Au Pairs - anyone got experience of them?

[CountessDracula]

OK, in my attempt to save cash I am considering hiring an au pair and putting dd into nursery full time instead of having a full time live out nanny + a cleaner + a dogwalker. I would save approximately £9000 per year

On downside have a wonderful nanny who dd adores and I don't want to lose but that's my decision I suppose.

Can't just have nursery though as work odd hours and they only seem to do 8 to 6 (which is fine sometimes but not others).

Plus need cleaning and dogwalking done. 25 hours per week would be fine as would only need the au pair to drop off/pick up dd when I am working away (2 or 3 days a week, the rest of the time I work from home), do a couple of night's a week babysitting and walk the dog and do the cleaning/ironing. So she would have plenty of spare time to pursue language courses etc.

What I am wondering is, what is it like having someone living in your house? How do you trust someone, can you get pukka references etc (I knew the nanny for 2 years before dd was born so didn't have that problem). And is it ok for them to have occasional sole charge of an 18 month old?

And will I have to give up my lovely bedroom or are they happy with a small (ie 10 x 8 ft) room. Do they hang around all the time? Could I bear it?

[CountessDracula]

Oh and am I bonkers upsetting the status quo just for cash?

[Mo2]

CD - I've had 2 au pairs and both have been fine, although our current one is by far the best. It's definitely the best solution for us right now (2 DSs - 4 and 18 months - in nursery).

I'm afraid I don't have much time to post now. Have you checked the archive, 'cos I definitely posted lots on this once before (either under this name or 'Motherofone'.

If you do decide to go this route I have things like offer letter templates/ chorelists/ house rules etc which I'm more than happy to send you offline - just contact me.

[CountessDracula]

Thanks Mo2, will look it up

[CountessDracula]

Anyone else?

[MrsWobble]

We've just changed from a daily nanny to a live in au pair and, two weeks on, it seems to be working OK.

My children are older than yours (I think) as our reason for doing it was that the youngest started full time school in Jan and I couldn't bear the thought of paying nanny rates for her to sit on my sofa watching my telly drinking my coffee with her friends.

Like Mo2 I can also send contract/houserules etc if that would be helfpul.

We found ours through an agency and interviewed her over the phone. I also checked references by phone. She has what was our spare room which is reasonably large if a bit dingy (it's semi basement).

[150percent]

No direct experience of overseas au pair, though have had girls of a similar age living in (rent-free on the basis of helping with certain chores/baby etc).

Room size hasn't seemed too important, but access to hot water and plenty of plug sockets is a must. One of the girls was as thin as a rake but had a huge appetite. Food was probably my one regret of the arrangement - it was so hard to keep up with what was being eaten and needed replenishing - I came home many times to prepare dinner to find that a key ingredient had been ingested by ravenous lodger!

Sole charge: really depends on experience. Mine worked in a pre-school yet still seemed unable to look after smaller ones. Found ds1 strapped into highchair in front of telly with an ice lolly whilst the girl looking after him was in the kitchen. Not the standard of care I would have hoped for. Also I had one girl who didn't really think about child safety eg leaving her medication on kitchen table within reach of ds, iron on the floor etc..

As for cleaning etc, standards really vary and it will takes weeks of "nagging" to get things to the standard that you want. And watch for ironing etc - had a number of items ruined.

I found in the end that it didn't work for me. The downside of having my space invaded (and my larder raided) wasn't matched by the upside of help round the house and the odd childminding. But the financials were different for me as a SAHM. £9k is a lot of dosh...

If you do go for an overseas au pair then from what I've seen of other expereinces, if you need a driver get a copy of the licence, and preferably a reference to the standard of driving in advance! And make sure that expectations on cleaning/childminding are set out in advance - one firend had an au pair who refused to clean until it was pointed out that she had signed a contract.

[MeanBean]

I have had an au-pair and am just about to get another one, largely because I have a flexible (working from home) job and can't afford any other flexible option.

My experience with my last au-pair was largely positive. I'd say that you need to be very tolerant of someone in your house (if you're not, don't even consider it), and also, you need to remember that these are very young girls, who are doing the job because they want to learn English, not because they want a career in childcare (although some of them do). So they need a lot more guidance than the average professional childminder. However, in some ways, that can make it easier, because they don't have pre-conceived notions of how to do it, so they do it your way, rather than theirs.

Having said that, my au-pair was a very constructive, pro-active person, and she really got to know the children well - she made suggestions about changing DD's nap times, for example, and things like that, before I had thought of it (maybe I'm just a crap mum!) If you get someone who comes from Eastern Europe, they tend to be much more mature and used to looking after children, they don't find them frightening or alien.

I was very careful to make sure that the au-pair didn't do more than 25 hours until I knew her really well and trusted her (and then paid her more for it), because I think it is a tough job looking after kids, and you need to make sure that you don't load someone so young and inexperienced with too much responsibility.

I had one downside - my au-pair bonded incredibly well with DD, but not with DS, which became more and more of an issue, and in the end, was the major reason why I got rid of her. In every other way she was perfect, but in the end, I couldn't inflict a carer on my DS who actually lived in his house and whom he didn't like. The problem there was that she didn't like him at first, he picked up on it, started to dislike her, then when she changed her behaviour to him, it was too late - he just didn't like her, and after about four months of her being consistently nice to him, it just became obvious that he was never going to like her.

In retrospect, it was her own immaturity in showing her dislike of him that was the problem, coupled with my lack of understanding of her inexperience - and my lack of experience in having an au-pair (she was my first one), and lack of guidance for her - I didn't realise how big a problem it was until it was too late, and I was so pleased that she had bonded so well with DD, that I behaved like an ostrich with the DS issue. You live and learn.

And no, you don't have to give up your nice bedroom! Most au-pairs would rather have a small crap room, bad house, lousy furniture and mendicant single mother, than an unwelcoming, unfriendly family. They are young, new to the job, in a foreign country, far from friends and family, unable to speak the lingo (at first), and they need a lot of support and understanding. They want to be welcomed into the family, without being suffocated by it. It's a difficult balancing act, but it can be done, and it's very rewarding - people have been know to keep in touch with ex-au-pairs years afterwards.

If it helps, there are a number of web-sites which have chat-areas like this one, where parents can sound each other out about pitfalls. Being crap, I can't remember any of their names, but if you do a google search on au-pairs, you'll find lots.
Good luck whatever you decide...