AP & socialising in your home - am I being a bitch????!

[Hotpants]

Mynew au pair is arriving tonight and I am having a last minute panic. I am busy putting together our house rules (with help from some fantastic examples from fellow Mumsnetters) but keep getting stuck on whether or not to allow socialising in my house. I know I definitley don't want her to bring any boyfriends home, call me old fashioned but her bedroom is right next to my daughter's and I don't want DC's to see a man coming out of her room (or worse, hear something!). But to be honest I would really prefer if, in her free time, she met her friends outside of the house. We don't live miles from anywhere and there are cafes nearby, Cafe Nero, Costa Coffee etc. I am quite a private person and just really hate the idea of other people beyond our au pair in my house. Is that unreasonable? Where does everyone else stand on that?

I don't see why you shouldn't be old-fashioned - it's your house.
I think you have to have the final say on who comes to your house so I would be very wary of giving anyone carte blanche to bring who they want.

I'm also getting an AP for the first time and I'm planning to say 'ask me if you'd like to bring anyone round' and then we'll deal with it as & when. She can generally get hold of either me or dh by phone so she can always check if she wants to ask someone back for coffee on the spur of the moment. Obviously if once we know her we reckon is is trustworthy and has good judgement we'll relax a bit.

I think you can encourage her to meet her friends elsewhere.

Our rules say:
"You are welcome to have friends back to the house occasionally in your free time, but please check with us first to ensure this is convenient and introduce any new guests to us. Please keep the noise down when DS is in bed and we ask that guests leave by 11pm unless previously arranged with us. Please never leave your guests unattended in our house. "

However we are fortunate that in practice because our house is smallish and we are rural she tends to meet her friends out. Also we took our current one on knowing she had a long term boyfriend. He is welcome to stay occasionally but that's because we like him and DS is young enough for it not to be an issue. I certainly wouldn't allow different and unknown blokes staying over in my home.

Also it feels different once they are here and you know what they are like, and what their friends are like, compared to now before you kow her and it's an unknown entity. If she is a decent person with respect for you (as you hope, and most likely as she will turn out to be) then it won't be a problem as she will likely respect that and rarely have anyone round, certainly not for late night parties etc!

Agree with Weegle. Also never leave your guests unattended with our children.

we have the rule that we would like to meet anyone coming into our home for the first time and then if we like the guests, ask to make sure it is convenient for them to come over in the future.

Also agree with Weegle - I knew that the friends of my ap would be OK, because she was.

However, I didn't like her having friends in her room in the evenings as they woke up DS2 a few times. As he was such a pain re sleeping at the time this left me seething! He was a vvv.light sleeper, so it wasn't her fault, but with two people chatting and laughing, it was bound to happen.