There’s something about hosting a friend of relative of your au pair that can mess with the fine balance between “part of the family”&  “childcare provider” and between “host mom” and “house elf/slave”.

For lots of us, we forget to check our assumptions about how we should act towards other people’s guests, how much of a host or hostess we should be, whether we should treat the guest like another au pair/family member or like the au pairs’s responsibility, and so on.

Most of us host parents want to be warm and welcoming when our au pairs have guests- whether these guests stop in for coffee or spend a week or two in your host parent house. Most of us have learned though trial and error what we can take, and what we can’t take, when it comes to house guests in general and guests of au pairs in particular.

ReturningHostMom writes with a great  opportunity.

She’s hosting an au pair’s house guest for the first time — with this particular au pair. This host mom has had some good and bad experiences hosting guests, and so she wants to know–

What can she do UP FRONT to set the expectations for the visit?

I’ve dug up this thread looking for some updated advice. Our AP is about to have her BFH (boyfriend from home) visit for two weeks over the Christmas holidays, and he will be staying in our house. I encouraged AP to invite BFH over Christmas, as we are going away for 10 days and while she was welcome to come, I didn’t think it would be much fun for her to be up at my sister’s house with their family, with her not knowing anyone there and not being the sort to make friends and go out with local APs, the way some of our previous APs were. So now I’m facing two weeks with BFH (a total of five days will be with us home), and then mom and sister are coming two weeks in the spring and godfather for 10 days in May. So I need this visit to go well, or I won’t be feeling welcoming for the next visits.

I should put up front that we have had great and awful visits with previous APs’ families: Two were fantastic – parents, boyfriends, boyfriends’ families, etc all visited, lots of fun, great to have them. One AP, though, had her mom and sister for two full weeks, and for two full weeks i cooked and cleaned and waited on them – they were lovely people and we had fun but still I felt very overworked, but then on the last night, after I cooked them a big “goodbye” dinner, AP announced she was leaving the next day with mom and sister. Turned out this had been the plan all along – flight was booked – and AP’s mom and sister simply used our house as a hotel so they could visit the US before AP left with them. So you can see why I’d be a little gun-shy with the visits this time around!

So what can I do to help ensure that this first visit goes well, so that I will feel happy about all those future visits as well?

I’ve tried to set expectations by being clear and outlining my expectations in the au pair handbook. I have in the handbook now that anytime guests stay longer than 3 days, that AP should provide food (thanks to that AP mom and sister who cleaned out our fridge of food every other day but paid for nothing). I have in the handbook that no guests should drive our cars, and I told AP that there would be a mileage limit for the visit (again, from that other AP, who put over 500 miles on our car when the mom and sister were visiting). I have in the handbook that AP must take vacation day on any day that I would otherwise need her to work and so will have to get back-up childcare.

I haven’t yet approached the question of sleeping arrangements with BFH, but since AP has told me that when BFH stays at her house at home, he stays in her room with her, I was thinking I’d just put them in there. Should I set some rules about the bathroom (small house -AP shares bathroom with two children 7 and 9, and her room is on same floor as our bedroom)? What else should I be thinking of?

We like this AP a lot, even though she is young for her age and needs a lot of hand-holding. She is kind, respectful, helpful, and very much a part of our family, and I really want to welcome her family with open arms…but I need this visit to go well in order to do so with the additional guests who are scheduled to come (plus I should add that she has had weekend visitors a fair amount too).

Advice? Suggestions? Thanks very much.

We got an interesting request for advice from a host mom who just found out that her incoming au pair has gotten a BBH — a Boyfriend-Back-Home. This mom is concerned because her first au pair – host mom experience was marred by her au pair’s devotion to the BBH over her commitment to the host family. The specifics of that situation are interesting, and I’ll post them in a few weeks, but right now this mom wants some advice:
One of our very important interview criteria was “no boyfriend” due to the experiences we had with our previous aupair regarding this issue.

Long story short, below is part of the email I received from our new au pair to be today.

I can completely understand why this mom is spooked– We have always screened au pair candidates carefully around the boyfriend issue.

At the same time though, we’ve had two au pairs with BBH and in neither case did it turn out to be a problem. Both young men were encouraging of their girlfriends’ year of adventure, and encouraged the au pairs to stick it out through the initial homesickness phase. One of the boyfriends stayed with us before and after his vacation trip with our au pair, and he was not only a pleasure to have around but also had lots of fun playing with our little girls when our au pair was on duty for two days. In short, it could not have gone any better.

I think that this host family has the right idea in planning to call their incoming au pair to talk to her about how the boyfriend might influence her year here. Given that it’s a relatively ‘new’ relationship, who knows if it will even be active, much less serious, three weeks from now? (Not to sound jaded, but you remember when you were 19, right?)

Do you think a BBH is bad news? Do you have any good strategies for managing BBH issues as they come up? Please share in the comments…

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:

1. Her change in plans (i.e., not taking vacation) is what is causing the problem.
2. You made many plans in advance to accommodate her.
3. Her lack of planning does not constitute an emergency that you have to fix.
4. 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…

When an au pair has guests come to visit, it is tempting for the Host Parents to give the au pair lots of ‘extras’– extra time off, extra flexibility, extra food and space, and basically to try to accommodate their au pair’s expected desire to spend time with the visiting friend or family member.

This willingness by host parents usually comes from two places:

(1) their affection for their au pair, and

(2) their understanding that if they don’t accommodate proactively in some way, stuff will fall apart at the edges as they try to react to things that aren’t working.

We already discussed some of the important things that you should talk about with your au pair when she has guests, in a few previous post: Your House Is Not A Youth Hostel. Remember that: your house is NOT a youth hostel. But apparently there’s still stuff to cover, and this Host Mom’s request might help us fill out our list of all that a host parent needs to anticipate when an au pair has guests visiting.

Before I post this host mom’s request– some caution:

• Her au pair has only been with her a little more than 3 months… In my book, that is much too soon to be hosting that au pair’s guest.
• Plus, the guest is coming for two weeks, again counter to best practice, where visits are just as long as you can stand (and that being probably about a week).
• Even worse, this host mom has already had some issues with this au pair being hard to motivate and hard to satisfy, despite being lovely and nice with the kids (more on that in a future post). So, the set up here isn’t great.

Still, this host mom can make it work– if we help her out a bit more. Here’s the request, from Momof4 :

Our current au pair has been with us for 3 months and her brother is coming for a 2 week visit next month (around the 4 month mark). We are totally open to her having family visit, but since this will be our first experience, I have some concerns about how this will affect our day to day during her work week. She will have only been with us for 4 months, so she will have earned 2 vacation days and have her 2 normal weekends off while he is visiting. I know she will want to spend time with her brother on a day to day basis, show him the sites, go on day trips, etc. which is wonderful, especially since she’s been feeling homesick lately. Anyway, any advice on how to work with her schedule during these 2 weeks?

I have 4 children (2 who attend preschool 3 mornings a week & 2 infants home all day with me). Needless to say, it’s pretty much non-stop around here from 6am to 6pm with activity. I am a stay-at-home mom and don’t want to disrupt the children’s routine too much since it takes just about a week to get everyone back on track again whenever we have any type of changes in the household, but I definitely want to be as flexible as I can so she can entertain her brother!

First and foremost, your job is to make sure that you, Child1 and Child2 are safe.

1. Never hit or shake the children. If long bouts of bad behavior ever frustrate you, it’s okay to tell the child to take a time out, have them sit in a safe place and take time to regain your energy and composure.
2. Know how to react if Child1 or Child2 chokes, stops breathing, or becomes ill.
3. Keep the children away from dangerous objects, dangerous areas (e.g., water, pools, oven, fires) and dangerous situations. Make sure they do not touch or try to use cleaning solutions or other liquids and powders that could be poisonous or that could sting their eyes.
4. The girls are learning how to use simple tools in the kitchen but often they need adult supervision. They can use the microwave themselves, but they need supervision with the stove, oven, tea kettle, and mixer. They can use the semi-sharp knives with the plastic handles, but may not sue sharp knives without very close supervision.
5. Always use seat belts.
6. Never leave Child1 or Child2 alone in an unsafe area (bathtub, front yard, near a street, store).
7. Never leave Child1 or Child2 by themselves in a public area or let them go off by themselves in a store, no matter how safe it may seem, not even for one second; always keep them very close to you in public .
8. Never give Child1 or Child2 to a stranger, no matter what they tell you. Never accept a ride from a stranger yourself. Always protect the children and yourself above everything else, including money or other possessions—everything else can be replaced.
9. Never open the front door to strangers or let anyone in the house you don’t know. We will alert you to any repairman appointments. Keep the doors locked at all times when you are home. Be careful with house keys and let us know right away if you lose them; do not leave the house keys on the porch when you go out—this is the first place a burglar will look.
10. Learn how to use the alarm system and use it regularly at night.
11. Tell us about anything strange or out of the ordinary that you notice.
12. Do not give out our address or home phone number, unless absolutely necessary.
13. Do not use the fireplace (living room).
14. When bathing the children, always keep your eye on them—do not leave the room.
15. Keep the kids away from sick people and children (colds, flu, cold sores), as best as possible; postpone play dates if either Child1/Child2 or her playmates are ill. Children passed on their viruses very easily to each other. Encourage the girls and their friends to wash their hands often, especially when they come home from school or playing, before they handle food, after they play with the dog, and before they eat. Imagine that the girls will wash their hands between 10 and 15 times a day.
16. If you get a cold or minor illness yourself, please wash your hands often and try as best you can to avoid touching the kids’ face or hands. Should you ever become too ill to take care of the children, please let us know so that we can make alternate arrangements; this will not “count against you.”
17. Learn the children’s medicines and dosing; never give them aspirin products and be careful not to “double dose” with acetaminophen or ibuprofen in cold medicines.
18. Contact our neighbors Friend and Friend in an emergency; be prepared to call 911 or Poison Control Center when necessary.
19. Try to avoid walking alone anywhere after dark. Ask us for a ride or call a cab.
20. Should Child1 or Child2 ever need to ride in the car of other parents, ask if they need us to provide a booster seat. We keep a ‘spare’ booster seat in the garage. Although Child1 is almost old enough and big enough not to require a car seat, by law she should be using one.

Here is a sample of what you might use as “Au Pair Guidelines”

Feel free to cut & paste, add, revise, whatever, to make these guidelines fit with your family practices and priorities.

If you come up with some good guidelines, please add them to the Comments section!

(Note: It is easy to personalize these guidelines…Do an edit/replace for Child1, Child2, Mom, & Dad.)

• Safety
• Caring for the children
• Our home
• Privacy and your room
• The car
• The phone and computer
• Visitors & guests