Au pair problem...I feel ridiculous posting this but

[MizZan]

...our AP is really, truly eating us out of house and home, and I'm just wondering if anyone has any strategies they might recommend to help us avoid this situation in future. I've pretty much written off the current situation but am wondering if we've just been very lucky up till now, or what. Have had quite a few au pairs before and while some of them have been a little peculiar in their eating habits, we've never run across anything like this before.

AP joined us in April and announced that she liked meat and expected to have "cooked meat" for lunch every day. That was just the beginning. She is putting away at least 4 enormous meals a day (usually including a large lunch she cooks herself around 2 PM, hot dinner eaten with DCs, and a second dinner she cooks herself later on around 9 or 10 PM). Since she barely knows how to cook, this usually ends up creating huge mess in the kitchen and smells all over the house - either that or she uses up instant-type foods which I've purchased to put together for quick weeknight dinners when I'm working, which isn't very helpful. She is a nice enough girl (and fortunately only here for 7 more weeks) but eats like nothing I've ever seen. In between these meals, she's coming down for many "snacks" (sandwiches, massive bowls of cereal, crisps if we had them in the house, hunks of cheese, and massive amounts of any kind of ham or other lunch meat we have in the house (which we ourselves save for weekends as we try to get decent quality stuff and it's expensive), etc.). She literally eats more than DH and me combined.

Am somewhat at my wit's end as (a) she's constantly in the kitchen, which is making me a little nuts, (b) it's costing us a fortune, and (c) am perpetually finding we're just on the verge of running out of milk/juice/bread/cereal as well as finding that literally nothing appears to be off limits, no matter how "fancy" or expensive it might be, whether it might be something we got specifically for the children, whether we might be about to run out of it, or whatever. Our fridge is tiny so no hope of keeping a separate area for AP or anything like that - just not practical. I cannot stand guard over the kitchen cupboards and fridge to see what she's eating - and I guess the point is if she's hungry of course she should eat something...sorry to rant but I guess I'm just looking to see if this is a common experience and if anyone has any words of wisdom!

I would certainly ban frying food in the evening! That would drive me up the wall. If she's hungry she can have cereal or a sandwhich - and I would also insist she leaves the kitchen spotless!

my last au pair ate too much as well

She was complaining afetr 2 weeks that none of her clothes fitted her anymore and that she had put on 5 kg and didn't know why

It is so frustrating and so very expensive.

She had other "issues" aswell though so we asked her to leave 3 months earlier than planned

In many countries it is the norm to eat big hot lunch and they dont count s/w and crisps as lunch. But i don't know about 4 big meals . Was she babysitting last night?

Tbh i don't understant it when posters say 'buy her some crap'. Apart from the fact that it is rude, even from a selfish point of view how is this good for the children? how can you 'ban' 'expensive' fruits when she eats with the dcs? and is it worth for few extra pounds?

Surely part of the cultural experience of the au pair is to eat as 'the locals'?
And it's not 'a few pounds', our food bill is up by almost 50%. Our au pair's 'pocket money' fades into insignificance compared to the other costs of having her here.
We tend to end up with us eating more cheaply (own-brands and discount brands) in order to buy the au pair's food and stay within budget..which does make it tempting just to get rid of the au pair!

Laquitar. I think the problem is that it is not an extra few pounds, that no one minds. We had a Greek AP who ate completely normally and as a result enjoyed a wide variety of good quality foods but then you have an another AP who eats the whole pinapple you brought and the 2 papayas, plus all the biscusits plus plus..... literally the day you buy them. That is just plain selfish and piggy and in the end you so resent both the sheer volume and the selfish race to eat all the good quality foods first when you have a whole family to feed then you (the host Mum) either have to simmer with resentment, hide food, or just have it out with the AP and lay down strict rules which make you look like a control freak... but !! what else are you supposed to do.

to some extent, she may not realized. I am Australian but have lived in London for years but have still not got my head around this 'expensive foods' business. I tend to spend a fortune, but not mean to.

At home things like berries etc cost the same as apples and bananas, it takes a while to equate that - esp. if you're not doing the shopping.

I also don't understand why you think it's too late to say anything, 7 weeks to go is a long time. It is perfectly reasonable to say that you don't want her cooking after dinner has been cleared away - dinner is the last "proper" meal of the day, if she is still hungry later she can have a snack (list options). My, perpetually hungry, 15 year old knows what he can have to snack on, if he wants anything outside that he asks. An AP is a young person staying in your home, why are they outside the "house rules"?

I've lived in France and Italy as an exchange student with a family, and worked in Russia where I was also hosted periodically by people. In Italy - where I was offered tea and a couple of digestives for breakfast - they were being paid to have me so in principle I could have probably "helped myself" more to the fridge content.

You eat what the families offer you and pay attention to what is going on around you. If they have four meals, go ahead. Do not go and stay in someone's home if you aren't able to be observent, it's basic manners in one sense but also I agree with Milarkee part of the cultural experience.

If I had done what the OP described in this situation I would have expected to have my programme directors have a little "chat" with me about my behaviour frankly.

Harriet, i was talking about Ap not exchange student. APs WORK, usually hard, and they work with your DCs! My question was how can you feed your dcs healthy food-and give them good example-when you plan to feed your AP 'crap food' if they eat together?

But the idea is that you're supposed to be part of the family as well.

Sorry but I still think what the OPs au pair is up to is unacceptable and rude and I can understand the parent's point of view very much here. I was working in Russia by the way, not an exchange student.

Also, no one on here was saying that during the main meals the AP had to eat crap food or not eat what the family was eating during that time. LIke sitting there with a plate of spam while everyone else had pasta and truffle oil. It was trying to think of a way to fund the extra meals that were also happening.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to sit her down and say, look you're here to live as a member or our family and our family has the following routines to keep everything running smoothly and also keep us within our family budget: we have three meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and if you're hungry at other times please do help yourself to fruit or toast or cereal. We don't have a fourth cooked meal late at night here and we are finding it's becoming expensive and a little disruptive to provide a fourth meal later at night to you when no one else in the house eats at that time.

It sounds like she's being greedy and taking the pee a little. I'm jealous that she's not the size of a house eating as much as she does!

When do you pay her? the reason I ask is that we pay ours on a Friday night. We then use that time or a 'feedback session ie what worked well this week/ what didn't. Could you use the next pay day to sit down and say you want to review how its going. Praise her for the positives then add in the negatives E.G We've noticed you cook after 8pm. I'm very sorry but we're not happy with this Could we request if you are hungry after your main meal at 6pm you have 1 bowl of cereal but no cooking at 10pm and then give her more positives. This is a proven management technique which I'm sure has some intelligent consultative name which I forget but I call it the feedback sandwich. Good - bad- good. Using that you should be able to put in corrective behaviour at any stage.

Is it possible to buy the basics then bring home main meals (food needed) when you have finished work. Crumbs, she is eating alot...hide some of the food? Neighbours fridge. Otherwise talk to her...or create a food allowence, tell her you are cutting back or taking part in a healthy eating scheme. Good luck!

I have had two APs who did this. One was greedy and overweight, and the other was probably bulimic, looking back (even raided the special food I had put by for Xmas, and also started underfeeding the children and eating most of their dinners herself, and they were too young to really be able to tell me - I only found out when I caught her in the act ).

The thing is, it's easy to scoff mountains of food when you're not paying for it, so I would consider simply not doing a great deal of shopping. I find that usually works. I do agree it's dispiriting though.

I am happily AP free at the moment!!

PS During the bulimic AP's stay our food bill went from £80-£100 a week for five people to about half as much again, and one week a memorable £185. The financial side of things is a nightmare, I do agree.

She also did this thing where she read in a magazine that eating fish three times a week was good for you, and then bought about £50 worth of it, only to completely ruin it during the cooking process because she couldn't be arsed to follow the recipe (in her mother tongue!!) so our dinner had to go in the bin.

She also used all the printer ink for her digital photos, reconfigured the family PC so it was set up as if it were her own, with lots of memory-hungry software installed, and stole all our batteries and stamps. And lost the mobile phone we lent her. And took the town bike we had lent her off road and wrecked the wheel, only to wreck it again by not parking it sensibly so it got knocked over. And left the garage door open so all our bikes were stolen.

You can probably work out why I never let them have a car ...

When I've had aupairs I've always set out what they can eat/can't eat before hand eg the kids lunch food, unopened packets of things in the fridge.
I tell them I have to plan the week's food carefully, I'm happy to buy in more of what they want but they can't just simply help themselves without asking as it throws out my weekly shop.
I've told them to tell me if they want anything specifically for them. For example one lovely Thai AP loved chicken and lived of it and rice so I bulk bought those for her every week