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Paid childcare

Discuss everything related to paid childcare here, including childminders, nannies, nurseries and au pairs.

unsure??

8 replies

Justcake · 21/02/2018 10:00

It's come up recently that my DP feels it would be beneficial for us to get an au pair. Great for DC, learning another language from young age etc

I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with this. I'm not sure I want a stranger living with us. I'm also not sure I'd feel comfortable with living with a pretty young woman under my roof. Not that I don't trust my DP 100% I do. I'm just not sure about sharing my home with someone I don't know.

Do you get a lot of male au pairs? What's your experiences been?

What have your positive and negative experiences been?

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surlycurly · 27/02/2018 22:48

I'm on au pair no 5 and my children have yet to learn any other language from them. The au pairs all want to practise their English, not teach their language to any degree. Overall it's been a good experience having au pairs and I couldn't have done my childcare any other way. However I had one that I loathed by the end of her time with us and it was horrible to dread coming home to my own house. And I think about one in 20 au pairs near us is male.

Justcake · 28/02/2018 14:21

That's interesting as my OH is convinced that they'd learn a language.
I guess you have to go with your gut and hopefully you don't end up with someone that's awful to be around

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autumnleaf1 · 28/02/2018 16:51

Mine are learning Spanish with my au pair. She never speaks English with them. If you want to do something like that, you need to be committed to keep it up. There's no point learning a language for a year and then rarely hearing it again. They'd easily forget it.

BlackAmericanoNoSugar · 28/02/2018 17:04

We’ve had lots of au pairs and the kids have only learned swear words from them. DS started secondary this year and is doing Spanish so is doing a tiny bit of learning with the au pair.

Most of our au pairs have been male but DH has never shown the slightest interest in the female au pairs, nor they in him.

I enjoy having au pairs around, they’re young and fit and so can run the legs off my high energy DC, plus it’s handy to have another adult around because DH travels a lot.

Puffthemagicdragongoestobed · 28/02/2018 21:53

We have had two au pairs and after the last one left we decided it's not for us. We just don't like to share the house - we value our privacy too much! Ideally you would have a separate annexe, then it could work very nicely! But, who has that in London?

Positives: you have another adult at home dedicated to the kids. It gives you great flexibility, you won't have to drop off your kids anywhere in the morning and in the evening they will be home as you get home from work. Babysitting is included, so you can have one or two nights out a week, depending on what you arrange with the au pair. It can also be nice to have another adult to chat to. Our last au pair was a great cook so she always cooked a bit more so there was dinner left over for me most days when I came home, which was lovely.

Negatives: you have to share your home. Do not underestimate the impact of this. You just no longer feel entirely relaxed in your own home. No more breakfast in PJs. You never know what food is still around when you get home from work. You have to give up significant space in your house - you will have much less space for your own stuff.
Our first au pair also often didn't clean up after himself, so many times I had to wipe down work surfaces and the stove after he used it.

Our first au pair was a guy - he was generally really nice and we got on well. He was very sporty and taught our DS swimming which was great!
We never clicked with our second au pair unfortunately. She just never really spoke, and she also didn't do much with the kids. After she left we decided not to have another au pair but use local childcare.
What was good about both au pairs was that they were both very patient with the kids - very important!

If you are going for an au pair really make sure that you get on very well and that you are on the same wavelength. If you have the tiniest doubts at interview stage do not go for them (this happened with our second au pair but there were so few au pairs around at the time that I just went for her anyway).
If you find a great person and you have the space it could work very well!

OVienna · 01/03/2018 17:43

On our ninth au pair in as many years.

None have shown a wit of interest in DH - plenty have been objectively very attractive. God forbid there is always a first time but in my experience it is many thousands of times more likely they will get on a DH's nerves than be an attractive prospect. I wouldn't give it a second thought.

With both DCs in school/having long days, the AP is now more of a babysitter for DDog and does about 15 hours a week after school for us. For several years our AP worked alongside a nanny in a share we had.

Do you actually need childcare help? I am not sure how much of the language your DDs will learn.

We will get one next year who speaks the target language DD needs for GCSE. Considering that we don't speak this language AT ALL, even a bit of homework help would be great.

If you don't need childcare help to get to work, and unless you have a vast property to ensure some privacy, I wouldn't commit to a lengthy au pair stay just to get a bit of language help. Some do want three months - you could see how it goes. Or perhaps try a summer au pair but then think about whether they'd expect to come on a holiday with you.

Their skills in most areas you need them for - childcare and say cooking a light meal - can be very basic and you need to assume they will need quite a lot of oversight. Ours have never cleaned but people I know who have asked for this tend to be underwhelmed. I am always amazed when people hand their 19 year old APs cook books and think they can get on with something complicated.

It really can really, really impinge on your 'me/down time'. It's been a while since we've had this issue but there was nothing worse than coming home from work, catching up with the kids, etc and being met with the expectation that it was socialising time as far as the AP was concerned, even though it was half past nine or later. This was very hard and after one really trying year we ended up having to set ground rules. But I do walk around in my PJs still!

iheartmichellemallon · 04/03/2018 11:12

Where do you guys find your au pairs? We need to get one for September (3DCs) but not sure how to go about getting one.

surlycurly · 04/03/2018 12:10

I've used aupairworld.com for most of mine. It's quite inexpensive for monthly membership and allows you to get a good overall sense of the prospective au pairs before you decide to talk to them further. Hope this helps

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