Dd au pair having childcare issues

[bevelino]

Dd is an au pair in Spain and one of the children has aspergers, which the parents did not tell her about before she entered into a contract. The child has very challenging behaviour issues and shouts and hits dd daily which she finds very upsetting.

The mother finds her child a challenge to deal with and often walks out and leaves Dd to deal with all the behaviour problems for up to 6 hours at a time which Dd finds difficult to cope with. I am becoming concerned about dd's mental health and wellbeing and want her out of the situation.

Dd only has 5 more weeks of her contract and feels she should stick it out. She has made good friends with other au pairs and her Spanish is now fluent, so it has not been all bad. Any advice would be appreciated.

I agree that a series of short term English teenagers probably isn't really the right solution for a child with his needs. His parents need to resolve this and having your DD for another few weeks won't fix things.

Please don't leave it to your dd to tell her friend - you need to speak to the friend's parents now. Tell them everything. A 17 or 18yo should not be moving abroad to that situation, even if they feel they're going in with their eyes open.

"It would be good for her to think about why she feels so obligated to them when they have not shown the same respect to her."

This is what I was thinking. She's obviously been brought up to work hard and keep to her word etc but she needs to realise this should not be at the expense of her mental well being. Especially if the family kept this from her, how underhand. They are clearly unwilling to pay for proper qualified help, and they know they're in the wrong otherwise they would not have resorted to this kind of deception.

Could you email her this thread? There is good advice here.

I'm so sorry your dd has found herself in this situation - it sounds very upsetting. If her mental health is at risk then protecting her has to be paramount and I can see she may have to come home. Well done her on the Spanish!

Poor child - he sounds as if he is struggling terribly and may not be getting the support he needs. And then when your dd goes he will probably really miss her.

The parents definitely shouldn't have misled applicants for the role, but I do feel compassion for them too - this is their reality every day for the foreseeable future and I wonder whether they are in some denial and close to breaking point themselves.

I appreciate your dd is young and feeling under strain, so she may not feel up to this, but if she was feeling up to it she could explain to the parents that she needs strategies to prevent the difficult behaviour and see if they have received any advice from any experts or can access any further advice. Can she ask what strategies school are employing and use those if they are working there?

For the placement to work there would need to be up front openess for her and all future au pairs so they know about the child's needs in advance and are part of a joined up plan to help him and address his behaviour and that the au pairs have strategies that work to prevent these issues.