Help my AP is eating me out of house and home and now dh had enough- advice please

[Julesnobrain]

We have a nice Czech AP who has been with us now for about 3 months. She's a big girl but not fat.We noticed straight away how much she ate but that was compared to the last one who was anorexic !! After todays eating dh has told me to get rid of her but she's actually really good with the kids, very reliable, steady and good at cleaning. We have just got back from our hols. She stayed in the house (it was OK thank you ladies for your advice on this one). I left a freezer full of home cooked meals with a day by day schedule plus snacks plus an additional £20 for milk, bread and salads. When we came back we spent £200 and stocked up and she has literally spent all day eating aghhhhhhhhh. Today she has had 2 bowls of cereal, a proper cooked lunch (chicken, veg, mash etc), a loaf (yes a full LOAF less the 2 crusty slices) of bread, half a family size/large block of cheese, a quarter large jar of mayonnaise, 4 apples, 3 yoghurts, 2 muffins, 3 packets of crisps, 1 tin of tomato soup, half a packet of rich tea biscuits and a 2 litre bottle of lemonade. Now I know its deeply sad that I know all this but due to her eating 2 family sized jars of mayonnaise in a week before we went on holiday dh had asked me to monitor what she ate. We are honestly not a mean family and I think we eat heathy sized portions ourselves but this does seem an awfully large amount of food and it is costing us a fortune. I don't want to get rid of her and I don't feel its appropriate to change her conditions and request she take a food allowance ( I think £25 - £30 a week is going rate?) but have any of you had this problem, how did you handle it, did you start a special ap shelf of food? dh is threatening to start buying tesco branded mayonnaise and label it just for her which seems really mean. I have asked her if there was special food she would like me to buy but she has said she likes everything... which she does......... any advice please. sorry its such a long post

Are her family in this country too, if not she could well be comfort eating, she is probably homesick and missing her family. I was an AP in the US and I was horribly homesick sometimes.
Perhaps give her her own cupboard and fridge shelf????

BTW at whole loaf of bread in a day, AND all that other food, does she eat it on it's own, or in sandwiches??? I am suitably impressed with the amount she can pack away. Though I am sure a little chat will sort it out.
AMAZING..............

i had a Czech nanny who got through food at a phenomenally fast rate as well. I decided to accept it as part of the deal. The only thing I minded about was having enough food in the house in the morning to make the children's packed lunches - so if she ate the last of the bread or cheese it would have been a problem. I explained this to her and she never did.

We had a running shopping list blu tacked to the fridge and anyone could write on it what they wanted and then I did an internet shop once a week. I was happy to accommodate the nanny's requests except that occasionally Ocado would be out of stock of some items. Similar problems occur with some of the children's requests as well unfortunately.

Well, I have to go against the grain here and say that I don't think she eats that much.
I mean, yes a loaf a day is excessive.
But if you remove that one item, or even cut it down to half a loaf, I don't think its that bad.

So what has OP decided to do ?

Oh, this thread brings back memories.

I had one of those - my fab Swedish girl, who was a size 8, tops, but managed to wolf down so much that friends of ours who stayed overnight would get out of bed early to watch the 'breakfast', such was her reputation....

Pasta bowl filled to brim with porridge, topped with 2 bananas, topped with raisins
Then
Two (sometimes admittedly only one) bowls of cereal
Then
Maybe 6 slices of rye bread or ryvita, topped with salami and cheese and pickles
Then yoghurt
Then toast and jam
All washed down with usually two pints of full-fat milk (which she swore was healthier than semi-skimmed)
And maybe a waffer thin mint to finish...

She used to happily say that breakfast set you up for the day, but her eating during the rest of the day was pretty similar...

We learn to laugh about it eventually. But we also bought industrial sized bags of cornflakes from the cash & carry and loads and loads and loads of those fresh packs of ready-made pasta for lunch. And we got her making her own pasta sauces and her own garlic bread...

If she is fine with everything else then I think you just adjust and let her get on with it.

Am still amazed at the list for just 1 day, i would need a good 3 days to eat all that without the chance of seeing it all again.

I could eat the bread, cheese and yogs in a day instead of meals or the cooked lunch and yogs for the day.

Hope you can come to an agreement.

Maybe a pasta added to her shelf along with bread, mayo, cereal.

I could give her a good run for her money.
Less the WHOLE LOAF.
Seriously people are amazed at how much food I put away.
I was 5' 2'' and a size 12-14 for about 18 years and I put away that kind of food.

Yes MrsWobble I have now added to my house rules that an AP (it actually relates to my DH and Dd too) must not eat the last banana (as DS needs to take one to school everyday) nor drink the last of the goats milk (ditto) or eat the last of the bread in the evening without checking in the freezer for more (milk and bread not bananas).

I was also tempted to add a bit about setting a good example to the dc re eating after the mad italian who ate a whole packet of digestives at every meal(breakfast, lunch and supper) and DS couldn't understand why he wasn't allowed to do the same.

Is this for real? She must have some sort of eating disorder. poor thing.

MDS a whole packet 3 times a day.

Why wouldn't it be for real MrsM?

current / soon to depart swedish AP puts away a box of cereal - 375g every 2 days and a whole lrg pot of natural yog - 500g every day on top of 4-6 pieces of fruit, hard & soft cheeses, bread, biscuits & 2 cooked meals.

We don't know where it goes as she is very slim.

It's not all under her bed is it?

NWJI not in our case, watched her consume it in short shift, tho we did have an ant invasion the other day from her room

Yes, 3 whole packs per day.

I started buying Somerfield own after 2 days, I couldn't believe it.

For the first day at breakfast she ate half a loaf of banana, date and walnut loaf - homemade seriously sturdy stuff. One loaf usually lasts the whole family (inc piggy dh) 4 days.

crumbs which she probably ate to.

I think i would have stopped buying them or at least secreted them somewhere.

Why would you have more 3 packets of digestives in your house at any one time? There is no way my teenagers would let the sun go down on those.

The easiest way to prevent eating of junk food is not to buy it. It's what I have to do to stop myself from scoffing whole packets of Jaffa Cakes.

pmsl

She hasn't got a boyfriend stashed away under her bed has she?

Agree with other suggestions re buying cheaper food - I think you need to start shopping at Lidl, making up a snack box and getting her to stick to mealtimes and possibly making her bigger portions/big bowls of pasta.

I only have biscuits which I can resist in the house including jaffa cakes - now shortbread however is a different story

My dc are 8 and 4 so don't really help themselves as biscuits are kept in a high cupboard.

I had multiple packs that week as a) DS has a metabolic disorder similar to diabetes and has to take 2-4 digestives to school each day for am/pm break (as well as a banana and 10-20% carb drink like a smoothie or juice) and b) as my neighbour was having a big party which I was making 2 banoffie pies for.

She arrived Mon night (there were 3 packs in the house), ate the banana cake and 2 packs of biscuits on Tues I went shopping weds - I asked what she'd like and she said biscuits - bought 3 more packs (making 4 in total in the house) and she had polished off all bar one by the end of the day. I then bought somerfield cheap ones the next day when I filled up with fuel.

She was the only Italian I knew who didn't like pasta or tomatoes. She was a lunatic PITA and didn't last a week.

LOL at Squeakypop.
I had 2 older brothers. My dad did a big shop on a friday night, on the way home from work.
I don't remmeber there ever being any biscuits left by sunday afternoon.

Can't help it as I haven't seen so much ignorance as in following two posts for long (By ThatBigGermanPrison on Wed 27-Aug-08 00:11:33 and By tissy on Wed 27-Aug-08 08:35:30)...
ThatBigGermanPrison and Tissy, please, don't lecture on things you have no clue about.
Czechoslovakia split more then 15!!! years ago...It is quite a common knowledge that nowdays there is The Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Map of Europe (which is geographical term as opposed to the political one - European union)is here: www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/europe/europe_ref_2008.pdf

Part of Russia is still in Europe, so I can't see how Frankfurt is in the centre of it. Centre of "Europe" is probably even eastwards from Prague.

Sorry ladies, but one thing is not knowing things and another in one's deep ignorance lecture others.

Don't be so bl**dy patronising, Atlass.

Your link doesn't work

For those of us who went to school (and got an A for geography O Level) in the late 70s, it is not unreasonable to think of what used to be Czechoslovakia as "Eastern Europe". Not strictly accurate, I grant you, but things have changed very fast. I was not lecturing anybody.

I remember the Berlin wall falling, I visited Berlin before it came down, I am not ancient, it is not that long ago.

I don't know who decides what is East and what is West, if anyone does at all, but one thing occurs to me, you cannot get much further West than where I am right now, and still be on land and still be in Europe.

OK, so maybe the Czech Republic is now roughly in the middle of what is now Europe, for the time being, until another few countries join up, but that doesn't remove the fact that until fairly recently everything East of the line down the middle of Germany was considered Eastern Europe.

this is the map I was referring to in my post. Frankfurt isn't so very far away from the middle. If Belarus and Ukraine are now fully fledged members of Europe (I see the map is dated 2004), then I apologise for by blithering ignorance.

ooh look at least the UN statistics division considers the Czech Republic to be Eastern, even if no-one else does

test

Okay, that worked. Every time I delete a letter it wipes the whole post.

What I have been trying to say for the past 10 minutes is you have to handle this calmly and sensitively.

She may be embarrassed at you mentioning how much food she is eating and if it was me I would feel unvalued if I had to eat from a separate cupboard or have much cheaper brands than anyone else.

Since the vast majority of au pairs hail from the 25 countries of the EU (ie not including Romania and Bulgaria) the geographical centre of aupairland is the village of Kleinmaischeid, pretty close to Frankfurt.