My au pair’s vacation is coming up. To cover for her, we’re having both sets of grandparents come stay over. They’ll be here for a month, but will overlap for a little over a week. The overlap will occur while the AP is on vacation.
We have a smallish house – 3 bedrooms. Our “guest bed” is a futon on the living room. So when the two sets of grandparents overlap, one set of grandparents will have to sleep on the au pair’s bed, because the other set will be sleeping on the futon..
We told the au pair this several months ago, and she was fine with it. We’ve had the conversation many times, so I know she’s heard me. However, as her vacation gets closer, she is seeming less and less likely to actually buy plane tickets or go anywhere.
What are our options?
Am I obligated to get a hotel room for one of our parents or for her? She was hinting about how expensive hotel rooms are. Last Christmas I gave her a travel book to a place she said she wanted to visit, and I told her that book was chock full of inexpensive hostels, etc.
I think she might be vying for me to pay for her hotel on her vacation, since we need her room.
[cv note: Keep in mind, the only reason that the grandparents are there in an overlapping situation was to make it possible for the family to have childcare during the au pair's vacation. In effect, the grandparents are making it possible for the au pair to have the vacation time when the au pair wanted it.]
What’s reasonable here?
However, she is not a great au pair and hasn’t really “earned” this much generosity. I know it’s her room and I can’t kick her out. I just think that it is a reasonable request to use her room while she was supposed to be ‘gone’ . These plans were made months ago. We went round and round for months with her changing her mind about when she wanted to go on vacation. Finally we gave her a deadline to decide, because the grandparents had to be able to plan when they were coming.
I think that, now, she’s just playing me. What are my obligations here?
At this point we’d rematch but we can’t do it in a way that would give her a fair chance at finding another family, and we only have 4 months left with her, so we’re sticking it out. She is a total homebody and is just now starting to make friends, but still rarely goes anywhere. She spends most of the time in her room watching TV or surfing the web and has seemingly no interest in seeing anything of the country she came to.
What do you and readers think I should/can do about this?
Thanks, New AP Mom
Some advice and a poll! Click here….
New AP Mom–
As I read this situation, I think that you have the causality wrong. Yes, you need her room. But, you only need her room b/c you wanted to make her vacation possible. To make her vacation possible, you needed to have grandparents come and stay.
The way I see it:
- Her change in plans (i.e., not taking vacation) is what is causing the problem.
- You made many plans in advance to accommodate her.
- Her lack of planning does not constitute an emergency that you have to fix.
- You are not responsible for housing her while she is on vacation.
Other things to keep in mind:
It’s not only the bedroom situation that’s a problem, but the bedroom itself…. She can’t expect to have the use of her room really at all, if the grandparents need a place for their luggage, a place to change, etc. etc.
What the heck is your AP going to do in a little house, with no work to keep her occupied, and the house stuffed with 6 other adults and (is it two?) kids?
Options
- Have the au pair sleep in a kid’s bed, and have the kid(s) sleep on the floor in the parents’ room.
- Have the au pair sleep on an aerobed thingy in the kids play area (if you have one).
- Ask the AP to go take her vacation, or to sleep elsewhere (e.g., at a friend’s) for the 6 or so days of the overlap.
- Make a reservation in her name at a youth hostel in a city near you, one that can be reached by bus for less than $100 round trip. Only make the reservation– don’t pay for it. (Only do this if you can easily cancel the reservations.) Announce to her that you did this to help her out, and that the rest is up to her.
- Suggest that she find an au pair friend and do a swap– one week visiting her, one week visiting at your house.
Do Not pay for her to stay in a hotel.
Imho, this would just be teaching her that she can take advantage of other people in general and of you in particular. If it ends up that anyone stays in a hotel, it should be you or a grandparent…. but I think that this is a super-last resort.
The second to last resort? You and DPartner sleep on an aerobed in the kids’ room, whilst your parent stays in your room.
Keep an eye on the endgame
Since you are drawing to the close of a not great relationship, you are unlikely to get anything good out of being overly generous to your au pair. THere is pretty much nothing you can do to resolve this in a way that makes your au pair “happy” other than to pay for her hotel. But don’t do that! Instead, recognize that you’re going to need to have another direct and totally candid conversation with her, outlining her options of (1) going away for a week and paying for her vacation herself, (2) staying in a hotel nearby on a “staycation” for a week, paying for it by herself, or (3) finding herself another place to be during the two grandparents’ overlap.
Do you notice how the word “herself” crops up in all three suggestions?
Unless your au pair steps up and responds well to the request (okay, direction) that she take responsibility for her own vacation and her own choices, no other option will strengthen your host family-au pair relationship. So, in this kind of situation, your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) is to not let yourself get played.
Let’s take a poll on this one, and then have everyone chime in with their advice…
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I agree with everyone who has been saying that there is a disconnect between the message agencies are giving to au pairs, and the one they are giving to families. Our first au pair arrives in a week, and even though we have chosen carefully and she seems like a great match for us, my biggest worry at this point is whether she is going to be prepared for what this job REALLY is, as opposed to what the glossy brochure makes it LOOK like.
I don’t think anyone is arguing against the statement that au pairs should be “a part of the family” – it’s just that there are many different interpretations of what that means.
Normally, you would not employ members of your actual family to look after your kids for a charge, nor would you expect to say goodbye to them after a year, perhaps never to see them again. So right there you have two major differences. Another big one I can think of is this: If my au pair really WAS my daughter, I would be interfering a lot more in her personal business.
Au pairs and families are all different with regards to how “up close and personal” they want to get, and as we have seen in many comments on this site, when there is a gap in expectations, problems arise.
Ana P.,
I’ve had two au pairs, who were college graduates in their home countries, and earned less than the au pair stipend was here (which is currently about $800 a month, not $500). It depends on the country and on the profession.
Calif Mom
Unfortunately, I have had bad experiences with 4 au pair princesses. When they left, the next family called and told me that they didn’t believe what I told them…….and guess what……..the same thing or worst happened to them. One decided to get another job to earn more money while she was here because we didn’t pay her enough!!! She was arrested for prostitution!!! All said they could cook and none did. One wouldn’t even cut up fruit for my kids. She told me that is what mother’s are for. Dropping my kids off at a neighbors house because I was an hour late from work is not acceptable. She only had to work three 10 hour days that week. So the extra hour was a 31 hour work week. Yes – I know she isn’t suppose to work more than 10 hours a day…….but if she was a “member of the family” she would have understood. It is the only time it happened. She had four weeks of vacation. Hitting my children is also unacceptable and clearly stated in my handbook. I am tired of trying to please these girls. I don’t know why I am not finding a “good” au pair. I even asked the LCC to help and she thought they were good choices. Au Pairs seem to develop clicks of girls from their country, compare notes, complain, and develop a plan to make their host families give them more. Rematching is very exhausting and you are without childcare. It is also very hard on the kids. Once OK, but 4 times is crazy. No one has a good answer why this isn’t working and the agency has been very involved…..and when they don’t work out they just try to place them with another family. I have had domestic nanny’s that were wonderful and come back to visit every year. They knew it was a job, not a vacation. I swtiched to an au pair hoping that my kid a could learn about a different country and get exposure to a foreign language, but that is not what they have experienced.
I think a room to sleep in is a pretty basic thing and that is why it is required by the government that the aupair must have her own room. They have very specific requirements as to how big the rooom must be, how big the windows must be and how the entrances are arranged. I do not think that an aupair must have her own bathroom but she does have a right to her own room.
She needs someplace to store her belongings and change her clothes. Surely, in this situation, she will have no privacy when she is in the house. How will she be able to change her clothes without a room of her own ? It won’t be much of a vacation if she can’t sit by herself behind a closed door and speak on the phone or read a book. She will have to be on her feet , fully dressed and fully active every minute. And she certainly won’t be able to take a nap or even sleep in if she is in the middle of a common area all the time.
I never heard of specific room requirements. My coordinator visited and approved the room. Please let me know where to find this information.
Reg states “(6) Place the au pair with a family who cannot provide the au pair with a suitable private bedroom; and
There is no definition of the word suitable.
I am also interested in where these specific requirements are stated. There are many pictures of au pair rooms on the Internet. Many au pairs have rooms in the basement of the house.
News to me too. My au pair has a room in our basement with no windows. She is our 6th au pair. Agency has approved room. Au pairs seems to like it. No complaints. Is this something new?
Our agency specifies that the room must be private for the au pair and that the host family may not use the room for storage.
The room must have a bed and a closet and dresser.
Beyond that I don’t think there are any exact stipulations.
Re: the room, one thing that I personally think is important is having a window that was big enough that she could climb out of it in case of a fire. When we renovated our garden level/basement in our first house, we were required to enlarge the window in order for it to be approved as a bedroom– but I don’t know if it was our LCC, our contractor, or the building inspector who told us this.
In any case, it made me aware of not only the sunshine value of a window, but also the safety issues of a window.
Also, we made sure that a person could climb (up) out of the windows in this room, just in case. My DH actually demonstrated this to our first AP.
I have had 4 Au Pairs with 2 agencies over 3 yrs and never heard of specific room sizes etc. I beleive it has to lock and a couple of other things.
Our Au Pairs rooms have always been in the basement. Here in our rental on the East Coast this room has a tiny window and no closet so it was classed as an office but it has an adjoining closet and a bathroom across the hall (and is pretty big) and the LCC stated it was fine.
We just a got a portable hanging rack from Target so she could hang up her clothes in her room ($10) and it has worked just fine.
In response to CV’s comment above she has 2 ways out of the basement and we gave her a fire extinguisher for her room.
When we had some renovations done , our aupair was not happy with her temporary quarters and complained to the LCC. The LCC asked the agency to send me ( and her ) a copy of the exact requirements since we both thought the temporary room was fine. It was fine but the state department did have some very specific rules. It could be that a lot of agencies are a little lax on this and if no one complains , nothing bad happens. But I always like to plan for the unexspected situation where people hit the books to find an exception. That aupair ended up dropping out and going home. She made such a big fuss about the room but then, she didn’t like any of the people she met in rematch ( although a bunch of them wanted her ). She said she had heard too many terrible stories from her friends .
Expecting your AP to act, and you to treat her, like your daughter is reasonable. I would have my own daughter out of her bed for the grandparents, and so I vote that no, you cannot force her to leave, but yes, AP should give up her room for the grandparents. I don’t care where AP is from, culturally it’s never acceptable for them to be assigned the floor over a young person. I think any AP’s parents would be horrified if their daughter demanded to stay in her room after she said she was going on vacation, the host parents call in the back-ups around her plans, and then her plans change so she wants “seat backs.” Wouldn’t you be horrified if your daughter did this at someone else’s home??
Seriously, AP’s privacy? She’s guaranteed her room 24/7, 365 days a year? She wont’ have anywhere to change? Puhhhlease. She can have full use of her room anytime other than when the grandparents are sleeping. If she wants to play on her laptop in privacy, she can go to a cafe or just work it out like any other adult. This is not that big of an inconvenience for her. She created her own inconvenience if she stays.
Also, at some point in this thread the connotation developed that an AP is an equal to the host parents. She is not, just as she is not her own parents’ equal back home, and just as my daughter is not my equal. So no, the argument that an AP necessarily should have use of her host parents bed while they are away if you expect to use her room when she’s away (or supposed to be) proves nothing. And yes, it is a double standard just like the curfews, car restrictions, and all the rest.
I keep reading this posts here and it gives me the impression that it’s a war between ap and hf. Jesus, it’s just a room. All you need to do is talk. If it was me and my plans to travel went wrong I wouldn’t be upset to give my room to elderly people to sleep. if it was in my parent’s house I would give my room for the grandparents and sleep on the couch. All the family has to do is talk to the au pair. I don’t think it’ s big of a deal. Poor au pair who had her plans canceled and poor host family who had already invited the grandparents. Things like this happens and like any other person, any other member of the family who lives under the same roof the au pair will understand the situation as i hope the host family understands her situation too. if you live together you have to manage to have a pleasant and good environment.
(Hi D– you’re right, they do need to talk, and I hope we’ll hear how it ends up. Keep in mind that the AP just never made plans, she didn’t have them ‘canceled’. It sounds like it was willful, not accidental. And yes, we remember we only hear one side of the story…. cv)
I have a question. Suppose this aupair had never planned to go ” away ” . What would the host parents have done for childcare ? And where would everyone have slept ? Or is it understood that the aupair has to leave the house for her vacation.
good point anonymous (the anonymous above this, not the one farther up the page)! I seriously doubt there is any rule that the aupair has to leave for her vacation, so if she had just not planned on leaving in the first place, with the host parents’ knowledge, they could be in this same situation (the parents probably would have made sure there was no overlap between the sets of grandparents in that case though)…
I recently read an article in the New York Times that due to the economy, many American families are staying home and going on daytrips for their vacation. So let’s not be hypocritical and make this girl sound like a parasite simply because she chose not to go away or failed to make plans.
It is true that adults have privileges that younger people do not and it is also the fact that with those privileges come responsibilies. In the end, our children are our responsibilty and so are the car payments, etc. An aupair agency agreement makes it pretty clear that the use of the car is discretional and her room , a nice room is an enttitlement. It is part of the deal.
Some of those basement rooms are very nice and some are just not so nice. For instance, if the kids can run in and out of the basement playroom all day and the host parents do laundry down there all night, it doesn’t really matter if the room is the whole downstairs. It has no privacy.
If the AP had said upfront that she would rather have stayed home, we would have asked her to break her vacation into two disconnected weeks and had only one set of grandparents come at a time. Which, given all of your feedback, is what we’ll do next year , so we bypass this situation entirely.
I agree with all of you who said that communication is key. We are definitely communicating about it. I’ve been clear that we’ll need her bedroom for the grandparents. She’s had many different plans for travel, none of which have so far materialized. Hopefully in the end she’ll find some place that she wants to visit, and if not, it will be a cozy couple of weeks with her sleeping in the den.
This did kind of devolve into host parents v. au pair smackdown and that isn’t at all how the situation is. I’m trying to work with her to figure out a solution that works for all of us, and wanted feedback on how I might handle my side. I think that in this situation, both we as host parents made a mistake (by promising her room to the grandparents) and she as an au pair made a mistake (by not being clear about not necessarily wanting to travel when there was still time to do something about it.)
Anyway, I’ll let you know what happens.
Just wanted to clarify one more thing. She is still acting like, and telling me that, she wants to travel. It’s just that actual plans, plane tickets, hotel reservations etc are not forthcoming. So when I say “not necessarily wanting to travel” that’s only a guess based on what you’ve all said here, and that interpretation of her (in)action.
I am thinking that a major part of all this bruhaha is that the aupair lives in the same place where she works. If any of us told our bosses that we were taking vacation and then changed our minds and stayed home it would be of no concern to anyone but ourselves.
We can all call in sick, too, with no one capable of assessing whether we really need to take a whole day off. An aupair cannot call in sick and then go to the movies ( as I did last week ).
My boss is a great violator of boundaries and calls me on holidays and vacation just to chat or to ask me to ” just this once ” do her a little favor. Last summer I told her I was in Florida and could not possibly stop by the office during vacation . Even with cell phones , an aupair does not have that option.
Just to set the record straight, I never to ask my au pair to do anything outside of her scheduled working hours. I never go into her room unless she’s there and I knock first, and even then it’s only been a handful of times. If her door is closed I try not to bother her at all unless there’s something urgent I need to ask that absolutely cannot wait until I see her next. There’s been an underlying assumption on this thread (don’t know where it came from) that I don’t respect her boundaries and that’s not the case at all. I’m very careful about that. I just need to know where everyone is sleeping because of the circumstances of this vacation. That’s all this is.
We are all putting forth ideas based on what we think is right or wrong according to our own value system and experience.
I called my agency and was told that they could not give me an answer to a hypothetical situation. Has anyone inquired of his/her own LCC and gotten a straight answer as to where the agencies would stand on this question. I called the agency because my guess is that different LCCs would have different sympathies and if it never got to the agency , there would be no problem. However, if the aupair or a friend of hers did protest or object, it might go up the agency t/o and the agency might take a different position.
Here is the bottom line…. Au Pairs earn a vacation during their time as an au pair. 2 weeks for 12 months of work. The time should be worked out with the host family as to when it is most convenient. Let’s face it there really may not be a most convenient time but time does have to be given. However, there is nothing that is stated that an aupair who has EARNED this time must go somewhere. I often take time off work for a STAYCATION. There are no rules that say an au pair must leave the house. This is their home for the year. I would suggest speaking to the au pair about changing her plans to a time that she may want to actually go somewhere or at a minimum explain that the grandparents will need a bed more so than a young adult and since she isn’t going anywhere it would be very helpful if she can be accomodating and share with the kids etc.
Hope this all turns out well…
I think this does sound like it’s gotten very dramatic, but I wonder (this happens to me) if NewAPMom is just trying to figure out the right thing to do, and getting stressed about all the “what-ifs”. As a working mom, I try to plan and organize and control everything, and when something isn’t working out according to my plan (for example, the au pair decides not to go out of town on vacation as discussed), I get very anxious.
My $0.02 is that if the au pair agreed that a set of grandparents could sleep in her room while she was on vacation, and then she chooses not to travel, she should find her own place to sleep. (If she chooses to stay, she should be able to use her room during the day). That’s being mature and responsible. But, again, it’s difficult as a HM to ask for that from an au pair, particularly one who isn’t consistently demonstrating responsibility
So how this turned out…
She finally bought plane tickets to go visit a friend for her whole two weeks of vacation (although not until a few days ago, which is why I didn’t update until now.) So problem solved!
On a semi-related note, she’s been better lately. More attentive with the kids, and even showing some initiative. I wish I could say I’ve been doing something different, because then I’d know what to do differently next time, but I haven’t… no idea what’s changed on her end.
Thank you all again for your advice.
So, full disclosure, this story actually wasn’t over yet. Now it is.
We ended up firing our au pair this weekend after she put one of the kids in physical danger for the third time. Yep, it took us that long. But we were lucky – the kids are okay.
It’s a logistical nightmare trying to cobble together childcare. But man, it feels good to be out of that frying pan.
Thanks for the update. Obviously this vacation wasn’t the only issue brewing. HD and I joke that every couple has “their dishwasher,” that one silly issue that is the straw that brakes the camel’s back. (And you find yourself shouting at the top of your lungs about how the silverware should be loaded.) I’ve said it before on other strings, try Care.com We found a part time nanny for rematch times.
You were the one who mentioned care.com! I saw it and wanted to thank the person who mentioned it but haven’t had time to look, so thank you!
I also used a part time college student for after school care for my older son earlier this year through Care.com with pretty good results.
Have you ever considered Zoom-Room? It’s the electronic, remote controlled 21st century Murphy bed that turns any living room or home office into the perfect guest room – but no one knows it’s there. Check out http://www.Zoom-Room.com. It would give you space for the au pair and the grandparents!
Hi there, just checked out the Zoom-Room. Costs start at €3,000.00 – €5,000.00 (not including tax, installation and delivery!). For that kinda money the grandparents could rent a suite in the Hilton!!!
Good point. That comment above yours is actually an advert. cv
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