she had ever had.

AP (19) who told me after about a week or two that she was so depressed she was having fantasies about being in a bus crash and dying. My kids were something like 5 and 8 at the time. Yikes!

AP (23) who was very weird, probably stole 90 euros from me with hindsight, sat in a darkened sitting room with the kids day after day watching DVDs for the entire gloriously hot and sunny summer holidays unless I was physically there to prevent it, and after we left a package arrive with some fairly sicko Harry Potter porn fan fiction arrived with what I thought was my name on it, but with hindsight was probably addressed to what was her writing nickname by someone who didn't know she had been sent home. I was phoned up for a reference shortly after the arrival of the package and I gave her a really scathing one, as it was clear by then she was really dodgy.

As I said, before future AP employers panic, I have also had some great ones. For example the 19 YO who could make a toy out of anything, and built the most amazing playhouse for the kids out of a washing machine box. She also reformed my online grocery ordering so I spent about half and we ate even better. Also the 21YO one who was a trained chef and filled my freezer with great stuff all the time whilst being all bouncy and wonderful with the kids.