Question about au pair étiquette.... Post Reply

[newAPuser]

So we are relatively new to using an Au Pair. We had one previously who was perfect that she did what we needed with the kids and then kept pretty much to herself during her free time and especially weekends. She had to leave due to her student visa expiring however and now we have a new one.

She is great with the kids and we like her but just tends to "hang out" with us all the time she is free (which is a lot). She would sit in the lounge with us on Saturdays and Sundays which is our only real "family time" and would eat all meals with us - and its just getting a tad bit annoying.

What is the best way to go about it? It's not personal as no matter who the au pair was we would like to at least have weekends where we are just able to be with the family. I know they are supposed to be "part of the family" but I have heard most of my friends who have au pairs who do manage to allow some privacy to the host family. Are we asking too much?

She spends most of the time in the said family areas just looking at her phone/playing with some game handset so not sure why she can't do that in her quite large room. She has a couch, bed, table, etc. Not sure how to go about it all as the kids like her and she is a great help. It's just awkward as I just want to spend some quality family time with kids and husband...

What do other au pairs think? And other parents who have au pairs? I think next time we will specify we want more privacy ... I guess we were naive to think that she would understand the need for privacy? She is not even that young!

Any advice would be gratefully received!

[GABS]

Hi,
I've also been an aupair (2005-2007) and It Can be a bit difficult at the beginning until you settle in and make friends , know the area and how everything works in UK. I am
Not sure how long your au pair has been in the UK for , if she has friends, knows the area etc.
The family I worked for was great and they wanted me to be around all the time and used to take me out everywhere with them in the weekends , especially the first couple of months. I felt a bit awkward as everything was new to me and felt Like they need their privacy but they always insisted I go out for family dinners, picnics , parties and I did that for a while until I made friends and started going out with them instead ) but still attended all family dinners, birthday parties , always went out for dinner for my birthday etc.The family always treated me like a member of the family , an older child if I can say so and they still are like a second mum and dad to me . You need to remember that she is by herself , no family or friends so she might feel comfortable being around you and your family instead of being alone in her room. Try encourage her to go out in her free time and explore London ,make new friends ... Maybe some of your friends have au pairs / nannies and you can put her in touch with so she can hang out , out of the house ) or ask her if she would like to take a course ( English or something that she s passionate about) and that will give her the opportunity to go out and meet new people .
I am sure once she has made some friends and is a bit more confident she will always be out and about .
Also If you don't feel comfortable with her being around ,she doesn't feel part of the family and that stops you being yourself then maybe she is not the right au pair for you.
Good luck! Hope everything works out!

[newAPuser]

Thank you for the replies. I guess I am a person who enjoys quiet time reading and chilling out so have a hard time understanding people who don't. So that's a definite learning curve for me. When I was in high school I had to home stay and I definitely felt I had to occupy myself instead of plunging myself into the host family's space all the time. Maybe it's also a cultural thing....

I guess what is most annoying is that she would loudly watch youtube etc on her phone when we are also in the room or skype - which surely is not that acceptable? And she lounges around in her PJs all day when we are all dressed and we insist that the children change into day clothes too...and what do you do about table manners? I feel I can't correct my children (slurping, not waiting for others before starting etc) if the au pair is allowed to do it... Maybe I am mean and unflexible....

She does go to some english classes in the area during the day when we are all out anyway and has friends she goes out sometimes at night when we are about to go to bed. So I guess it will be a matter of time when she does go out in the day too... I guess we were just super lucky with the old au pair... and we just need to adapt ourselves. Wish we could afford a nanny when the boundaries are clearer I suppose. I realise it's something we have brought upon ourselves so can't complain. Apologies for ranting, wanted to off load a bit and I just wanted some advice so thank you for reading!

[gruffalo's dad]

When I was in high school

American? The cultural thing is more about your desire to avoid confrontation.

Most of your specific complaints are fair enough and I think you should speak with her about them. However, I think it should be along the lines of:
- Please get dressed and don't be in your pjs during the day, unless you are staying in your room.
- If you'd like to skype can you do it in your room rather than where the rest of us are.
I'm assuming that you follow these same practices yourself, so perfectly reasonable to expect that your au pair does the same. I'd deal with this that way rather than saying "Can you get our of our faces at the weekend rather than being under our feet all day?" (not that you would say this, but I think you would like to).

[Seriously?]

I think I could have written most of the first post! We too had a great au pair who couldn't think of anything worse than hanging around with us of an evening and disappeared pronto after dinner. Now our current au pair always sits with us of an evening, and has a very interesting interpretation of personal space! It doesn't matter what boring stuff we watch on TV, she will sit there until we go to bed messaging on her phone. If we are not in the house she sits in her room and never sets foot in the living room!?!

I find it quite annoying, but also accept that this is the way it is and the alternative is that you treat them like a lodger, which I wouldn't feel comfortable with personally. It's a hard balance to get the sociable vs sensible mix right in an 18-20 year old, and at end of the day, the sensible ones who you want in charge of your kids, are more likely to be the home bodies and enjoy hanging out with the oldies! We have a designated "date night" which we have made clear is for us to spend our time together as a couple and her to make herself scarce. She seems to accept that at least. Could you try that approach with your au pair at first so she starts to get a hint that you need your own time.

I think sky ping is definitely off limits in communal living areas, or watching you tube. That should be easy enough to explain without really making her feel uncomfortable. Just blame the noise interrupting your book or tv show. Surely she has to be understanding of that?

Good luck, and when you work out how to manage the situation, please do report back!

[kiwimummy]

We have the opposite problem! Our au pair (who is absolutely lovely by the way, and the children adore her) disappears the minute we walk in the door. Well, we do see her when the wifi goes down, as she comes down to ask for it to be reset.

We had to beg her to have one dinner a week with us. She did for a couple of weeks, but was then always mysteriously full when she arrived home on the designated night.

Maybe it's us....

[curly]

If you are worried about a confrontation why don't you start the conversation by asking her how she is finding the job and if there is anything that she is struggling with. Then you could gently bring it up that she doesn't have to feel obliged to spend every evening with the family. You never know, this may be unknown territory to her too and she might feel she has to come down every evening to be polite!

I have had a few live in nannies and I have found that after the first few months things do settle down and they are more relaxed in the environment.

It is completely fair enough to ask her to skype somewhere else.

Good luck, if she is a great au pair then it is worth having a conversation.

[C'est moi]

We've had both scenarios - one who drank tea and ate biscuits with us every night in front of the tele ( we all loved it) and another who was in her room every second she wasn't on duty. I agree with a previous poster who suggested positioning it from the 'don't feel obligated to hang out with us' angle...
You guys may end up needing to retire to your own room for more private time if she won't take the hint. Good luck!

[C'est moi]

On the table manners/ getting dressed thing, I think you need to just keep insisting with your children and hope (again) she reads between the lines. I do not like open confrontation, but I found with some passive aggression ( eg ranting to myself about the state of the house when I wanted our old au pair to do more) we got to where we needed to. I would even try casually bringing up things like how important you feel it is for people to get up and dressed to face the day on a day when she's not in her pjs.... Need to be subtle of course but I've definitely found with our au pairs that hinting and suggestion has worked well.

[newAPuser]

Thank you so much for all the helpful replies. A sit down chat along the lines of "don't feel obliged" is going to happen soon and I do like the hinting suggestion about the state of the house, though I have tried this a few times already. It's probably also a language thing as I say quite loudly to my son "you must wait for everyone to sit before starting" and "don't slurp or make rude sounds when you eat"... but she doesn't seem to notice. I am also hoping that my son would sometime blurt out (as they often do) "But XX is slurping/starting, etc...!"... ah all the things we have to do.

And re the suggestion about having to retire into our own space, well that's what we actually ended up doing last Sunday as she sort of took up the entire sofa lying around in her PJs....

[oab]

I'm not an expert - we have avoided getting an aupair because of the loss of privacy.
But i do think you need to explain to her nicely that things like slurping/staying in PJs all day/watching youtube loudly in the lounge are not acceptable in your household as you don't want your little ones picking up these habits. I think it's perfectly normal to explain these things, most au pairs are young girls who may have not left home before this job, so they may not realise these are bad manners/habits. And afterall, this is your household, so the same rules that apply to you/your husband/your children need to apply to the au pair too, otherwise its havoc.
As for her spending all her free time with you... this is not an easy one to resolve...i like a previous suggestion of finding her a course (something she's interested in - cooking, make-up, photography - there are so many options in London!) that she can do during the day at the weekends.
Good luck!

[Stripyshirt]

Do you have a tv in the au pair's bedroom? If not you might consider getting one as that might encourage her to spend more evenings in her room rather than in the living room with you.

[HikingGirl]

I was an exchange student in a different culture for a year, and had lots of issues in some of the families I stayed in. (The programme existed of 4 host families in 12 months). Most problems came from them tiptoe-ing around issued until they had ballooned into massive issues. They also came from 'silly' rules. As an 18 year old I didn't have the social skills to figure out what was and was not accepted in a different family at all. When they did tell me what was and was not accepted they came down on my like a ton of bricks. 'This is the rule in our family, and from now on we expect you to do that too'. In my family no one had EVER spoken to me like that. We were asked to do things, talked about things, debated about things.

Just sit her down, gently explain how you feel, and give her a chance to explain how she feels.

I doubt she will take any passive-aggressive hints. Why not just explain what it's like to raise children? You are a parent, you have certain rules, and it's harder for you to explain those if the au-pair has different rules. So perhaps she could just adhere to those rules too when the kids are around.

Now if she had been eating her supper in a certain way for the past 18 years, one conversation isn't going to miraculously teach her new table manners. Do give her some gentle reminders, and time to adjust.

Explaining she can be in her room if she likes, or away with friends is definitely a good one. It's often hard to know what is and isn't expected.

Not having privacy is hard though. It does come with having an au-pair. But it may be just as hard for her. Try solving it together, and approaching it as a shared issue: 'How can we live together best?'. What does she need, what do you need?

I so wish my host parents had taken the trouble actually telling me what was bothering them, before putting my out on the street with my suitcase! Apparently I had been getting on their nerves for months, without ever knowing. What a horrid feeling that was! I thought I was trying to be nice and accommodating.

[firsttimerSW11]

I'm late to this party but if you join the SW18 mums network on Facebook there is a regular post about Au Pair meet ups. Not sure where you are but they usually happen in Tooting and from what I've read they are a roaring success. Why don't you suggest that? Incidentally, the organisers of abovementioned Au Pair evening suggest the host mother give the au pair £20 to get them to go, for a few drinks, relax, make a few friends etc. Not a bad thought, methinks.

Incidentally I worked as an Au Pair in France 20 years back and used always hang out with my host family. I was only 18 and if they had said to me that they;d prefer me to give them a bit of family time, I'd definitely have done so, it just didn't occur to me. But I'd hope they'd have been very delicate and nice about it. Instead of saying you don't want her hanging out with them, suggest meet ups etc.