Unhappy au pair, should I quit?

[ags123]

I am a first time au pair for 3 months and although I am with a nice family who floolw the rules, I just feel like I can't fit into the family. For most of my day, I am alone as the kids I take care off are with friends or playing alone, and the host parents don't really talk to me. At dinner, we all eat together, but no one really talks to me and I feel out of place and very uncomfortable. I have managed to make some friends, which makes things easiet. But, overall I am not happy at all about constantly being ignored by the family and feeling so out of place and alone. It's gotten so bad that I am depressed for most of the time and I want to quit. I don't really know what to do.

AAAh Are you the same nationality as the family? I was wondering if there's a language barrier. Have you talked to the agency which found you the job?

Why are you an au pair?

You could try to change family if there is a good reason for you to stay.

Tell the mum how you are feeling. Good communication is really important. Talk. Good luck.

They may be thinking you'd like to have your own space and are trying to help by leaving you alone. Have a chat to them.

Well they shouldn't be ignoring you, but conversation is a 2 way process. DH found it difficult to take to our last au pair as she didn't really speak to him, just answered his questions.

The other thing to consider is are you giving them enough space? Maybe they just want to have the odd meal by themselves in the evening and you could maybe offer to eat earlier one day a week so that they can eat alone?

We like independent au pairs, we aren't the sort of family who goes out at the weekends with our au pairs on day trips etc and we make that very clear. We have a nice family meal once of twice a week with them, but the rest of the time they cook for themselves.

Talking to other au pair family hosts too, their au pairs are off out with their friends most of the time, rather than doing stuff with their host families and many au pairs seem to eat with the children some of the time.

There are some families though that really integrate their au pairs into them, it may be that you just need a different family, it may be that you do need to give your current family more space and go out more.

I agree with Caroleann here... They are a family and dinner is to catch up with kids/spouse especially if parents both work. If you eat with them once or twice a week they might find it easier to include you in conversation so they can catch up with you too...eating with au pair Every night would make me feel resentful of having another person in the house and not being able to concentrate on kids and husband day business. But then I don't have an au pair as I don't think it would work for me ;). The less needy you are the better things work out... But that's generally the case in relationships in life.
Go out with friend your age and you will have a much more interested audience as they share your interests and way of life .... A family that treats you fairly and gives you freedom seems already a good deal in my books and maybe expect you to be more independent. They are your host family after all... Not YOUR family. Nobody can replace them...

I'm sorry to hear you are having a bad time. We are now on our second au pair and our experiences have been really different with both. We try to engage our au pairs in conversation during dinner and talk about the culture in their country and our country. Our first au pair did not have brilliant English but it was fine as we really liked her and so we were happy to take time to explain things to her. Our second au pair is not turning out to be a success and is quite frustrating but we still make sure that she does not feel excluded at dinner and we talk about our day. We run our own business together and I find that it is good to have an au pair as it stops my husband and I talking about business constantly to each other and makes us think about other things! I worry about our au pairs during the day too as they are left on their own while our children are at their regular childminder (we don't want to give the au pair too many hours so we split the childcare). Our first did things like an online Photoshop course though so maybe if you are interested in studying something you could do an online course. It doesn't sound like the family are being very friendly though. I am sure that there are other families out there who would be nicer to you but I am not sure how you could make the transition from one to another.

Cat