Au Pairs - maybe something useful for someone thinking of employing their first Au Pair...

[MrsWood]

When I came to the UK as an Au Pair with 2 of my best friends, I was "positioned" with a family with 3 kids - 6, 9 and 12 years old. My friends were in families with smaller children. One was looking after a 4 year old and one was looking after a 2 MONTH old. I spoke excellent English as I studied it for years before coming over. My friends spoke good enough Enlgish. Unfortunately, NEITHER of us had ANY experience in looking after children - neither of us even had a sibling! Upon instructions from Au Pair agency, we all lied on our application form and provided false childcare references. Agencies are trying to make money out of Au Pairs and families and will get the girls to say ANYTHING in order to get them as clients - they get around £300+ from each family and around £150+ from each girl they get on their books. We were quite sensible 17 year old girls and were NEVER horrible to any of the kids we looked after, we were actually having a very good time being Au Pairs, however, I must stress that many parents are not aware of the difference between Au Pairs and nannies. Au Pairs are meant to be mother's help (cleaning, cooking, babysitting the kids etc.) and are paid very little - £40-£45 per week - comparing to nannies with PROPER qualifications in childcare who get around £200-£300 per week (depending on your location within the UK) and are complete opposites to Au Pairs - i.e. shouldn't have to do anything around the house apart from looking after the kids' needs 24/7.
I guess the whole point of this thread is to help parents who are new to this and don't know what to ask and how to make a decision on the right person to look after their kids. After all, you have to be able to trust this person and more importantly, trust your little angels in their hands whilst you're at work or whatever.
My husband and I now have a 21 month old daughter ourselves and she is the most important thing to us and we certainly feel wiser for the experience I've had from "the other side".
As a parent and an ex Au Pair this is something I felt I needed to share with you folks

Any questions, please feel free to ask - I will help you in any way I possibly can.

I think child care is a very 'personal choice' as all parent require different types of childcare to what suits them best, and what they can afford.

I totally agree, right or wrong, its parents choice who looks after their children.

I understand that there are lot of families with bad au pair experience but there are so many au pairs who are treatened very badly by families.
I came to UK to live in the family as an au pair. In the beginning everything was perfect, really fun mother, sweet children (1y and 6y). Mother was working from home, so she helped me with children and often we went out all together (to the parks, seaside).
But things started to change soon. I supposed to work 25 hours a week but about 3-4 months later it had increased slowly to 10 hours a day (I did all the housework, the mother never hoovered or ironed after I got there) plus Saturday morning (parents just wanted to sleep in). I still got same amount of pocket money- £60.
And if I wanted to go and se my friends in the weekends, I wasn't allowed to go every time I asked. In case the might need me (most of those times they didn't, so I ended up just sitting in my room and doing nothing).
And after 8 months being there I discovered that I wasn't allowed to go out in weekday evenings as well (just to see my friends, I never wanted to go out for clubbing or drinking). The same reason- THEY might want to go out in the evening. They rarely did.
This was the final point when I just couldn't take it anymore and gave my notice. I felt like being in the prison, I wasn't allowed to any personal life. It was sad to leave because I really liked the children, especially the toddler. And the mother was nice person, she just didn't know that au pair supposed to HELP you, not to do all childminding and all housework.

I remember once when I decided to do a spring clean whilst the family was out in the country for the day. I was so proud as that house was NEVER so thorughly cleaned - dust was 2 inches high in some places, kids toys were on a big pile under bunk bed (something like garbage dumpsters) and not to mention kitchen cupboards being full of expired ingredients. I cleaned and cleaned ALL day long to surprise them, and, as I was there only for a month by then, I guess I wanted to impress them as well. Show them that I was worth it! They came home and noticed NOTHING until I couldn't hold it in anymore and decided to give them a tour around the house. Their house was as if Kim and Aggie have been through it! Got a little "thank you" from them and thought - "that's that. They will keep it up". That was on Friday. I was away that weekend (Xmas) celebrating with my Au Pair friends. The family also had a bash at home with their closest family. I came back on Sunday and found the house in a worse state then when I started my Au pair job! There was stuff everywhere. The kids just dumped their clothes, toys, books - everywhere all over the house, bathroom was a state, kitchen made me feel claustrophonic from all the stuff everywhere around the surfaces etc. You couldn't see floors in ANY of the rooms. I was heartbroken. I didn't know where to begin. I was back to square one. I remember calling my mum and crying my eyes out. They just didn't appreciate it at all. After that, I NEVER left the house for more than 1-2 hours as I was worried all my hard work would be ruined in no time at all.

I know how you felt, MrsWood.
I decided to clean once as well like this, family was on holiday and I stayed at home. I also felt bit quilty because they still payed me for this week and that's why I decided to do something around the house.
Cleaning the kitchen took already one full day... And it was a big house, I can't remember how many days it took to make it sparkle.
Anyway, the family came back and they didn't notice anything! Next day one of their friends came over and was surprised how clean the house was and then the mother said: 'oh yes, I thought something was different here.'
And of course, couple of days later everything was messy and dirty again... I never felt so sad and angry and disappointed in my life.

The house I was staying in was 4 bedroom cottage with HUUUUUUUGE rooms - kitchen was the size of an average bedroom! I was just lucky the kids weren't that small so they could be bribed into tidying up after themselves - mostly, they'd just laugh at me, but if I offered extra TV time or extra long baths then they'd cave in and do it - mind you, they could only do as much as they thought was enough, bless them, and then I'd have to do it again myself, but they were quite cute at it, and I felt I was in some control.

Cleaning after or with children is ok, I didn't mind doing that. But cleaning after parents - that made me angry. Dirty coffe mugs, clothes, shoes everywhere and they didn't really cared. Father was a smoker and he used to leave sigarettes and lighters laying around, so irresponsible, I still can't believe it!!

Sounds awful, Henelele.

We are not naturally tidy, but having an au pair makes us make the effort! Left to our own devices, I'd deal with the dinner dishes in the morning - yuk, I know - but having the au pair means that I make sure the dishwasher is on at night.

I don't expect my au pair to do a lot of tidying - she should just be able to clean or hoover already clear surfaces. When things work out to plan, the au pair only has about and hour of cleaning per day - we live in quite a big five-bedroom house. I don't think that is too bad.

I know that the messing capacity of my children really got my first au pair down. She'd never re-do anything the same day, but it was demoralising for her work to be trashed so quickly (same for me, LOL). But she made a rod for her own back by insisting that things like mopping the kitchen and other hard floors were done every day, even though I told her twice a week was fine. She was horrified by that concept.

Henelele -
I'm a journalist and I'd love to talk to you about your experiences as an au pair - I'm writing an article for a broadsheet newspaper and I'm very interested in the sort of issues you've raised on this thread. Could you send me an email (to [email protected]) or a private message through this board? I look forward to hearing from you! Natasha

forevermore... have you heard about the new childcare voucher scheme? I don't know exactly how it works, but basically the government will pay up to 70% of a nanny's pay. The nanny has to be registered (I'm currently in the process of registering, have to have a police check, valid 1st aid certificate and some sort of qualification) so that some of my wages will be through this scheme. I'm sure that if my surgeon bosses qualify for this, it would be worth at least having a look into. I could ask my bosses where they got their info, if you like. Hope I haven't got any of my info wrong, but I don't think so!

are you the natasha walter? what is the thesis for your article?

Oh, just reminded me - Once my "mother" went out for the day with her friend who left her 4 year old at our house for me to look after (as well as the 3 kids I was already looking after) and when they came back several hours later the woman handed me £5 (!!!!!!!!) for looking after her kid, who was a bit hyper, may I add, and managed to exhaust me more than the other 3 altogether! I was gutted, but smiled and carried on. What a (you know what I mean)! I should have got that PER HOUR considering I wasn't her Au pair and she must know her son is hard work. I'm even surprised they weren't concerned how I'd cope with hyper 4 year old, 6 year old girl and 2 boys - 9 and 12! I was 17! I was so worried all the time. The kids were everywhere and just wouldn't settle - 2 went out in the garden to play on playcentre, one wanted to do drawing indoors, one was upstairs jumping on beds.... I mean, it was hell! So irresponsible.

Think this would be agreat thread to get ungrateful au-pairs who think they are being hard done by for being asked to do their 25 hours pw to read.