AP worries

[Millarkie]

I think our new (been here a couple of weeks) AP isn't eating properly. There is no evidence that she eats breakfast or lunch, she does eat fruit (about 5 apples and a mango - and she requested we bought her a pineapple this week, but that's not touched yet) and a low fat yogurt during the day. I cook for the kids and her in the evening so she is eating then at least, but that meal is vegetarian (because ds is veggie) and she tends to eat a child-sized portion).
Now, she may have stuffed her bedroom to the gunnels with chocolate and cakes or something, but she is always freezing cold.
I have joked before on MN that our house is not warm (generally 19/20 degrees in the living room) but when I get home AP has got the central heating on and the log fire blazing and she is sitting right next to the fire wearing a fleece (and sometimes a scarf!)
I don't want her to be cold but we have gone through an extra £80 of oil in the last 2 weeks plus coal/wood for the fire which we only have on at weekends...and today I have just realised that our little fan heater is missing from the spare room so she must have taken it into her room and is using that too...so our electricity bill is going to be horrendous.

My gut feeling is that I can't do much about the apparent lack of food but I can get dh to do the meter readings now and next weekend, work out how much more power we are using and add it to the oil bill then point out to her that since an AP is a luxury rather than a necessity for us, that if she needs to be at 25 degrees plus all the time that we cannot afford to keep her... and to point out that she needs to eat in order to be warm.

(She isn't skinny but she is slender (but then so was I at 19) and it is not her first time away from home for any length of time).

Oh, heck, not sure what to do, want to treat her as an adult but I am worried that she will pass out when looking after the kids or something.

Get her an extra jumper for the warmth, or offer her a fleecy blanket (not terribly expense) that she can wrap herself in when in her room so she doesn't have to use the fan heater.

I don't eat that much so she might just not be one of those people that eat lots! Do you think she would pass out looking after your children? Does she look "peaky"? Could you talk to her mother/someone else about how much she typically eats at home?

Am going to ask for her parent's contact details (should have done this the moment she arrived as I need them in case of any emergencies).

She is already wearing the sort of fleece that I would wear outdoors so don't think extra jumper would help. We have several fleecy blankets around the house (kids like to use them to play at Mummies with)..the tv is her room is ideal for watching whilst in bed (well that's what i would do if I were that cold!)

She has just come downstairs for the first time today, maybe she wants breakfast now (at 5pm) - surely that's not normal.

Why not talk to her and ask her if she okay. She might be homesick so not wanting to eat. Just ask her if everything is okay as you are concerned for her as she doesn't seem to eat and that could be why she is always cold.

The cold house is a tough one - if you can't afford to keep the heating on then she needs to either get used to it or get a new job!

With the eating though, lots of teenagers don't eat very well.

I do talk to her - she says she is happy, and I have asked what she has been eating during the day (get an evasive answer then) and whether there is any other food she would like (pineapple being the answer to that one). She says she is happy, she has made a few friends, she has gone out a few times to cinema, shops etc.
It's hard because we can in theory afford the heating to be maxed out all day, but it is uncomfortable at that heat - I am stripping off layers as soon as I get through our front door and it just feels muggy and yuck. Although the cost does make it a lot harder to 'justify' having an AP rather than after-school club and a dogwalker.

She has come downstairs and eaten an apple - chopped up, slowly...

There is NOTHING WORSE THAN YOUR EMPLOYER WORRYING ABOUT WHAT YOU EAT..!!Im a live-in nanny..and i often babysit for the familys friends and i couldnt belive it one night i got there and the mother said to me..MRS X is worried about you..she says you dont eat..well i was really rather annoyed for her to be analysing what i eat and what i dont , then have the CHEEK to tell her friends..if she was really worried why wouldnt she come to me the whole neighbourhood knows my boyfriend lives abroad and that i dont eat much..because her and her big mouth..!! sorry little off subject!!!! But im sure when she is hungry she will eat when i first started as a live in nanny i would go down and eat when they were out ..but give her a few more weeks ( and a couple electricty bills later) It will all work out..

Supernanny - please don't SHOUT at me.
I don't think it is wrong for me to worry about a 19yr old who is away from her home/family/friends especially when she is looking after my children sole charge for an hour or so at a time. She is an AP not a nanny and I think that makes a lot of difference. I never worried about what my nannies ate or didn't eat.

im sure she will eat when she is hungry.

Tbh if my nanny or AP seemed to eat very little or nothing i would worry, but FOR HER, as a human, not for the effect that it might have on ME.

Same goes for heating problem. Poor thing, sounds that she is freezing

Would you gossip with your friends or would you come out with it and say.."i see your not eating much is everything okay?" Refering to my family i work for..
Im NOT refering to millarkie so dont assume im shouting at you..thats rather immature.

She is not freezing - the room is 23 degrees at the moment and she is wearing a fleece. - She would be freezing if I asked her to stop putting the heating on max and the fires on though. I, on the other hand, am bloody boiling, wearing a t shirt. Yes I am worried about her health but I am walking the line between letting an adult do what they want, and worrying about the fact that that adult is in charge of my children (albeit for a short time 3 times a week). And that she is young, she is in 'my care' etc.

If I was uncaring I would switch the heating off and tell her to pack her bags!

Thanks for your supportive and thoughtful advice - I'm fucking off to real life now.

When I was an au pair I wans't sure what and when I could eat. I assume you have spelt that out to her?

I agree that as she is looking after your children she needs to be in a fit state to do so. When I haven't eaten properly I can't function well enough.

...but then again if she starts eating we will have another thread 'my AP now eats too much, had 3 slices of white bread today, she is costing us a fortune..'

Just in case you're still around - I would be worried about her eating. We're mothers after all - we worry about food

That aside - is she scandinavian by any chance? Friend of ours married a Swedish lass and we were mortified when they came to stay as she found our house very, very cold. Spent the whole time clutching a hot water bottle and apologising for making us feel guilty. Apparently they keep their houses much warmer than we do here - her Lancashire in-laws had got used to whacking the heat up and stripping off a layer for her visits.

We had an AP who was like this although she was also very skinny. She ate virtually nothing throughout the day except low fat yogurt and an apple, would have a meal with us in the evening and then disappear upstairs immediately afterwards for 5-10 minutes. She was also extremely cold and it was not as cold a winter as this one has been.

I was extremely worried about her both for her own health and because she was helping to look after my dts and in the end rang an eating disorders helpline who thought that it sounded as though she might be bulimic. She went home for a holiday after she had been with us for about 3 months and seemed a bit better after that. I never found out if she had a problem though and this isn't helping you!

I gave her an extra duvet and hot water bottle to try to help with the cold but she used a fan heater as well.

Another thought: A couple of our APs haven't liked British bread. When I've bought them rye bread (from Tesco or Aldi) they've eaten more.

I think employing an AP is a very fine balancing act, they are more than just an employee, if they were just an employee then SuperNanny would be right (albeit with the rant factor turned down by a factor of 10).

But, au pair, means equal with, i.e. they are a part of the family, and you are quite right to be worried about a member of the family who may not be eating correctly.

Is there a cultural factor? After a Sunday lunch in the local pub (bog standard carvery - nothing special) our Dutch AP said she would never eat such a large meal - and was then scoffing biscuits later the same afternoon! Is "grazing" food available for her and does she know it?

Is she too embarrassed to say she doesn't like what you are cooking after being with us for four months ours has just pointed out that she doesn't like the rosat lamb that has been served up every other week!

The cold thing maybe just what you are used to, a standing joke here is that AP will have several jumpers on whilst the rest of us are in T-shirts.

Families who have an aupair are in loco parentis. Completely different relationship between employers and nannies.

Sadly, it is not uncommon for aupairs to have eating disorders. My aupair tells me one of her aupair friends has it - the family does not know apparently. I know another instance where an aupair had to go back suddenly on doctor's advice because her eating disorder, which was previously under control, resurfaced.

I think the stress of a new country, new family, new way of life, relative lack of privacy, can bring things on. I do look out for.

Evasive answers about food are not good.

About the cold, UK homes are badly heated. Even my Swedish aupair who came from the north complained initially. But then she got used to it. She just wore loads of jumpers though and did not turn up the heat.

25 degrees all day long would be unbearable. Can you turn the valve on the radiator in her room and the high traffic common areas up and those on other radiators down? I would be careful about fan heaters, especially the overheating/fire risk.

Mine doesn't eat either. I don't cook for her because she doesn't seem to like what I make but she makes barely more than a bit of rice for herself and in 4 months has never asked me to get her anything. She doesn't seem to be fading away but it does bother me. She has full run of all my cupbaords but she doesn't eat much. She's 25 though so more than old enough to sort herself our without me worrying about her. I am starting to notice a bit of bread, cheese and apples disappearing but really nothing much at all

I'm back.
Thanks Blueshoes, DIOM, badpups and northernlurker (and anyone I missed when scrolling up and down!)

Well, there is definitely some sort of food issue here, even if it's just a misguided diet (she doesn't need to lose weight she looks very fit at the moment). I came home and she has written herself a little timetable and filled in what she has eaten during the day (didn't read it through obviously, but seemed to be dominated by apples/bits of wafer thin chicken).
She knows what there is to eat - last au pair was here with her for a week and they ate during the day then, and since then I have made a point of showing her the soups, ready meals (I keep frozen meals with chicken/seafood in the freezer for APs since we only eat veggie food), pasta and sauces etc. We eat granary bread which last AP commented on as being very nice compared to normal english white bread..but have asked her if she wants any different type, and I have asked every day or so if she likes/dislikes anything but so far she still insists she likes everything I have cooked.
I hope it is simply dieting and she won't go too extreme but I do worry about her.

As for the heating, I think dh and I will have to discuss getting some sort of safe electric heater for her room and some safe way of plugging it in (her room doesn't have enough sockets and I don't want to overload any). I am sweltering in the living room at the moment though and to some extent it is not nice being uncomfortably hot in your own home. I have given her a week's trial membership at our local gym (so she can see if she wants to join it properly) and she has now chosen to go to English classes twice a week in the daytime so as long as she switches the heat off before she goes out we might get away from heating the entire house to max temperature from 5am to 11pm.

She is a nice girl - but I was so spoilt with last AP who was in the whole a joy to have around..and I do worry.

Millarkie, this food timetable, did you ask her to fill it in or is she doing it for her own reference? She does not exercise frenetically, does she?

My 2 aupairs would eat the meals I cook for them - both of them insisted they liked them. But outside of that one meal a day, they are supposed to fix their own sandwich, pot noodles etc. They hardly ate anything much as far as I could see from the food that was left. One of them was trying to slim, I think. But I never got the vibe that it strayed into abnormal dieting ...

I guess unless your aupair starts to lose weight drastically, apart from just being slim and fit (!), there isn't much you can or should do besides what you are already doing.

I keep a food diary I am trying to be aware of what I eat and lose weight though.

Hey Tankie - I've kept a food diary too, on occasion - but the difference is I am 3 stone overweight (gently getting smaller though ) and AP is very much not overweight..not stick and bone though..yet.

I certainly did not ask her to fill in a food diary I just came home and she had left it on the kitchen table (in plain view)..then she took it upstairs with her.

If it wasn't for the fact that she seems to be so cold all the time I don't think I would be so bothered by the food issues, as long as she doesn't start wasting away/vomiting or something.. but if she is cold because she is not eating then surely that is not good.

I must say I eat plenty and am always cold in my house - my dp is in a t shirt and as I type I'm sitting on the sofa wearing a vest, shirt, cardigan and a blanket wrapped round me! Some people do just feel the cold more. I find my aunt's house unbearably warm.

My aupair who felt cold was naturally quite well-padded. She said something about the cold in England being different (from Scandinavia).