Several times a year we get an email from an au pair who is trapped in an unhappy host family home. The family might be recovering from some tragedy– the loss of a parent, a scary illness, money problems. The parents might be estranged or divorcing, or there might be issues with alcohol abuse and verbal abuse. Host parents can be downright mean, moody and depressive, or all-but-absent.

Whatever the reason for the family’s unhappiness, an unhappy home is a bad place to be an au pair.

Some au pairs are able to manage being in an unhappy home.

• They can detach emotionally or simply hold their breath while they’re on duty.

• They can re-craft their responsibilities so that they make themselves the source of brightness for the host kids.

• They can become actively involved as a positive force for helping the family pain heal. And,

• They can get caught up in the drama and add to it themselves.

It all depends.

What do we advise these au pairs?

When I put myself in the shoes of these au pairs, I usually want to tell them to rematch. I don’t thing that most 19 to 24 year old’s have the ability to protect themselves from the collateral damage that they can experience in an unhappy home. Unless the cause of the problem is something that is healing or can heal, I think au pairs should cut their losses.

But, when I put myself in the shoes of the host child(ren), I want to tell the au pair to stay. if the au pair has a good relationship with the kids, if s/he can indeed be a buffer or a positive force, then I hope s/he can find a way to stay so that the emotional damage to the children is mitigated by the support of a kind caregiver.

First stop for unhappy Au Pairs? The LCC

This is the kind of issue, too, where the burden and maybe blame falls to the LCC and/or the agency. After all, they are supposed to vet each host family to make sure that these are emotionally and physically safe environments ofr au pairs. of course, host parents can and do hide their problems from LCCs, and problems can crop up after families are in the program. Still, the first place an au pair should go is to his or her LCC. The LCC should help the au pair evaluate the situation, and get him or her into rematch if that’s warranted.

Still I wonder — How/

Can we help au pairs inthese situations to make a good decision to stay or go?

What should they consider?

Below, is a long, thoughtful email that we received from an au pair in an unhappy host home.

If you have some suggestions for her, please do share these in the comments.

Dear AuPairMom,

I don’t know where to turn, and I hope you can help. I have been with my host family for almost two months. While I was lucky and able to meet the family (excluding the father) prior to my start date, I of course only saw the family and the children at their best!

First, let me preference this by saying, I really REALLY do like this family. They have been kind, welcoming and I think for the most part the transition to living with them full time has been mostly smooth (obviously there were little things here and there but I will blame them on jet lag and they had nothing to do with the children).

Ok, so here is my problem. I have agreed to be with the family until June. However, there have been a lot of issues ( not involving me) within the family that have made me continually stressed and worried. Let me preference this by saying I work minimal hours – three days a week for four hours each day and two days a week 8 hours, and weekends off. I never go out on the weeknights as I don’t want to disturb the family by coming in when they are asleep and I feel for the most part we have had a very good give and take relationship.

1. The children. I of course fell in love with them from almost the minute I met them. I truly LOVE children. However, they are extremely spoiled, scream when they do not get exactly what they want and can be extremely abusive to each other. One of them has these fits of rage so violent that I have to take the little one and put her in my room until the elder calms down. Luckily the elder one is very slight as I would worry about my own safety should she be bigger. The parents give in to them 100% of the time. Last night they refused to eat dinner.

Instead of being made by the parents to eat dinner they were offered treat cakes and watched spongebob. This is not the first time this has happened. Sugar is used as bribe and a way to make them “calm” down (we are talking spoonfuls of sugar in their tea, and maybe 3 snack cakes BEFORE dinner with some chocolate milk thrown in there for good measure). They don’t want to do homework? Ok, later. (which ends up being 9pm – and the little one is 6). If we are playing in the girls room and the mom enters and they don’t want her there they scream “LEEEEEAVEEE” (in their language) and she leaves – no questions asked. There are no rules here. Mostly I try to love them and provide SOME structure for them, however, without the parents support I can do nothing. (And disciplining them – like timeout – is a no go as they will run to their parents who will let them watch a movie or feed them some more sugar)

2. This is my true worry and concern: the parents (the children are a product of their parents actions and it is not the children’s fault that they cannot cope with this tense and unstructured home – I just try to pour on the love). The parents are continually arguing and bickering and there is no consistency between them. They will undermine each other right there in front of the children. They ignore each other and often completely ignore the children (even after being out of town for days and days they will not say hello to the kids, etc., the kids watch tv from 7pm until bedtime and no one ever talks to them during this time…). When the whole family is home together there is this tension in the air, and if I can feel it, I know the children can feel it.

As I mentioned my hours are really easy, lately, however, they will casually bring up “oh we are both out of town on Saturday”- implying that I will need to work on Saturday too (why can’t they just say “X we will need you on Saturday, is that ok?”). I feel that we are a family of sorts and so I try to be really flexible – I’m not going to say NO way- but I don’t understand why they can’t be more comfortable just asking me. I have stayed in contact with the old Au Pair and she didn’t have any where to escape to on the weekends (I leave late Friday night and return Sunday night or Monday am. It helps me to be excited about the upcoming week) so I wonder if they are just assuming that I should be around?

This is not a happy home. I am not a child. I am in my mid twenties and come from a loving home with guidelines. Of course my parents fought (we were after all a regular family!) however, it was never like this – I knew my parents ultimately loved each other.

Part of me worries that for my mental health I need to unmatch with this family – the other part feels that I’m greatly needed by this family. (Their previous Au Pair said it was the most trying time in her life and it brought her closer to God). I cannot abandon them. I feel for the parents and the children. I don’t want to disrupt the children’s lives anymore by leaving them. And, sometimes, in these rare moments things are ok (its always when the parents aren’t together… and we are enjoying a moment solo with one of the parents).

I am so lost. I feel like I’ve almost been brought into the house to be a buffer, so that the parents don’t have to be alone with each other. If I try to have a more open communication with the mom she always says “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” BUT I AM WORRIED! These are her children’s lives (and mine!). I am witnessing a family falling apart and the kids being left to their own way to medicate themselves: sugar and tv.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Images: Lies and Empty Dreams Some rights reserved by ro_buk [I'm not there] on Flickr

Hi AuPairMom,

We are welcoming our first au pair in about 3 weeks, and we are very excited.

Your blog really helped us decide that this was the right type of child care for our family. We need someone with scheduling flexibility, because we have an always-changing, somewhat odd work week.

I have to leave for work at 6:00 am to get to the hospital in time for the start of my shifts. My husband travels a couple days a week for work, so he is often not home overnight and thus not able to take on ‘early morning’ childcare.

It’s been very difficult to finding someone to come to our house in the early morning. It had come to the point where we were begging, bribbing, and hiring less skilled child care providers just to get someone to be in the house before I left for work in the morning.

A big reason for choosing an au pair as a caregiver is the flexibility of having a live-in person. It’s so much easier to be ‘on duty’ in the early morning if you can be ‘on duty’ in your pajamas.

My concern, though, is whether I should wake our au pair up before I leave for work.

In the past, I liked seeing the sitter’s (tired) face before I left for work. I could be sure that someone was there, and I could quickly go over what needed to be done that day.  Now that we will have someone living in our house, I am not sure if I really need to have her awake and ready for the children as early as 5:45 am. Our children (ages 6 and don’t normally get out of bed until 7:15 am, so the only reason for the au pair to be awake that early is for me to confirm that she’s home and that’s she’s up.

I want to be respectful of the au pair’s needs — and I’m not sure she ‘needs’ to be up at 5:45.

But, if I don’t see her in the morning, how do I know she is actually home?

• What if she stayed out all night and hasn’t made it back?
• What if something hast happened to her?
• What if she sleep through her alarm and the kids are late for school?

I know totally irrational thoughts probably, but I have heard a couple horror stories.

       - Should I just have her call/text me when she is awake and ready to start her day about 7:00am?

       - Should I make a curfew so I know she is in the house the night before?

       - Should I just make her get up at the crack of dawn and hope she doesn’t hate me?

I already made sure that our new aupair is a morning person. Of course, I hope I am getting a wonderful, responsible au pair, but I can’t help being a bit cautious before she gets here, and I get to know her better.

I would love to hear how other host moms and dads handle this situation. ~ EarlyBirdMom

Image: UpCycled Felted Wool Bird, by ForMyDarling, available on Etsy

When is the best time to discuss with a prospective au pair candidate that a host child has special needs?

When your child has special needs, you need to be sure in advance that your au pair is up for the challenge.

Many au pair candidates will indicate on their applications that they are open to caring for a child with special needs, and there are also many au pairs who would be great at it but haven’t indicated their interest. The pool of possible candidates may be quite large. But — and this is a big ‘but’ – Dept of State law requires that an au pair have previous skills and experience relevant to caring for a child with special needs. 

So, to maximize your chances of finding a great au pair, when do you actually start talking with prospective au pairs about your child’s specific needs?

Do you consider only au pairs who are ‘special needs willing’? (I suspect that some agencies, knowing your situation, would require this.)

Do you go straight to an agency that specializes in au pair candidates with special needs skills?

Or, do you wait until you have identified a candidate you like and who’s interested in your general situation, and then lay out the full details?

Let us know what you think, and share some advice with HM in Napa.

Dear AuPairMom -

We’re halfway through our first year as a HF with an amazing, wonderful AP. Part of our motivation to hire an AP was that our son was language delayed. We wanted to find a caregiver that would become part of a supportive extended family for our son, and the nannies we’d used and interviewed just didn’t seem willing to participate that way.

During the match process with our first au pair, we found out that our son (now 3) was diagnosed with PDD-NOS, which has been changed to Autism Spectrum Disorder during our AP’s stay. When we first learned that the delay were more serious than we thought, we wrote our AP (3 months before her arrival) and told her about the changes and what that might mean for her schedule (therapists working with our son, etc.) and offered to release her from the contract. She thanked us for the information and said she still wanted to work with us.

She has turned out to be an amazing and mature young woman and we are sad that she’s chosen not to extend but support her decision to go home for school.

The dilemma is this – now that we have a diagnosis of Autism, how do we approach hiring the next au pair?

Our son has blown away everyone who has worked with him – he’s caught up with his typically developing peers to the point that some of the therapists are telling us to get him out of his mixed typical and special needs preschool (and into the private preschool we’d originally chosen) as fast as we can. Skills that they expected to take 3-4 months to teach have taken 3-4 weeks or less. So, we feel excited that he is learning and growing.

At the same time, he needs firm boundaries and clear communication just like any three year old. He also needs to be prepared thoughtfully for transitions between activities (also like most three year olds).

On top of these needs for our son, our family schedule is unusual. Host Dad is a firefighter/medic, so he’s home and a lot more involved than most of the other Host Families we’ve talked to. HD and I monitor the specialists that work with our son, as does the au pair when she is on duty. Our AP’s schedule varies from week to week.

Our APs suggestion is to not tell anyone about the special needs until we find someone we want to match with and then talk to them about it directly. I feel like now that we have a formal diagnosis, we need to be straight with the agency. However, I’m concerned about being restricted to a smaller pool of au pairs.

• For host parents and au pairs of children with special needs, what has your experience been?
• What do you recommend for finding the right kind(s) of au pairs for our family?

Thanks in advance for your help. HM in Napa

See also:

Regulations & Additional Training for Au Pairs of Children with Special Needs

Au Pair Asks: What happens when you discover that you can’t provide what your Host Kid with Special Needs needs?

Finding an Au Pair for a child with Special Needs: Willingness is not enough

Matching with an Au Pair: How much info to share about an Atypical Host Parent Situation

Note: ProAuPair has a specialized program to identify au pairs with significant skills and training for working with children with special needs. (not an affiliate link, not a “referral”)

Delicious baby photo Some rights reserved by PhotoCo. on Flickr

And speaking of trying to maintain some privacy around ones adult social life,

Here’s an email that has me completely stumped.  How do they stay “host parents” to their au pair, and friends with their friend, and have any separate adult social life?

We really need your ideas here, folks.

Dear Au Pair Mom,

I am in desperate need of advice. First, I want to give you a little background on our Au Pair and our family. I am a 37 year old stay at home mother of four boys, ages 9, 5, 2 and 4 months. My husband works from home and is closely involved in our day to day lives. Our 5 year old son has a severe epilepsy syndrome and requires constant care. Because we have 3 little ones that always need to be watched, we have hired two au pairs to live with us this year. We have a 20 year old au pair from South America who speaks English very well and a 24 year old au pair from Thailand who speaks English moderately well. My issue is with our South American au pair.

She has been absolutely amazing in every way…she loves our kids, is always eager to help out, has the same religious beliefs as we do and is so conscientious in her work.

Yesterday, I dropped her off at the airport because she is taking a long weekend trip to visit her friends. Later that day, one of my husband’s closest friends came over and said he had to talk to us about our Au Pair. Uh oh.

In the past, we had some trouble with a nanny we had for 3 years…found out she was not at all what we thought she was. So my first thought was that our South American Au Pair had done something really horrible…I never would have imagined what he was going to say!

It turns out that, over the past few weeks, he has been giving our au pair a ride to the gym because they both took spinning classes. He had told us before that he just drops her off and they don’t even speak to each other while they are at the gym.

But things between them are more serious than he’d let on….

Yesterday, he told us that every night this week, they had spent all night at the beach together. And, on their last night together, she had told him she loved him. His feelings for her are not as strong, but he does like her. He is single and 27 years old. He didn’t seem to think that either of them had done anything wrong by sneaking off to spend time together…that her personal life is her business. But now that things are more serious, he wanted to let us know.

I am absolutely blown away by this and really don’t know what to do. If we didn’t know her and he had introduced her to us as his girlfriend, we would have been happy for him…concerned that she is so young…but happy…because she is an amazing girl. But this is different.

One of the ways my husband and I make having au pairs in our house work is by having a clearly defined line between them and us. We are very friendly and helpful – I believe that both au pairs are happy with us. But our personal life is ours! So now I’m left wondering how to navigate this.

I can’t help but feel betrayed by both of them…why didn’t they come to us before they started sneaking around our backs? Why did she go after my husband’s best friend? He is our friend, and a grown man….why would he do this?

If I tell them that if she wants to keep her job, they can’t see each other anymore, then I’m the bad guy. But how do we navigate them dating? How can I ask her to go take care of my kids while he is over at our house having dinner with us?

I feel like they have put us in an impossible position.   It totally changes the dynamic.

My husband feels like the damage is already done and maybe everything will be ok if we just let it play out. But I’m angry at both of them and don’t know how to rebuild trust. I wish you could see a picture of our lives…my son has between 8 and 20 seizures a night and is at constant risk for sudden death. We have a very difficult and stressful life. And this is the last thing I need right now.

Thank you for any advice you can give me.

Image: There is no such thing as privacy, on Flickr Some rights reserved by Ben Husmann

What has happened in the last year that’s helped you learn to be a better host parent? Or if not “better”,  just a wee bit wiser?

if you’re like most of us, you’ve felt delighted, relieved, frustrated, annoyed, grateful, and more — all because of your relationship(s) with your au pair(s).

As part of our families and as members of our households, but even more as partners in caring for our children, au pairs see us as we cycle through our worst and our best. And, our relationships with them influence how we experience our children, our parenting, our homes, and our dreams.

Our relationships with our au pairs can be windows into our understanding of ourselves as parents, spouses, family members, friends, and sojourners — if we choose to make them so.

Given that our host parent – au pair relationships influence us anyway, we can get a little extra insight about ourselves by reflecting on how our relationships unfolded over the year. While for so many of us it’s important to set new goals and strive to do better, it also helps to spend a little time understanding what’s already happened so that we might learn from it.

In that spirit, and with personal growth in mind, here are some questions to help you capture some insights from this past year with your au pair(s):

1. What was the most challenging part of your host parent- au pair relationship this year?

2. What caused the single biggest positive energy boost in your au pair relationship?

3. What was the best way that you used your one-on-one time with your au pair this year?

4. What were you able to let go of, and feel okay about letting go of, to improve your host parent – au pair relationship?

5. In what way(s) did you grow emotionally through your relationship with your au pair?

6. At what point(s) did you consciously reassess your expectations of your au pair and of yourself? (How) Did this help?

7. What was the biggest change in your relationship with your au pair over the year?

8. What was an unexpected delight regarding your au pair this year?

9. What was an unexpected challenge for you as a host parent of this particular au pair?

10. How did your experience as a host parent contribute to your relationship with your child/ren?

11. (If you’ve been a host parent before:) How did you put into practice this year your experience as a host parent with previous au pairs?
      (If this is your first time as a host parent:) What was your first surprise about how having an au pair *really* works?

12. What was the best thing that you did for yourself to improve your host parent – au pair relationship?

I hope that you can take a moment or two or three just to think over this one relationship over this one year, and see how you’ve grown as a result of it.  If any of your responses tickle you, or generate some insights you’d like to share, please add them in the comments.

Have a happy and sweet new year.

Image: This sweet owl pillow was made by The Sometime Crafter from a pattern by Badbird. Check out The Sometime Crafter blog for project ideas, patterns and tutorials — especially if you have a crafty au pair.

Two difficult challenges have hit my friends this past month. Last week a friend’s BIL slipped off a ladder, and is now in an intensive care unit coping with serious head trauma. His recovery will be long, difficult and uncertain.

Earlier in the month, a friend’s sister was diagnosed with cancer, for the third time. She has no idea what the specifics will be, but her prognosis is grim.

As it happens, both of these families have live-in childcare. One has an exchange student, the other has an au pair. In both cases, the caregivers have to face a very different physical and emotional situation than they originally signed up for.

When there is a serious and dramatic change in a host family’s situation, both the family and their au pair need to find ways to adjust to the new reality. We’ve already discussed situations like surprise host mom pregnancies, divorce, lost jobs, abrupt moves, and the serious illness of a host child.

All of these changes upset the delicate balance of the au pair and host family’s ‘psychological contract‘. A situation that was perfect for a family (or an au pair) changes on a dime, but we are still locked into our commitment to each other.

We generally assume that, as thoughtful host parents, we can find a way to talk with our au pairs and renegotiate what to expect of each other. But what about when the abrupt change happens to you? What if you, yourself, are having a hard time handling the situation?

How can you even begin to think of helping your au pair — not to mention your kids, your friends, your partner, your family — get adjusted to what’s coming?

Making things more difficult is that when the change happens so abruptly that we are unable to plan ahead or take time to change. We may have so little understanding of what to expect that we might simply be unable to predict, or to plan. Then what?

Both families above are blessed with large and strong networks of friends, and getting lots of help and support.

If we could offer them some suggestions about addressing the situation with their caregiver, what would we recommend?

Share your thoughts, below.

See also:
When Your Au Pair Breaks Your Psychological Contract
Having another baby? How to tell your au pair
When your personal, private challenges affect your Au Pair relationship — emotional challenges of one host parent
How can we prepare our Au Pair for significant disruption? — serious change & challenge for host child

Image: Hopeful Morning from Dead Air

I imagine that every au pair has an idea of what her or his “ideal” host family should be like. The assortment of children, the family’s location, their personality, their basic household rules… all of this factors in.

But how much do you think it matters that the family be “American”-American, rather than German-American or Recently-American?

I admit I haven’t thought much about this before. I know that some host families look for au pairs of certain national origins, often so that the the au pairs can help the parents reinforce a language in addition to English. (Of course, some au pairs avoid this kind of situation because they want to work only in English.)

And, we think about unconventional family arrangements that might affect the au pair’s lifestyle (e.g., divorced parents with two households).

But this family of Eager Parents raised the question– could their own family’s culture be seen as not “American” enough?

Hi AuPairMom,

We are considering getting an au pair, but need advice.

We are from Asia, and have been living in the US for over 10 yrs. We are citizens and can host an AP. However, knowing that it is designated as a cultural exchange, not sure how it would work.

We are a mix of the Asian and American culture and believe that it will be a truly enriching experience, only not in the typical way.

Does anyone have thoughts n the feasibility/success in this situation?

Thanks for your thoughts- Eager Parents

Personally, I think that this family shouldn’t worry, and should focus on communicating their personalities and family values, which in the end are more important (in my mind) to a great au pair relationships.

• What would you advise these parents to consider? What might they add to their family letter & to their interview plans?

• When they choose an au pair, what might they do to make sure their year is a success?

Image: Chinese Family from Haneen Krimly

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could meet a really terrific young person from anther country, discover that you had complementary world views, and THEN go through an official agency to engage him or her as an au pair?

From time to time, we get questions from either parents or potential au pairs about how to go about with “pre-matching”, and I’d love to hear what any of you all have learned about that process.

Please note – let’s talk about pre-matching and then using an Agency to keep things legal and to provide support.

(Save “Can we sneak in an au pair without a program?” for another conversation.)

What’s the best way to pre-match with a family and then find an agency?

Dear Au Pair Mom,

I’m Tiara, a young woman based in Australia who just spent a wonderful creative summer in San Francisco. I’ve been looking at coming back and au pairing seems like an option – I’ve done childcare before as well as lived with host families of all sorts so I think I can adjust well.

I was wondering if it was possible for au pairs to prearrange host family placements.

In my SF stay I spent quite a bit of time with members of alternative families – queer, sex-positive, kinky, poly, and so on. Many of them are recent parents and would appreciate help that was friendly towards their alternative family arrangements. However, because they are not very mainstream they may not be open to registering for an au pair service. Indeed, while looking through au pair sponsor orgs, I’ve noticed that many veer towards the conventional and traditional, and wasn’t sure who would be open to non-conventional families.

I thought that I could get in touch with the families I met in San Francisco, ask if they would be happy with me as an au pair, and then have the sponsor company help organise the paperwork between us. Is that possible?

I understand that many companies do family screenings; would the alternative bent be a huge rejection factor? Alternatively, are there agencies you could suggest that are more alternative-lifestyle-friendly and could place me in an appropriate setting?

Thanks for your advice!

Every host parent has his or her own approach to interacting with their au pair. Our personalities affect some of this, but even more important is who has taken which role in the host parents – au pair relationship.

When adults team up to become parents, homemakers and breadwinners, they divvy up these roles so that most of the important things get covered.

With regard to interacting with the au pair — who is part of the family and also an employee– sometimes one parent manages the ‘family’ part while the other manages the ‘employee’ part.

Or, parents might split up categories of responsibilities, with one parent doing the childcare & home management tasks while the other parent does the phone bills & car management.  Others might take a good cop- bad cop approach and have one parent deliver all the tough news so that the partner with regular direct AP contact can avoid negative blowback, and so on.

In most families with a host dad and a host mom, it is the mom who takes most of the responsibility for interacting with the au pair around kid & home related issues.

Even though this seems like the ‘typical’ gendered split of family work, and thus shouldbe predictable and conventional, this kind of split can make it hard for an au pair to connect strongly with both the host mom and the host dad.

Without things to talk about with the host dad, or projects to do together, it’s hard for them to get to know each other. Add the cross-gender dynamic and some dads’ preferences to be wary of how they connect with younger adult women, there is often a much bigger gap between a (female) au pair and a (male) host dad.

Add to this language challenges, cultural differences and generational differences between how moms and dads are supposed to act (and expected to act by the Au Pair) and you’ve got a complex situation.

Below is an email from July, who writes about challenges with her host dad.

Dear “Mom”,

I’m wondering– Is it typical for HDs to take a back-seat and leave HMs to organise everything au-pair related?

I’ve been with my Host Family for a month now, they live in Vienna, Austria, and I’m originally Irish, but came to them from the UK. Of course, they speak German, but I was originally hired with the Mother’s intentions that I speak English with the children [they don’t understand anything past “please and thank you”, but that’s another issue!!]. I do speak some German myself, I did a year-long course before I arrived for 3 months.

Fortunately, because of the Mother’s work, she speaks very good English, so there hasn’t been an issue there. The problem is the Father speaks no English whatsoever, hence I try so hard to speak German with him. But any time I do, he either calls for his wife to come and “sort what’s wrong”, or mumbles something in a strong dialect that I don’t understand.

Here’s an example of the kind of mix-up this causes:
The day that I arrived, I brought my carry-on bag and handbag inside with me from the car, HM told me I could leave my checked bag in the car for HD to carry up to the apartment later. After dinner, I went to unpack my carry-on, but I wanted to finish all my unpacking, so I waited for HD to take up my case and let me know. I waited until half past eleven that night[!!] before knocking on the door of their “private” living room. HM wasn’t there, only HD. I was so tired after my journey, but I tried my best to ask in German could I please go to the car to fetch my luggage. He didn’t understand anything, but got up from his chair and walked me to the kitchen [maybe he thought I was asking for a drink?], when I saw my case in the hallway. I pointed to it, and said “that’s what I was looking for, thank you”, and he slumped off.

Last week, HM asked me to give “us” my bank details, so HD can arrange my stipend be paid by transfer. She’s a busy woman, so when i caught HD in the kitchen after dinner, I handed him the paper, explained what it was in German, and asked him to come back to me if it was’ missing any info. He had no idea what was going on.

Sometimes he arrives home while one of the two kids are in a tantrum, and doesn’t bother asking me what happened… just goes straight into cuddling the kid who was naughty to the other, instead of the victim. I feel undermined, the victim kid is confused, and the bold kid gets away with hitting the other! grrr

I understand that he works hard to provide for his family, but it’s not fair to ignore me or to make my job harder by ignoring me. Is there anything I can do or say to make him feel more comfortable? I’m a first-time au pair, but there’s been three au pairs in this family before me, but I have no contact with any of them to find out did they have the same experiences with him.

In addition to specific advice and conversation about July’s situation, I’d love your thoughts on this:
What can a (female) au pair do to make a good, comfortable working relationship with a Host Dad?
What can a (female) au pair do to make a good, comfortable ‘part of the amily’  relationship with a Host Dad?

Readers, I must admit that these stories of being screwed by both agency & au pair get me upset. Thank goodness these stories are more rare than the terrific au pair and the perfectly fine au pairs we have little reason to need advice about. We all know that most au pairs, and most agency relationships, are not this bad. Keep this in perspective as we jump in to another bad situation.

Our posts about DeflatedHostMom and the “Match Behind Your Back” dynamic prompted another host mom to add her story. It combines both deceptive agency practices and tensions with one host parent

Here’s the situation:

I am concerned how to handle this. I had an au pair who arrived in my home on March 21st. From the start, the au pair did not hit it off with my husband.

Four days later at our local coordinator meeting, she informed the local coordinator that she had a fear of my husband. She also told me later that day. I tried to assure her we had hosted au pairs prior to her and they are all fine. She (to me and the coordinator) seemed willing to hang in there for sixty days to give it a try.

Now, at the time my husband was not residing in the home, however I told the au pair that he could come back at anytime. He was staying with his brother due to his job being relocated two hours away from our home. He was in and out quite a bit and we all did activities together.

Well, last Thursday out of the blue, I was told her rematch was approved when I never even knew it was being considered. The following Friday evening, the au pair informs me that she is leaving the next day to stay with friends in Nebraska who would allow her to stay there until she could rematch. Luckily, her family has the money to fly her across the states, because she told me they are secret millionaires.

The coordinator also told me about emails my husband had sent the au pair which she felt put her in the middle of our arguments. I pulled his emails from the cell phone website and saw some that discussed when he would be taking the kids to the park, but nothing as the au pair characterized. I asked the au pair about these emails (on text message) and she told me that my husband did not text her anything and she apologized for causing problems in my family.

I was very upset at the au pair for trying to make our family look bad, so that she could be approved for an emergency exit.

I was annoyed at the agency for not even allowing me to address her issues.  I would not have been upset over a rematch, she was a bit of a princess and I really did not want to live with that for a year. I was upset at her leaving so abruptly.

I had just come from four weeks of having no childcare when my last au pair was sent back home due to her anger issues. I just feel thrown under a bus by an agency that I have patronized for three years.

Anyway, I spoke to the au pair agencies directors/coordinators and told them I felt this girl was deceptive, immature, selfish and a liar. I sent the text where she denied my husband had sent any emails to her as proof of her lies.  One of the directors I spoke with actually said maybe the au pair said that because she did not want to hurt my feelings. They are going out of their way to defend this girl so that she can rematch. My husband was livid when I told him that as if he has to defend himself again.

What I need help with is I happened to read her new profile. It’s usually kept hidden from the past host family, but I was able to see it.  Her reason for rematch stated that she was uncomfortable with personal changes wthin our household. Then it goes on to say,

“AP’s Hosts indicate she is caring, responsible, intelligent and consistent and that she bonds easily with young children.”

Neither me or my husband said anything like that! I said

“She was deceptve, immature, selfish and a liar”.

I just rematched with someone myself, based in part on the description of her I got from the agency. To think that the agency will make up blatant falsehoods like that is incredible! I do not think this is right and I want to report them or something. Any suggestions?

DCMETROAUPAIRMOM

Readers, we have two challenges–

1. Let’s help DCmetro with her current issue, and

2. Let’s think about what host parents can do (individually and together) to influence the agencies’ practices.

Ideas?