third au pair and feeling lost....tell me your success stories

[lovesunnydays]

As above we are now on our third au pair.The last two were just summer positions but now we have gone for a more permanent post as I really like the au pair arrangement now the children are older (4 DCs aged 9-14).

My only problem is that despite each of the au pairs all being very nice, clean, polite and charming they are really, really dull and not at all 'into' children despite all their experience of kids camps, balloon tying, kindergarten, beach clubs....

They have all come to us via Au Pair World and wonder how you have all found your au pairs if not through this website, which I believe is very popular.

I was very thorough when recruiting and of course got all the answers I wanted but just seem to get saddled with the boring types who literally just want to learn English and get their room and board for minimum input into our family. I feel we are putting alot into the arrangement in terms of providing food, car, fuel, full board etc so would like our au pair to be some sort of friend to the children. That was the original arrangement along with an hour a day house work and feel that our AP is not keeping his side of the deal?

Really want to hear of some au pair success stories to restore my faith...

What exactly are your au pair's hours and duties?

We found ours on aupairworld and they've all made some sort of relationship with the children - our current au pair took a couple of months to get her confidence with them but she and dd have really bonded now.
Does your AP spend much time alone with the children? I find that ours is much more relaxed and natural with them if I'm not around. Do you think the age of your children may have something to do with it - I know our dd wants more attention and therefore is easier to play with than our older ds (who is happy entertaining himself by reading/pc games etc).

AP does 25 hours a week. One hour in the morning taking kids to school and tidy kitchen, 1 hour housework to be done whilst DCs at school (but often done when they are home..) and then collect DCs from school and look after them for about 2 hours.

I have asked him to do homework with DCs, to encourage a bit of interaction and to develope a relationship with them but there always seems to be an excuse and of course the DCs prefer to do homework with me as they don't have 'said' relationship with AP. Vicious circle really....

Could you try giving the AP directed time to bond with the children? Maybe in the holidays, take a couple to the zoo, take them to the cinema, go to get the haircuts etc. Something fun that forces them to spend time together, rather than time in the house where they probably all would rather be doing their own thing.

yes think the age of the DCs may be an issue. They don't need playing with and entertaining but I just don't like the way our AP speaks to them in a monotone voice, just asking questions or giving commands.

He is not a bad person by any means, DH thinks he is fine, just very very dull and not really what I wanted.

Feel we are in a difficult position now as I am getting to the stage where I don't really like him and want him to go but DH feels he can put up with him, which to be fair is OK but I do feel that part of the deal was to be a companion for the children. True, they are older and so not as maleable as younger children but still couldn't he just make an effort?

missus - good point and I am going to use the Easter hols as a bit of a test for him. I will arrange some activities and days out for him and see how we get on.

E - coli, yes he does spend time alone with the children as I know he is a bit nervous of me (I will speak as I find at times...) but I have had reports from the DCs and overheard AP being quite short and brusque with them.

I feel it is time to move on but feel nervous about getting another disinterested AP. DH thinks he wants to stay with us until he finishes his language course as he has paid out quite a lot for it and exams. But this can't be the best reason to keep him, surely?

If he's nice, clean, polite and does his jobs then it sounds like you're getting a pretty good deal - I think you could easily find yourself with someone much worse (read some of the au pair threads on here!).

How old is he? He sounds rather like most monosyllabic teenage boys (men tend to be less with the chat than women!) but on the plus side he's clean, polite and does what he's asked to!

Of course he should be doing his housework while the DCs are at school and while you're chatting to him about that try to find things he can do with the DCs. Doing homework with them may be a challenge for him - is he academic? And is his english good enough to cope? The monotone may be due to his native language not having a great range of expression or his lack of confidence/not knowing appropriate expression in English. I have a German friend who can be incredibly enthusiastic about something but still speaks with a very limited range of expression in English.

Even as a fairly experienced nanny I find it a challenge getting children your DCs age to actually interact with me unless I'm playing on the wii/ps with them or we're out the house!

frakkin - thanks for your insight.

I do think that the DCs ages do have something to do with our problem as they can easily amuse themselves at home. BTW he is German and seems to have an unfortunate way about him when he is expressing himself in English.

we do get the monotone "get dressed!" instead of "would you like to get dressed?" sort of thing, seems to rub everyone up the wrong way but I have spoken to him about this (gently) so he should have a clue on this one.

As you say I will see how it goes over the Easter hols and if there really is no fun in him at all he may have to go. I know I am fortunate that he is clean and polite etc I just imagined that he might have 'some' life about him....find his presence a little depressing if I am honest.

I feel bad for being so critical but as a working mum dearly want a replacement carer who seems to like my DCs.

german etiquete is quite different to ours dont forget! so my german teacher told me

I also use au pair world, but I do take up refs and fly the intended au pair in for the weekend to see what they are really like before I offer them a job.

Unless I like them and they get on with the kids they dont get a job. Also, au pairs are not nannies - I had a fab nanny for the kids for 5 years - and you do have to spell out what you expect and keep re inforcing it.

My current au pair is scottish - she is living here with her bf and my boys love him to bits as he is always up for a game of something. I had a german au pair who was lovely also, she has just been back for a holiday for 2 weeks. I think there is a bit of luck in it but £100 in travel expenses to see what they are like is worth it if they are looking after my kids.

IME homework is always a challenge unless the au pair is really bright. Mine do most with her but I always pick up on the difficult stuff when I get home as usually au pairs cant help much (sometimes neither can I - thank god for google!)

I have had a succession of French girls and with the exception of the first, all have been ok. Getting on with the children is really important, and if his manner isn't right, can you talk to him about it. could even be in the context of improving his English an intonation etc?

I got them from Au Pairs by Pebbles and have no complaints.

We only ever had one but she was lovely. We found her via an agency called Brick Au Pairs which specialised in Hungarians (though they don't cover the whole country so this may or may not be possible for you). She was older than usual (27ish) which apparently is very common among Eastern European au pairs and had experience with special needs children - our children aren't SN but it looked like a good sign. (I binned any who specified that they wouldn't be prepared to come to a family where the children had disabilities because it just seemed to me to be the wrong attitude.)
I looked at a lot from various different agencies and I thought the photos were very telling - lots of the applicants had pics of themselves looking glamorous but there were a few that showed them actually hanging out with children. The photos of our lovely AP showed her on the floor playing trains with one little boy and crammed onto a kids' roundabout with another and smiling her head off both times - you could tell there was no way she was faking her love of children!

Hmm. Does sound very much like English communication could be a problem. We British are very peculiar in our 'would you like to...' or 'please...'. Other cultures just tell you what to do and get on with it. German styles of treating children are also very different and from what I've seen they're expected to be independent and amuse themselves fairly early on so what he's doing is probably very acceptable to him. If you think about it prefacing an imperative (because we do actually mean 'get dressed now') with a conditional question is quite advanced English and a cultural expression. Other langauges just cut the nicety off - we would say 'would you like a drink?', the French say 'you want a drink?'. Maybe he needs to watch more English TV to pick up the add-on expressions! When you're talking to him around the house you can gently help him by overemphasising the politeness aspect of communication - hopefully he'll pick it up - and when he does bark orders gently correct it not as a 'please don't bark at the children' but as a language issue - 'in English we say X....you say it. Good, now see if you can remember that' and get the children on board with helping to improve his English. I promise you it will have a knock on effect to his general attitude.

Don't feel bad for being critical but do learn from this experience. I know that each person is different but there are some cultural generalisations that I personally would rather assume hold and be proved wrong than assume that people are very Anglo in their output. It's not a case of going round thinking 'oh she's French so she'll definitly be like this' or 'oh he's Italian so he'll do this or say that', it's more being aware of the culture they're coming from. Different countries have very different ways of child-rearing and there may just be fundamental incompatabilities. I think the British are very involved, expect to play lots with children, very patient and demonstrative compared to a lot of cultures. This isn't saying you should stereotype BTW! It's more having an awareness in the back of your mind that they won't think the way you do automatically.

We try and recruit APs (all through APW) who already have quite good English so their motivation is to be in UK and working with kids.

Success stories - current Australian AP spent 4 hours making a Dalek cake on Monday evening for DS1's birthday yesterday (3 months ago she had never seen a dalek) - it did look fantastic.

You just don't do all the polite "would you like/could you please" stuff in German - it's a much more direct language. I think you need to give him some leeway on that!

How long is his English course? It does seem a bit unfair to me to sack someone just for being dull, especially when they're quite vulnerable and living with you in another country and have paid for a course themselves.

just a quick point about not joining the family in the evenings. have you specifically invited him to join you - our lovely German au pair used to assume that we wanted time alone unless we asked her to join us - once we realised we explained that we sometimes closed doors to conserve heat not to drop hints.
Also you can appear dull if you can't express yourself well.
We also play family board games sometimes and include our ap in those so she gets used to being with us.
HTH

Lots of success stories here. AP1 - she's 25 now, still drops us the odd email and tries to visit us every summer. DS still remembers her fondly and we have a treasured 'photo book' which she sent us after she left showing DS laughing on every page. AP3 - mad Spanish chap. Spent 8 months with us and I think his English was worse by the time he left than it had been at the start. But everything was a 'no-problemo' and done fairly badly but with a happy smile. The bathroom was always a tip by the time he had finished 'playing' with the kids at bathtime, but they went to bed happy with smiles on their (not always so clean) faces. AP4 is brilliant - cheerful and helpful and clearly adores the kids. Three other mums in the school have told me they would love to have him look after their kids if we ever want to move on, and I am sure some other mums have probably approached him behind my back.

Trick is to be clear about what you really really want and to compromise on everything else. And I am ruthless in sticking to a very small handful of nationalities - countries where mums working is not unusual, or where the national culture is a 'fun' one (so to speak). Sweden and Norway are my top two, then Spain. Have also forayed into French but not found oodles of personality in either of my experiences. Finnish girl was awful and Turkish girl was mad. If they don't fit in temrs of personality I am now ruthless in clearing them out quickly (although I do it in the nicest possible way of course)

we have just recruited AP number 4 from abacus au pair agency.

I have found that the girls that come through an agency are more serious about au pairing as they have to pay costs to the agency too. This helps weed out the time wasters.

We have had German girls and they have all been very different in their approach. One was very good at doing arty rafty stuff. One was very sporty with the kids and the current one loves to play top trumps and read with them.

Good luck

We've had some great au pairs over the years - all seem to have been characterised by a real willingness to help out and an ability to sort things out for themselves. The girls who didn't really fit in so well were those who just didn't seem to have much initiative to get on with things for themselves.. I don't mean duties here - I mean wanting to seek out things to do, places to visit and things to do - find the local library, tennis club, aerobics classes, local sports clubs and so on.

For the last four or five years we have been using an agency called 1st Choice where you can see videos of each candidate. It does give you a much better feel to spot someone who has that bit of spark and see those who speak passionately about themselves and what they are looking for. I can only think of one girl in the last 5 years who was not really that 'stimulating' or had much initiative but she was quite a sweet person in reality - just neeed more mothering.. Our others have all been really generous, good natured, very warm and loving types who always seemed to want to help out whenever they could. One girl called Maria looked after the house while we were away on holiday, when we came back she had spring cleaned the house from top to toe, swept up all the garden paths, bagged up all the various piles of garden rubbish, washed down all the garden furniture and rearranged almost every kitchen cupboard and drawer so they were all neat and tidy.. My DH is awful for his man drawers - his face was a picture.! She had even put all the kids trainers through the washing machine in her desire to get on with things.. Lovely girl through and through.

thank you for all your interesting comments - sorry couldn't get on here for a couple of days.

I think we will stick with our au pair for the time being, I know what you mean about getting rid of an AP for being dull....i have been turning this over in my mind and trying to reason if this is acceptable or not.

On one hand it makes life a lot easier if the extra person in your house appears happy and interested in what is going on, my own sensitivities make me think that probably we are not inspirational enough (maybe?). The flip side is that we just muddle on, he seems happy enough and the arrangement kind of works, just that he is not a singing/dancing kind of AP....

I have had the same probs. It's now got to the point where I can;s stand to have another useless lazy au pair in the house.

I actually interviewed one. In our email exchanges i told her all about what had gone wrong with previous aupairs, their lack of enthusiasm ideas etc. Then when she cam here for an interview i stressed the type of person we needed.I.E very enthusiastic and cheerful. She told me how much she loved kids ( yawn yawn) how much they liked her. Then i watched to see how she interacted with mine. It was pretty useless. So she went away and I told her she wasn't what we were looking for and she was SURPRISED.
I told her that next time she went for an interview where it was very clearly stated was was required for the job that she actually demonstrated those qualities.

Some au pairs are gems. Most are crap IME.

I had one who complained she didn't know what to eat in the house despite me repeatedly asking her what she wanted me to get for her. She said she didn't eat. I watched her bum grow in size to the extent that she couldn't move well. Christ knows what she thought, she was obviously stuffing her face with something!!

I bet he thinks the same for you and your family. Dull! Why dont you make things interestig for him rather then expect him to sell his soul to you. ITs an agreement, he is doing what he suppost to do(clean, fect, babysit, etc). You can not ask someone to bond with your kids (it should come natutally) especialy, if they(your kids) can entertain themselves.

This really annoys me. Families hire an Aupair and expect to own them and use them as they please. Feel sorry for them really.

Where does finding someone dull equate to the OP expecting to 'own them' and 'use them as they please'?

Many many AP's seem to have absolutely no affinity with children at all, and I suspect look for AP jobs primarily to find a way to leave home. We had an AP who I introduced to the riding club, the young farmers club, the college, the salsa club, the swimming club, the gym and to 6 people of her own age. And she refused to leave the house to do any of it more than once (all of it was paid for). When I suggested she take DS for a walk in the orchard one summer's day she couldn't understand why. She spoke perfect English but to her mind it was pointless going for a 'walk', you only walked to go 'somewhere'. In her spare time she would sit in the front room watching re-runs of 'Friends' and when I asked what she used to do in her home country she replied that she did much of the same, but hadn't been happy at home because her mum was forever telling her to go out and do something. Then she told us she didn't like little boys, only little girls and the fact we had one of each was why she didn't like spending time with them. She eventually went home and got a job in Mcdonalds. Now, it was her perogative to be dull as dishwater, but when the job description says clearly (as it does in my own adverts) 'be of a cheerful disposition and love kids' I consider myself and others fully entitled to whinge when they turn out to be anything but.