Au pair - would you have them do weekend/ overnight care of a 6 year old?

[Sometimespostingalwayslurking]

Hi, DH and I need to go away from Saturday to Sunday. Whilst we can take our 6 year old DS with us he is really not keen as it's bound to be boring (looking at houses in the place where we are planning to move to in the next few months). He gets on well with our au pair and asked why he cannot stay at home with the au pair. I am considering organising playdates at friends's houses for Saturday and Sunday so it would only really be overnight from Saturday to Sunday that the au pair would have sole care of him. Is this an unreasonable ask? Have people done this and did you pay the au pair any extra?
Our au pair has a 30 hour contract but effectively the hours worked only come up to about 22 hours most weeks. The au pair has had sole charge for an entire day for DS before during the holidays, just not overnight.
What would be a reasonable ask?
Cheers!

I would do this, and have done so. Ultimately it depends on your relationship with AP and whether you trust him / her.

PS not sure (given facts as you have them) that I would feel the need to pay extra. Our AP does occasionally babysit on Saturday nights, and that is one of our 2 nights a week.

Thank you. I think he would be ok with the au pair. Now I need to check with the au pair...

Depending on your relationship with AP and your sons with her at 6 I would do it, just do Skype am pm and perhaps have a nominated nearby emergency person ( family / fried) who could pop round if something came up?

Of course you should pay her extra for it if she agrees to do it. It's your choice not to use her full contracted hours not hers.

I still remember when I first started out nannying and agreed to babysit overnight which ended up the parents arriving home Saturday lunch after telling me it'd be first thing and me sleeping on their sofa overnight. I was absolutely fuming when I realised they weren't paying me for it but to young and naive to actually bring it up.

Yes, we did consider paying the au pair extra, just a question how much.

But DH is backtracking anyway, he is not so happy leaving DS with the au pair overnight. Whilst AP is generally a great guy he is still only 18 and we have had a few let's call them health and safety issues with him (just this evening he served the DCs mugs filled to the brim with very hot tea, and this was also to a 2 year old. The 2 year old promptly spilled it but luckily did not burn herself).
I guess he is just not great yet at assessing risk so maybe we will rethink the weekend thing.
Thanks a lot for your thoughts anyway. It may still be something we would consider in the future.

This would only be the 6 year old? I would consider it.

TBH the ap prob has plans on a Saturday night

If they didn't and you use them def pay - not their fault you don't use all hours. This is overtime

Tho sounds like he may not have a lot of common sense .....so would be wary leaving alone overnight with a 6yr

When I was an au pair I was left looking after 4 children (including a 2 yr old) for a weekend when I had only been there a couple of weeks! Utter madness. I was perfectly capable of looking after them safely but how the parents could make that judgement after only knowing me for so little time I do not know.

I think overnight with just the six year old would be fine as long as he has clear instructions to call a specified friend/neighbour for help at any time. If he is supposed to babysit as part of his contact I don't think you do need to pay extra really.

We've left our 26yo au pair with the children for a weekend, she'd been with us a year by then, so knew the children really well. I wouldn't have left her for the first 6 months or so. But, it depends on the au pair, I wouldn't have left our first one with the children overnight as her spoken English on the phone wasn't good enough.
We pay an extra £6/hour over her usual 25 hours and I paid an extra bit on top for the overnight.
I also left some extra money for emergencies.