As host parents we feel responsible for keeping our au pairs safe, since they are under our roofs and with our families. However, we recognize that what they do on their own time is (largely) their own business.

Au pairs deserve social autonomy, privacy, and the chance to experiment with new things and new relationships. But, these same au pairs who want autonomy can be a little naive about the ways of the world (or even just the ways of the USA). Many are simply too starry-eyed to make consistently good decisions, especially when it comes to dating.

Add to these concerns the horror stories we hear about “guys you meet online”, and concerns about cyber-safety, and we are understandably cautions about romances that au pairs strike up with people they meet online.

On the other hand, purportedly One in Six marriages in the US these days is between people who met online. Sure, that figure comes from Match.com, but even if it’s inflated, it’s still supports the competing claim that you really can begin a healthy relationship online.

• So, what advice do you give an au pair about relationships with people s/he’s meeting online?

• What kind of behavior do you approve of? What limits do you set? How do you help your au pair navigate the world of online relationships?

Here’s the story that prompts the topic:

Let me preface this by saying that we have a nanny, not an au pair. Our nanny is a former au pair, but since we are in Canada and there is no comparable program, she is a nanny here. That said, throughout our communications before she came to join us, we mutually decided that we preferred the au pair format (care-giver is more a part of the family than an employee) over the nanny relationship. Our nanny lives with us. She is our first experience with live-in care.

Our nanny has been with our family for approximately one month. So far we really like her! Our children adore her, she does the household tasks she is supposed to and is easy to get along with. We’ve had the occasional language issue, and a couple of smaller issues, but nothing serious.

Three weeks before she came to Canada, she met a her “boyfriend” online. He is a student in the US on a student visa. Since my spouse and I are both school teachers and have Spring Break off, we asked if she would like that week for travel or vacation. She declined, but in that conversation it came out that she had invited her “boyfriend” (someone she has known online for approximately 2 months and whom she has never met) to our hometown for the week before Spring Break.

She let it slip that while she didn’t plan to have him stay at our home, she planned to have him meet with her and the children at nearby parks. I immediately let her know that under no terms were my children to meet with a man we had never met. Period. She agreed and that has been the end of the having him come to our hometown idea.

She now wants to fly to another city to have a romantic weekend with her “boyfriend.” While I understand that I am not her mother, we have had a hostmum relationship (in our short time together).

Frankly, I think that it is a stupid idea to meet a stranger in a strange city for a getaway. The safety implications are clear to me, but seem inconsequential to her.

What role is a hostmum to take? Were she a nanny, I would treat her like an employee and say, ” See you Monday!” She has introduced me as a hostmum and has encouraged the relationship as a “hostmum” over that of employer… What are we to do?

See also:
In Loco Parentis? Your Parental Responsibilities when your AP’s behavior challenges your values
Your Au Pair’s Friends: Key to Her/His Happiness?
The Boyfriend-Back-Home: Always bad news?

Image: bear chat rooms from jenny downing

Who needs to snoop in an au pair’s room or flip through an au pair’s journal, when there is Facebook to tell us our au pair’s inner thoughts?

Not that any of us would intentionally snoop.  (As we’ve already discussed, there are very few and very specific times when snooping seems even remotely reasonable.)

And, it’s not really snooping when an au pair posts information for anyone to see. When an au pair shares thoughts and feelings on Facebook and they’ve already ‘friended’ — that information is fair game.

Or is it?

Host Mom Julie asks:

I’ve got a question for the gang:

What do you think about looking at what comments your au pair puts on Facebook about the experience of living with you? If that information is all publicly viewable, so that anyone can see it?

For the record, I would never read her diary or invade her privacy in her room.

Our au pair often posts on Facebook her feelings about being with our family. She also posts on a Facebook page provided by our Au Pair program. Sometimes she writes in her native language, which I also speak. Although she is very shy in person, our au pair has posted extensively.

I recognize that these sites (especially the one for the au pair program) are for young au pairs venting and I do take comments with a grain of salt. When our au pair said a few things that were not positive about my children, it did not bother me because I know that complaining is part of what people do when working.

Now, we’re in rematch because although she is very nice, our situation is not working well for her.   She’s explained that she wants to be in a home with just one child. We knew that out AP has been very homesick, and we’ve talked about it in her native language. However, we had no idea if the homesickness was getting better. And, we weren’t sure if she was still very unhappy. I really wanted to see how she was feeling about being here, and so I did check the site to see what she’s been saying. It’s how I learned that she really liked us, that she liked or didn’t like certain parts of staying with us and that she wanted to leave.

We are okay with the outcome (being in rematch) and there are no hard feelings. Still, I’m curious what the group thinks about looking for more information about your au pair’s experience, especially in a situation that’s respectful and not angry.

I’m wondering, because although these pages and this information is totally public, I still feel bad for knowing thoughts she didn’t tell us. Thanks!

-Julie

[This may all be a moot point, now that Facebook has created the option of having an inner circle of friends that other friends won't know they aren't a part of. Now, your au pair (and your child, and yourself) can create a smaller network of epople who get the really honest stuff versus the self-presentational, audience-aware stuff. But still ...]

Families and Au Pairs, do you think a host parent should keep an eye on an AP’s Facebook for insights?

See Also:
You’re on YouTube! Is that okay?

Is Snooping in your Au Pair’s room ever okay?

Checking Facebook from ialja
I Like this! from ialja

We all have a sense of what kinds of issues regularly present host parents & au pairs with relationships challenges — food, cars, late nights being chief among these. I’m becoming aware of a new category of challenges, centering on ‘Who pays for a mistake?’

We’ve had mistakes related to car damage, lost cell phones, hair-dye stained walls, and more… and here comes a mistake related to apparently illegal downloading.

Behind each of these ‘mistake’ challenges is the question of “Who was at fault?”:

• Should the host parents have warned the au pair? Should they have had something in their handbook?
• Could an agency have screened or trained for this issue to prevent it from happening?
• Should the au pair have inquired before s/he did something? Or, been quicker to make changes?
• Or, all of the above?

Here’s the specific situation:

I am an au pair from Düsseldorf, Germany. I live in my guest-family since December 2009 and on 29 October I go back home to Russia.

One story has happened to me recently and I don’t know with who can I consult. I have/had internet in my guest-family. I have downloaded movies there. I had no idea that in Germany it is forbidden to download movies and my guest-family did not warn me. Then we received a warning from Lawyer Office where stands that my guest-parents should pay for it.

My guest-parents have consulted with their lawyer and they have decided that they do not pay me money for September and last month October. Furthermore, they do not tell me what’s going on with this case.

I would like to ask You, what can I do? Do I have any rights? Can the guest-family exact such a fine from me? Could you please advise me something, because I do not know how should I behave.
Of course, if I knew that in Germany downloading is forbidden, I would have never done it.

I had a similar situation with our very first au pair, who racked up almost $900 in phone charges to a Psychic hotline. Yes, almost $900. To a Physic Hotline.

In one of my best shows of indignation and consumer advocacy, i wrote several scathing letters to the phone company and hotline company, explaining that she was under 18 (not true technically, but true socially), that she did not understand English, and thus that she couldn’t have entered into a valid contract with them. I also harangued them with complaints about their pricing structure: $1 for the first mine, $10 for every subsequent minute, and a policy of scheduling the next call at the end of the current one. it was a system designed for exploitation, that worked until I threatened them. We ended up paying nothing beyond the first $1.

in this Au Pair in Germany’s situation, at the very least her host parents need to discuss with her how to pay for the fines. They shouldn’t just take it out of her already earned salary– that’s punishment. Also, it might really put the au pair in a bad situation if she was expecting to have that money and needed it to return home.

Rather, they should arrange a payback schedule where some portion comes out of each weeks pay, that they au pair can plan for and agrees to. This would serve as compensation, not punishment, for the mistake.

Unfortunately, they are all running out of time– and I bet the Host Parents are thinking that they don’t want to be left holding the bill.

What do you all think this au pair can / should do?

See Also:

Settling Accounts — *Before* she departs
First Day, First Problem, First Opportunity: The $48 phone call
When fault is contested, who pays for damage to the car?
Who pays for what?

Images: karate kid | TK watching movie on…from GoodNCrazy
Untitled from Ken Wingerden

If there is anything about having an au pair — or anyone, really — in the bedroom on the third floor that bothers my DH, it’s noise after 10:30 pm. He is a fussy sleeper, and it drives him nuts to be able to hear a tv, or a phone conversation, while he’s trying to fall asleep. So, we have ‘quiet hours’ (when you turn the volume down), and rugs on the floor, and ask our au pair to close the door of her room and at the top of the steps so that sound doesn’t float downstairs, and that usually does the trick.

Well, actually, let me restate that: The sound-reducing strategies  solve the problem of us not being able to fall asleep, but it doesn’t make sure that our au pair herself gets enough sleep.

For PAHM, her au pair not getting enough sleep has become a serious problem. She writes:

I have a request for a topic….SLEEP!!!

My au pair stays up until all hours of the night and into the early morning. She is usually on the internet. Occasionally I hear her speaking German. At times she is VERY noisy on the phone and it wakes me up and i have to remind her to please be more quiet. Thankfully my kids are sound sleepers and her being up all hours has never woken them

She is often too tired to interact with the kids during the day. I often catch her sleeping on the couch while she is on duty. My boys are 8 and 5 and very active. They get really disappointed when AP is too tired to engage with them, which seems to be nearly everyday.

I have a curfew in my handbook, but it really only applies to going out… it would seem a little too controlling to have a “bedtime”.  After all, she is an adult.

I have suggested to her that she need sleep for good health, to enhance her mood, and even to help her sustain a healthy weight, but none of those arguments has gotten her to go to sleep earlier.

She has been with us for several months, and this has been going on for a long time. Any ideas what I should try next?

morning phone call from xjyxjy
1st time i participate in a tag…from irina slutsky

I’m a believer that different members of a family have different privileges and responsibilities, depending on their roles and their ages. Parents have more privileges than do children, and employers have more privileges than do employees. The rules that we follow can be different, as long as they are fair.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, uses my chef’s knife. When I’m driving, I get to choose the music. And guess what– if I want to leave my lunch dishes in the sink until dinner, I do.

I also have different expectation for myself when the kids are with me than I’ve had for our au pairs when they are on duty with the kids. I’m usually doing many other things in addition to being with my kids (like, oh, cooking, cleaning, laundry, paying bills, stuff like that). I don’t ignore my kids, but I don’t spend all of my time engaging them in educational play.

However, when our au pair is on duty, I do expect her to focus her attention on the kids, since that’s her job.

And, yes, in can be awkward when I expect her to focus 95% on the kids, when some times I focus only 65% on the kids. I think it’s fair, but it is also awkward, precisely because the differences in privileges point out that parents, au pairs and children have different roles in a family.

Host Mom-with-The View sends in this question, hoping for some advice on how to work this out a specific situation, where she wants a   different set of privileges for herself vs. her au pair.

I am expecting my first au pair in 3 weeks. She is 22, German and speaks great English. I have a 21 month old son who is extremely active, and I am expecting a new baby in March. I work 3 days a week outside the home, full time, 12 hours days. As I know her now, I like my au pair very much. I am very eager to start with a positive, fair, respectful relationship.
I am writing out family handbook, and trying to decide if it is fair to tell the au pair that she may not watch TV while the children are awake. I almost always have the TV on when I’m home. I don’t watch shows I have to pay attention to, but I like to have the Today show, or the news on in the background while my son and I play or do other things.

Occasionally, when my son is occupied, I will watch a show I have recorded that does not require much attention, or I will just rewind if I miss a part because I’ve been paying attention to my son. My son rarely watches TV, just the occasional 20 minutes of Sesame Street if I need to remove him from my leg to cook dinner or iron clothes.
My concern is that the au pair will half-ignore the kids if the TV is on and she really wants to pay attention to what is on TV. I know how I am with my son, and that he does not lack for attention or engagement while I have the TV on. I don’t know if this is something the au pair will be able to do.

I want to be fair, but I also think of this as her job, where she should follow the rules, but I’m afraid of the concequences of setting such an obvious double standard. I imagine this double standard will be very evident to her since I will be home for 12 weeks on maternity leave about 4 weeks after she arrives, in addition to the 2 weekdays days every week I’m home with her.

Can I ask her to do something I am not willing to do myself? Thank you for your help!

I can’t even figure out how to begin this post! Where do you start, when you find out that your au pair is sending lewd photos of herself from her/your cellphone, and downloading lewd photos of someone else onto her/your computer?

We got this request for advice from a host mom who is, to put it mildly, distressed:

Our 20 year old AP is very pretty and quite “popular” on Facebook (2000 friends?!).

Recently she asked for help with something on the computer. When I went over, I (unfortunately) caught a glimpse of her chat box and wanted to burn my eyes out. She was having net-sex with some guy. EEK! I’m not sure what level her participation was, but there was some comment by him about her nipples and …

I really didn’t want to know any more. I didn’t say anything, mainly because it’s totally embarrassing and what do I say?

Wait, it gets worse.

So a few days later, I needed to update the firmware on her cell because we changed phone plans. When I picked up the phone, the wallpaper inside is some guy in his underwear!! So I looked in the pictures file and there she is taking self-portraits of herself half-dressed (top half not-so-much dressed).

What do I do?

Do I:

• ignore it,
• tell her about the dangers of sexting,
• inform her that it’s our phone and computer and can’t be used that way?

This is worse than having my own (young) adolescent. At least American teens know that if they send pictures of their boobs around the whole school is likely to see it!   HELP

Ultimately, we’re all going to put this one in our family guidelines, in the computer/phone section… but right now… what do you host parents recommend?

Some resources:
Sexting: New Technology, Old Problem: Calling All Public — and Other — Health Professionals
Nearly 1 in 3 older teens gets ‘sexting’ messages

In the post Help: My Au Pair is Blogging about My Family!, we’ve addressed the question of how folks feel about their au pairs blogging about the family and/or posting information about the family on Facebook or MySpace. Lots of host parents weighed in with their opinions.

We agreed that your family should have a policy about what you are comfortable with, anything ranging from “say & post whatever” to “say and post nothing”. The important thing is that you have a policy that you can ask your au pair to follow.

But what about YouTube?

A mom emailed and asked if we could consider YouTube as a separate kind of medium, maybe requiring its own guidelines.

There are a whole bunch of YouTube videos by AuPairs, some of which feature the family. Here’s one with super-cute host kids …

YouTube videos can be so much fun to make, and they are a great memento for au pairs (and their families).
I think this would be okay with me, as long as there were no names and addresses mentioned, and as long as I didn’t look either really chubby or really b&*%y. But do you think there is anything differnt about a YouTube video, as compared to a blog post or stuff on a MySpace page, that would change how you feel about having your family involved?

What’s your feeling about being on YouTube?