Am beginning to hate my Au-pair

[dizzydo]

Just typed this in once but cant find it anywhere so am doing it again. Apologies if it's on twice.

Wide awake at 2pm. Anyone else out there??

Our AP has been with us for 13 months and has another three months to go. She is beginning to drive me and DH nuts. She is terribly opinionated - every conversation (even if she is not included in it initially ) ends up with "in my country.."

Anyway, have noticed over last week or so she has become more and more sulky and so finally confronted her to find out what was wrong.

The bottom line was that she reckons we dont include her as part of the family at the weekends. She says that at the weekend we never invite her to eat with us. I was totally gobsmacked at this as we do always include her if we know she is in. I told her that I would never knowingly do that and she basically said she didnt believe me. I asked her why she didn't come down and let us know she was there if we were cooking and had not called her/invited her down. She is not usually so bothered about making her presence felt (didn't say that bit!). Afterwards I realised when it had sunk in that what she was talking about was lunchtimes. We hardly ever eat lunch at the weekends (particularly Saturdays) because we prefer to have a late breakfast go out and then have an early tea quite often out somewhere. I found myself cooking lunch today purely for her benefit and then REALLY resenting it. It also made it very late for us to go out.

She also said that she should only have to do the childrens ironing and not ours. I reminded her that she is not a nanny she is an aupair and as such an extra pair of hands to muck in with whatever is required. Before she joined us we gave her a schedule of what we expected (ironing WAS on it) all of which she agreed to. She does do a good job with the children but is not good at tiyding up generally NEVER picks things up that I leave at the bottom of the stairs to go up or tidies the childrens bedroom.

We pay her £65pw plus £5 per hour for any extra hours on top. In school holidays we pay an extra £15 per day for 9-5 (£140 a week which I think is a lot). We also pay her an extra £15 every other week for 2 hours cleaning of our room which she said was not enough time. That is ridiculous as it is a loft room and bathroom!

Am I being totally unreasonable or is she? BTW she is 27 and possibly just too old for this type of role.

What does Mumsnet think?

The au pairs have their own seperate rooms each with an ensuite bathroom at home. The babies also have their own rooms so all have their own rooms!

At holiday we choose places where we can have a suite/adjoining rooms/or an extra room where we can be all together but a door in between.

By the way one of the girls is a midwife and has great knowledge of infant/toddler care.

As for the "advert" I have no connection to the agency- I have just had good and promt service from them so far...

Oh right

I must get back to that shagging thread for proper amusement.

I am always fascinated by the life of the well offs, houses so big that cannot be cleaned by just the family. En suite bathrooms, holidays in big apartments and being able to pay APs phone bills etc etc

and all this ironing that you need help with.... I only iron a few things, like a shirt i need to wear for work. everything else comes out fairly smooth from the dryer, smooth out hte few creases with your hand, fold and voila.

another planet from me.

Wigglewiggle - The joys of MN!! It includes each end of the scale. I too find it fascinating. In saying that, I am thinking about getting a cleaner... and I'm not rich, just busy with work.

i have been an au pair myself, for 10 (long)months in France during gap year.
I was looking after 4 kidsaged 3, 7, 9 and 11, and I myself was only 18 at the time. Didn't speak the lingo when I arrived, and was VERY homesick sometimes, but stuck it out.

Having read through this thread, I would like to add 2 or 3 comments:

1. I was rather appalled at the 'plenty more where she came from' comment - how disrespectful.
2. Who needs to employ someone to remove creases from fabric?! It's madness, isn't it? When I was an au pair, I iwas made to iron so much - even their underwear! that I vowed never to take such a boring task seriously ever again. as a 32 year old mother, I NEVER iron anything.
3. i would agree with the notion that an au pair's natural 'shelf-life' is 3-6 months. For me, certainly, the sheer mundanity of the work combined with homesickness and the difficulty of coping with 4 children (who were not mine!) was driving me up the wall.

Nowadays I always tell anyone who is considering becoming an au pair that it is ONLY worth doing if you cannot afford any other way of spending time in the other country to learn the language/cuture. It is hard, and having your own bedroom/bathroom does not make you any less homesick and fed up sometimes, unfortunately.
The family I worked for were nice, and had never had an au pair before, so I was lucky compared to some of my au pairing friends at the time, but it was still tough.

You might think it's disrespectful but it is true.

Supply of au pairs is no reason to put up with someone that doesn't click with your family.

Why do we have to justify how we spend our money? If we choose to spend money on domestic help, why is that a problem? Surely it's good for the community to employ others rather than hoard money in the bank or squander it on multiple exotic holidays a year.

It's just that it is easier on the family than on the perosn who has upped sticks from a distant country to become a live-in helper.
The onus whould be on both sides to try and 'click', surely, but I sometimes wonder how some of us would cope if the situation was reversed - i.e. working and living with a Polish family, for example?

It is not an ideal mix, by any means. Like someone else said, it might me cheap, but a lot of compromises are required on both sides for it to work smoothly.

ive never had an aupair, but have had loads of ap do cleaning for me. and the fact is, that if you dont click with someone, then why should you have to pay them to do something.
totally agree with ameriscot.

If you have the cash, you can do what you want - but I think it's just as important to consider the cultural and personal relationships as well - employing someone, esp. if they are going to be living with you, does not just boil down to cash for services rendered, does it? Hence the difficulties that arise!

So what do you suggest when faced with a grumpy au pair, TV?

I agree with Teeavee about the ironing. I am struggling to understand other people's ironing need!!. I understand that big families hava lot more ironing than I do.. Shirts, some work clothes I understand, depending on the type of work that people do. will i really need to iron my dd school clothes when the time comes? I even actively try to avoid wearing shirts for work so I do not have to iron them!!!

My guess is that if the AP does it for you, you will find a lot more items would need ironing then before: bedding, towels, underwear, sheets, kids everyday wear, the lot. sorry for generalising here.

Surely there is not need to iron all that other than it feels/look nice on bed/cupboard! If I was an AP would get annoyed to be asked to do all this ironing for the household. on other hand if i was paid by the item or by weight like I am reading in this other thread going at the moment about people using ironing services, and ironing was my business, all this ironing would be welcome.

Wiggle, I don't get my au pair to do ironing because she has enough other things she does to help me. If I switched to an au pair plus, that would be the extra work in the extra hours.

While I don't actually mind the task of ironing, I would freely admit that it's a huge task and I never get to the bottom of my ironing basket (s).

But that's life in a family of 7. I don't want to spend more than an hour or two per week ironing - I have other more interesting things to do with my time. You know, luncheons and stuff.

PS: ironing isn't a bad job to do - it's an everyday job, unlike say heavy, spring cleaning. It's fair game to ask an au pair to do at least the children's ironing if she has the time in her 25 hours per week.

Au pairs and paid pocket money and room & board, which if added together is approaching £200 a week in value. It's only right that they should do some "work" for this money.

what to do when faced with a grumpy au pair ?? hmmm...
i think that ultimately, as I mentioned before, the only way to ensure fresh-faced willing + smiling au pairs is not to keep them on for too long - I know from my own experience as an au pair that after 6 months the job, being so menial and such a drudge, can become a huge bore, esp if you're v. young and have other interests in life than housework
or....not have one at all?

Scrap all irons, I say! down with linen and hooray for lycra!!

Not having one when you want one is not a very construction solution.

But I agree with you that short term is best, but this probably is only practical if, like me, are a SAHM, and simply want an AP rather than need one. I am going to work around school terms from now on, so you have the changeover during the holidays.

not having one when you want one is probably all that most of us can afford....?

I just hired a live out "nanny" for 2 days a week to plug the childcare gap left by my 23 year old au pair who thought she was at a holiday camp and that I was her adoptive mother. It has been an extremely difficult time and I now see that getting an unknown au pair (yes she had excellent references) was a mistake. Living with a stranger is hard, and although she was getting more than minimum wage when you include the extra food, lodging and English classes I provided, she was always complaining and saying in her country (well we aren't English either). I was trying, but very halfheartedly, to replace her, as well as hugely struggling to keep my job, when I saw the light-I can't bear to risk getting another person who is going to move in and exploit ME. I ended up in hospital with a slipped disc I believe mainly from all the extra housework I ended up doing.

So, you've hired someone?

Congratulations.

So, now I have spent hours and hours interviewing by phone and in person for the last 5 days-it has been gruelling and upset everyone in the house. Out of 8 interviews arranged at my home, 3 didn't show and one flounced out because she saw the previous interviewee (great choice obviously!). 2 were resonable and one was impressive so I picked her-they were all previous au pairs for several years and now want to live with hubby, boyfriend, cousin whatever. I am going to pay her £7 an hour, £70 a day for 10 hours work on 2 days-if she didn't want to do the housework then I wouldn't pay her for the 2-3 hours that dd2 is in nursery those 2 days (she does want to do it). I also meanwhile found another lady to do the dreaded ironing and other chores on Sat or Sun so I will use her to pick up the slack at the weekends. I have better uses for that money, but I have to recover my own health, start to do my doctors-orders exercise, and do all that other stuff that has lapsed during the past year, that only I can do, like household paperwork, decluttering etc. TBH I am feeling so low about it all that I don't know whether to give up work (I will make no money for 2.5 more years with all the childcare costs I have), or leave my husband and children. So let's hope this lady is of the Mary Poppins persuasion, bacause I for one have lost the will to live over this work-home dilemma...

hi uwila, yes she came out of the blue but I thikn there is hope here-when I asked hers some of your questions she gave the same answer I would say-ie the right one! and I didn't even ask some of them, she just volunteered her ideas for entertaining toddler, and opinion on tv-and it was exactly the same as mine! I have learned too talk less and let them say it all over the weekend, a good lesson for me but I really wasn't in the mood AT ALL.

When does she start?

I hope the last gloomy sentence of your previous post was a joke!?

Are you okay?