“It takes a village.”
That’s what my mom friends and I say when we talk about seeing each other’s kids do naughty things.
In my bookclub we have a actual pact– if we see something, we say something.
There’s a way that this agreement can feel kindof nosy. How can you tell Violet’s mom that her kid’s comments on other kids “Insta” photos are mean? But if Violet were your child, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you balance the awkwardness of telling another mom with the benefit of her now being able to do something?
That’s my general feeling about Au Pairs and Host Moms & Dads, too. We should act like a village and help each other when a problem is looming and only one of us is able to see it.
[Not like the website “I saw your nanny…” where people rant on and on about behavior they see from afar and interpret in the most negative way possible.]
I’m talking about serious, useful and not salacious information– texting and driving, screaming at a host child, or — as the mom below wonders– about an Au Pair planning to leave a Host Family in the lurch.
Read on about this host mom’s question, and then add your thoughts to the poll at the bottom of the post.
I am seeking some advice. My au pair just told me that one of her friends, also an Au Pair who will be cutting her 12 month term short. Apparently, she got a job offer back in her home country that she can’t pass up on. She intends to leave around the 7 month mark, which will be in January of 2016.
My au pair told me that her friend doesn’t plan to give her host family much notice. When I asked why, she said that her friend wanted to make sure she could take her vacation. The friend’s plan is to take a 2 week vacation in December, which her host family already approved, and then upon her return, to tell her host family that she is leaving in two weeks.
As far as I can tell, the host family and the friend are happy with each other and the only reason the au pair isn’t giving more notice is because she wants to be guaranteed her paid vacation.
[ cv notes: This Au Pair may not have ‘earned’ a full two weeks’ vacation. She shouldn’t expect to have both weeks paid for… so it may be that if the au pair knew the actual rules about earning vacation, she’d abandon this plan….]
I told my au pair that I didn’t think that was very fair and her response was that if the host family decides that they don’t like an au pair, that the au pair then gets 2 weeks to rematch, so the au pair is giving her family the same time in this case. I suggested that this was different because there is no “issue” that requires rematch. She agreed.
In any event, I don’t know the host family, but I feel bad for them, since I know that their au pair has plans to “screw” them. I would be very upset if this happened to me. Any suggestions? Do I just let things be and not interfere since it’s really none of my business?
Thanks! ~NotWantingToBeNosyHostMom
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{ 43 comments }
I replied yes, which is the answer if I knew the mom. If I didn’t know the mom, I still think I’d probably reach out to the LCC or through some other means to try to get this information in the hands of the host family.
I might have some concerns about causing a rift with my own au pair though — would I be breaching her confidence by sharing? Would she be upset with me? I’d want to have some idea about that first, though I still have a very strong feeling that I’d want to try to get the information to the host family if at all possible without putting my own situation at risk, even if it’s through some confidential/anonymous means.
Yes, I would tell both the host family and the LCC. This is the kind of situation that gives the Au Pair program a bad name, and if it happened to me I would quit the program entirely. The comment “if the host family decides that they don’t like an au pair, that the au pair then gets 2 weeks to rematch, so the au pair is giving her family the same time in this case” reflects a really immature point of view from someone who has no idea how much a transition throws the entire family into disarray.
This is not a job where two weeks notice is ok. It often takes 6 – 8 weeks to get a replacement Au Pair, and if the family has held up their end of the bargain with the program they deserve as much notice as possible.
To the Au Pair I would say: You need to be an adult and let the family know that the situation has changed and there is a job opportunity that you can’t pass up. If you give them plenty of notice and give them a chance to find replacement options you will probably get to keep your two weeks of vacation (or whatever vacation you have earned) since they have already planned for it anyway. When you become a parent you will recognize that you did the right thing and (for whatever it is worth) you will have good karma on your side.
I voted no. I would tell the LCC, not the HM, unless I knew the HM well. I would also ask the LCC what her plans were about what she would do with the info.
I would call the LCC first. The LCC should call the AP and tell her what is the right thing to do and if the AP is not willing the LCC can do it. I would not directly tell the other HM, because I think that this might also could destroy the very honest “relationship” you have with your Aupair.
My APs usually bring this kind of thing to me because they are looking for advice on what to do in a situation like this. Although I put yes here, I would actually encourage my AP to talk to the LCC herself about this (with or without me, depending on what she would be more comfortable with).
Can I answer maybe? I think in the situation above, I’d understand that a host parent would be very likely to tell another host parent. (As an AP, I wouldn’t tell my HM, if I wanted to keep my friend’s confidences…) I mean, if the HP knows the other HF, it’s going to be pretty obvious what kind of inconvenience that could cause…
(I have a friend who is planning this, and her family has back up childcare, but I still feel uncomfortable about it. But I’m an AP, and I don’t know her HF, and there’s solidarity there. I’m not going to rat her out. But if I told my HM, I would fully expect that she would.)
My only doubt is, if you don’t know the family you’d have to be really, really sure that they were reasonable people. Sometimes au pairs plan such things because they’re afraid they’ll be chucked out straight away if they are open about their plans. That has happened to me and to other friends, and it’s really not as rare as all that. At least here. That sounds like it is not at *all* the case in the above explanation. And if you know the family, you’ll know for sure. But if you don’t know the other family, you can never know exactly what you’re stepping into, no matter what your own au pair says about the situation.
From a host parent’s point of view, though, if an AP comes to you and says they are planning to leave, if I were to find a new au pair before the AP’s planned departure date then it’s within my rights to have the current AP leave earlier than she may have planned. The agreement between host families and au pairs is for a year (or whatever length of time) of service, so if an AP plans to cut that short, she can’t be surprised if the HF cuts it even shorter.
This exact situation has happened to us, although not with any of the underhandedness. My AP came to me saying she had a possible opportunity that might involve leaving on very short notice; I told her that was fine and we settled on an out date that was before when she might have chosen to leave if it had been left completely to her. But there are no hard feelings because we both understood that the contract was nullified when she decided to potentially leave us.
DH and I had made a bad match with AP #10 – her personality and her culture shock got in the way of interacting with us well, and despite our best efforts to be cheery and attempt to engage, we were rebuffed at every turn. After one “reset your attitude” conversation, she mentioned that she had been thinking about rematch (we were at week 5), and I replied, “I’ll give you one week to decide. If I need to have a new AP arrive by Christmas, then I need to start looking now.” I think I shocked her, because she had made plans for a special Christmas week with friends, and here I was telling her that she would not be our AP by Christmas if she decided to go into rematch. Within a week we came to the mutual understanding that we had not made a good match. We did ask her to stay until the end of the two-week period, because we had a commitment to child #2 that we needed to honor.
I had a similar experience with AP #8. When she started yanking my chain about wanting to go home – right after I had purchased an airline ticket for her to go to a destination city with our family, I told her – in front of the LCC – “I wish you had not accepted my invitation to the destination city. If you choose to go home you may keep the ticket, but you’ll be in charge of finding your own play to stay. If you choose to join my family, then I’ll ask you to commit to completing your year with us.” She stayed the year.
Hmm… I see your point. I’m not really thinking “ok, you have two weeks notice”. I’m thinking of me, who gave my abusive family three month’s notice that I was leaving during the next holidays instead of waiting eighteen months and was given a night’s grace and driven to the airport in the morning. I had emergency money, so it was fine, but it might well have not been. Or the girl with the same family right after me, who gave them two weeks notice, and they (angered by the same situation twice in a row) drove her to the train station of their tiny town at midnight – with the next train being at 6:30am, and told her to sleep there.
Saying “well, if you’re leaving two months before the end of your contract, we’re finding someone else asap” is different, in my opinion. Though I do still think basic humanity suggests that you offer an AP time to find and book a flight or a place to stay. But then, you guys have LCCs and such for extreme crises right? I’m in Europe so we don’t really have any back-up except our own precautions… (That is, I think some Americans get agencies? But it’s not very common here, and since other Europeans don’t need a visa, people are not willing to pay agencies to deal with something they can find themselves – Host-families and APs included.)
(Should point out, I expect a lot of APs do refuse to tell their HFs this stuff because they don’t want their contract cut short in a reasonable manner. Just suggesting that if one doesn’t know a family, one doesn’t know if they are reasonable people and will respond to this news reasonably.)
Legally, Americans must use an agency to host an AP. The agencies are regulated by the State Department, so protection is built in. Our LCC has housed APs for whom a relationship has gone south (either her fault or the family’s) but so have we. The worst AP we ever took in had hit a HK with a brush. She was such a bad apple that she also stole from our very trusting AP – and then had the gall to call her and ask for a loan so she could buy a plane ticket. (Because in the U.S. if you don’t finish your contract, then you must find a way to pay for your own flight home.)
From a legal point of view using an au pair agency is mandatory in the Netherlands, also for European au pairs who really don’t need an agency to be able to stay here. It has a lot of benefits for the au pair (cheaper medical insurance, easy to open a bank account, and a much better position if things go south) and I would strongly advise you to use one. If the host family is not willing to use an agency that would be a big red flag for me.
I would tell the LCC who would then have the difficult conversations that I’m not willing to have.
I would try persuade the AP to give more notice to her host family. In the end, I would tell the LCC. I wouldn’t worry too much about staying anonymous…. If she knows this secret, probably others do to and it could be any one that told.
I would tell the LCC. While this sounds like a definite plan on the part of the AuPair, we arent getting the information directly from her. We have no idea if she was just discussing the possibilities with her friends. Maybe after her conversation with other AuPairs, she might have realized her plan is not fair. She might be planning to talk with her HM.
If I were to call the HM, I’d be interfering with their relationship based on a rumor. In this scenario, we don’t know the HM or AP in question. The LCC is the best person to decide how to proceed in this case.
This is a great opportunity for the HM to deepen the relationship with her own AP. They can have discussions about why her AP friend should tell the family. The HM can talk about how we all understand “once in a lifetime” job opportunities and how to “honorably” leave one job for another and why this is important. The HM could encourage the AP to help her friend do the right thing.
I would talk to LCC if I did not know host mom. But if I did know her, I would talk to her first. Au Pair signed a contract and unless there are some violations from Host Family she should not bail out of it in such deceptive way. Using your vacation time and leaving parents with almost no time to find replacement is terrible. Planning in in advance is even worse.
Absolutely I would tell the LCC, and if my AP had an issue with it, I’d be having a serious discussion with her as well. If she thinks it’s OK for her friend to deceive her host family — and she is lying by omission by letting them think they are under the same understanding of how long the AP will be with their family for, then what is my AP willing to conceal from me?
Having already gone through a surprise rematch when our first AP, who was eager to extend with us, threw us in disarray when she announced she wanted to rematch to see another part of the country, I agree that an AP may have no idea how disruptive it is to the whole family. It is especially disruptive to the kids.
This is not a secret that should be kept, because of the harmful and disruptive consequences to the host family.
I voted “no,” because I would tell the LCC what I had heard, and let her decide how to follow up with the AP and the HF. I would mention, in conversation to the AP, that her friend’s decision might end up costing her money – that she may end up owing money to her HF for her classes and vacation time, since it’s all pro-rated during the year.
I would like to stress that leaving a family with two weeks notice is not like going into rematch. While I do know of families who decided with no notice to throw APs out for no good reason; most of the time, the AP knows that things are not going well as HF have weekly meetings, establish benchmarks for improvement, or are shocked by an egregious error that put a HK in potential or actual harm’s way. I would say that few APs are surprised by rematch.
Agreed! Even in cases of rematch, there is often an agreement (when safety isn’t a issue) to give the AP more time to find a new family. I have seen this play out many times.
It’s hardly a fair comparison.
Random sidenote – the vacation proration comments actually could be inaccurate. Depending on the agency, she might get away with taking both weeks and not being penalized as there are several agencies that don’t do settlement worksheets (like CCAP for example). In that case she would take the 2 weeks and then if they got a rematch AP for the remaining 5 months that hadnt taken their 2 weeks, the family would have to give those as well so could potentially get hit for 4 weeks of AP vacation in a single year. If the HF/AP is with APIA or IE then a settlement doc would make the AP pay back the additional week but they would still have to accommodate more time for the next rematch AP. Net/net I think the HF should be given the right to reconsider and notice to plan for this. Some HFs (ours included) would say “I am disappointed but I appreciate you telling me, lets come up with a plan for now to then to minimize the damage/impact of this” and move on with life. By holding out on the family this AP is making this 100 times worse. Its incredibly selfish.
As others have said, she doesn’t have any issues so the rematch 2 week time period is irrelevant. This HF has done nothing wrong so again, shoe on other foot if the HF had to leave the program due to job loss or move or something else I would hope/assume they would tell the AP as soon as possible and perhaps host them longer than 2 weeks to help them get a new placement since it is no fault of their own. I can’t imagine most host families saying “we aren’t going to tell our AP for 3 months that we are leaving the program when we move because we don’t want her to bail out and find another family so instead we are going to work her until 2 weeks out and then tell her so we don’t have a gap”. Really, really petty, selfish, inconsiderate and just wrong wrong wrong.
Yes, this happened to us. Our awesome AP a couple of years ago took two weeks at Christmas plus an additional week over the course of the six months he was with us, all paid. He then tore his ACL and had to go home. We matched with an AP who had only four months left. Despite the fact that he had taken two weeks of paid vacation, his HF (perhaps feeling badly that they were really hurting him by having just decided to leave the program midyear with him), listed that he had taken no vacation. He also had completed no courses. So that year we had to pay for 5 weeks of vacation plus 2 sets of $500 for courses. Fortunately both APs were good, otherwise it would have really been a hard thing to swallow!!
If it was my au pair who was thinking of terminating on short notice and another host parent had caught wind of it, I’d be very thankful if they said something to me. So, in that mindset, if I heard this and knew the host parents well enough to have their contact information, I’d reach out personally. I would preface the conversation with the background of the information being based in rumor as I perosnality didn’t partake in the conversation with their AP.
My second choice would be to go through the LCC. The reason the LCC is my second choice is I’d be adding another layer to the broken telephone game … I don’t know if the host family would receive the information as it was told to me (or at all).
This being said, I have made a point to tell all my APs that I don’t wish to participate in the AP / HP gossip circle and if they tell me anything hat I find concerning, I will not keep it in confidence (I added this “disclaimer” to our handbook after an difficult situation with a prior AP’s friend)
“If it was my au pair who was thinking of terminating on short notice and another host parent had caught wind of it, I’d be very thankful if they said something to me.” This was very much my point after finding out that AP#5 only accepted coming here to be in the same travel schedule with her friends and had made a profile on an AP matching site about a month into her stay with us so she could go to a warmer climate as initially planned. She ended up leaving us in the lurch which led to a hasty (mis)match with AP#6 that was a longer nightmare than it should have been if (again) my LCC had shared with us that AP#6 was unhappy and thinking of rematching at six weeks in. It wasn’t until three months later after 2 ER trips with my then 7 month-old that we pulled the plug to find out that she had already purchased a flight for an impromptu vacation to “clear her mind and decide if she wanted to stay.”
I am forever grateful to another HM who ratted out my au pair to me for an arguably more minor reason (my au pair was a smoker and lied to me that she wasn’t; the host mom, whose au pair was friends with mine, told me my au pair smoked in her home).
I confronted my au pair for lying about smoking; after she tried to deny it to me first, then to redefine for me what smoking really means, we initiated rematch for dishonesty. Right after she left I found out from several other sources how much she’s been endangering my kids in other, much more dangerous ways, and we were lucky the kids were not harmed and the rematch happened on time.
So… yes, I would pay it forward and tell the HM. I would carefully explain that it is based on hearsay etc. But this would give the other HM time to find an out of country replacement that fits her requirements, and potentially save her a lot of money on interim childcare. This is about her kids. Kids suffer or the au pair potentially gets her vacation cancelled and her American adventure cut short….. hmmmm…. not a difficult choice for me at all!
I replied other, as I don’t know any other host parents in our area my only option would be to go through the LCC. That being said, our LCC has nearly 20 years of experience and has seen it all – so she would be able to handle the situation delicately. As others have said, I’d be sure to tell her that I was hearing the info second/third hand, and that it may be something to discuss with the au pair rather than going directly to the other host family.
If I had a different, less-qualified LCC, I’d probably work harder to contact the other host family, again couching my comments that I’d heard a rumor that I’d want to know about in their place. If I already knew the other host mom, I’d probably go to her directly.
I would start with the LCC but also likely some anonymous heads up to the HF as well. I’ve been through enough LCCs that I don’t actually trust them to deliver the news to the HF in a timely fashion – most have been all about avoiding upsetting the apple cart.
I would also point out that if it was my AP and I found out that she was planning on waiting 4 months and then ditching, we’d be in rematch immediately. However, if she told me as soon as she knew it was a good liklihood, I’d be willing to work with her to get her to the end of her time pleasantly.
I hate liars.
+1 on the different responses we’d have depending on whether the AP is honest or hides her intentions.
As a practical matter, it’s hard for many of us to cover an AP’s two-week vacation. Add in time off around the holidays and it’s just really difficult for many families to cover an unexpected gap in child care shortly after covering a 2-week gap in child care. Depending on the family’s specific situation, this could be hugely expensive, harmful to the parents’ professionally, and a nightmare for the kids who are being tossed into an emergency child care scenario. I would be furious if an AP kept this secret for months to ensure she was able to take her vacation despite all the financial, professional and emotional fallout she’d leave behind. Especially since that could all be avoided if she simply had the integrity to tell the family in advance. If my AP did this to me and my kids, I’d be tempted to just get her out of my house ASAP despite the increased inconvenience of having no child care the next day.
I don’t know how much harm this would do to the OP’s relationship with her AP. I believe in taking reasonable measures to protect others from harm. The AP’s friend is intending to manipulate the family and cause them a fair bit of harm to ensure she takes the vacation she wants. I would explain that bit of American culture to my AP and hope she understands (even though helping strangers isn’t part of her cultural background). But I can’t just ignore the problem because my AP wants me to or because it’s awkward.
BTW – Who are these LCC’s that you can establish a relationship with?? We are 6 months into our CCAP year and I just received notice that we are on LCC #4 (because the LCC they hired 3 months ago has been promoted already). It would not occur to me to involve a stranger nor would I trust this stranger to get the message right.
**I’d love to see a poll on how many people couldn’t pick their LCC out of a line up vs. how many have a relationship with an experienced LCC.**
I’m going to go home and hug our much-loved, trustworthy AP tonight.
I guess having a great LCC is almost more magical than finding a rock star AP. I wonder if the more populated areas have a higher turnover?
I’m going to go e-hug my much-loved, trustworthy LCC right now. ;)
I’m in a huge city, so that fits your theory.
We’ve been with 3 agencies and the only stable LCC was completely unfit for the job (lived over an hour away; had no experience in parenting, child care, foreign languages, or cross-cultural programs; few APs would have felt comfortable living with this creepy school bus driver if they needed a safe place to crash).
Without this blog and the amazingly helpful commenters, I’d be flying blind.
+1 on lcc’s. We know ours but she is next to useless and hardly schedules outings.
I will add – we are on ap 2, just matched with 3, and over the last 4 years our lcc hasn’t changed. She just does her job poorly.
I have the best LCC ever – knows her stuff, very supportive, and been with my agency for at least 11 years. I’ve watched her negotiate treacherous HP – and advocating for APs in other clusters being mistreated so that they could successfully rematch. I’ve watched her coach woman who should have never become APs, and those who struggled to finish their years. Several of my AP’s friends from other clusters have gone to her meetings because they were better. A good LCC is gold!
Alas, at the risk of hi-jacking this thread, we’ve been unable to find a successor for our current AP after 12 weeks of searching. Now that we’re 4 1/2 weeks out from our current AP’s departure, we’re switching to nursing. Good-bye to having the morning shift covered. Good-bye to date nights (and days) on Saturdays. Sure for us having a nurse is “free” because The Camel is on a Medicaid waiver, but good-bye to vacation time that we’ll now be able to afford to use. There’s a payoff for everything, and for us, most of the 14 1/2 years we’ve hosted APs have been fantastic – or we wouldn’t have stuck with the program so long!
I’m very depressed about having to leave, but now that The Camel is nearly the same age as the women we’re interviewing (and child #2 is in high school), they’re not interested. We’ve done the temporary nurse thing, but no more – I can’ risk getting a reputation for switching back and forth because in the long run (as in the rest of The Camel’s life), I’ll need a nursing agency on which I can rely. (And yes, we did look at Pro Au Pair, but at $5,000 more than the Big Agency with which we currently work and a promise that The Camel would age out at 18 – barely a year away – it wasn’t worth giving up the last of our disposable income for one more year of AP flexibility.)
It’s really too bad that there’s not another foreign domestic worker program like the AP program, but focused on recruiting people to help with caring for people with special needs and the elderly. I think there’s a pretty big need for this, and the program would be as beneficial to both host families and the foreign workers (au pairs) as the current au pair program.
But it’s not in the cards, if anything it looks like the laws are going to scale back the au pair program, not expand it to other populations of people needing care.
Good luck to you in finding a great nurse/nursing agency. I hope you still come here and offer your advice & experience.
TaCL, say it ain’t so! Are you going to stick around here even if you can’t find an AP? Surely there must be an AP coming into rematch who would be willing to give you guys a try (if you are willing to give her/him a try)? Or a bro-pair–they have fewer options but we are loving ours?
Best wishes to you and your family in any case.
Oh TACL….I knew you would be aging out of the program eventually. But still,selfishly, it is hard to see you go. Over the many years I followed this blog, I have appreciated your thoughtful, level headed advice that you have shared here. I would say about 60% of my handbook has things in it that are a direct result of some comment you made.
I hope you are able to find a wonderful nurse for the camel…she deserves no less! Sending good thoughts your way as your family transitions to this new phase….
No. You are not allowed to go.
+1
I veto TaCL’s departure.
+1
TaCL – I have learnt so much from you about the program and I know its weird, admiring someone you dont know, but i have admired you and how you seem to parent with so much grace. Good luck to you and your family
We have an AMAZING lcc. Really lucked out there and we are in a fairly large city. Moved to our current city 2 years ago from a 1st choice AP city where we couldn’t host an AP because or house was really small. Once we got here, i interviewed all 3 LCCs from APIA, APC and CCAP. I really liked one of them, ambivalent/tolerated the 2nd and really disliked my initial interactions with the 3rd. Ended up matching with our great AP#1 from the “tolerated” LCC agency. But the “really liked” lcc kept in touch every couple of months through our AP#1 year and i actually asked her more AP questions than my actual LCC during that year. Matched with AP#2 with the “really liked” lcc agency and she turned out to be not a good fit for and we called rematch after 2 months. My LCC really proved her worth and made rematch not so bad. She worked with me to match with our OOC AP#3 and even escalated when my placement manager want doing her job. Got the office to really look through and make sure we were exposed to candidates that meet our requirements. Having said that she can be somewhat annoying at times. She sees her job as an lcc as a business. I heard that in 5 years she’s grown the agency to have over 70 HFs requiring 2 other LCCs. I believe she has like 30 APs in her current cluster so likely that they will recruit another LCC soon. She’s very much interested in getting great reviews so she tries to always do a great job for the HFs and the APs. She’s a former AP and a mother to young kids so that helps her understanding of both sides.
The CCAP LCCs in my area seem to have a lot of turnover… for a while I had one who was only temporarily covering my neighborhood (because of turnover), but she is a long-term LCC in a different Seattle neighborhood and she is really great. She’s been with the company for a long time, and she is both helpful to HFs and APs. We were lucky to have her as our LCC during our rematch, because she recognized what was happening and helped us to have a smooth transition.
I’m now with IEX and our LC has been in that position for a few years- she’s really good and involved and personable. She clearly cares about the HFs and APs and knows what she’s doing. I could definitely pick her out of a lineup :).
And I really liked my first CCAP LCC but she was only in the position for about a year before she left (for a full time job elsewhere). She lives in my community and I have seen her around a couple of times since she left CCAP and we chat. The other CCAP LCC I had, I definitely couldn’t pick her out of a lineup. But she lasted about a year, and it was almost a year ago. She wasn’t bad, but we didn’t really click.
Sorry it didn’t occur to me to add “Talk with your mutual LCC” as one of the options in the poll!
It’s interesting to see how many of us reflect on bad situations we’ve experienced directly as we’re making the call on whether to intervene. I wish that someone had been able to warn me about our flame-out AP…. sigh.
That’s a tough one. As an AP, I disagree with the other AP’S choice and see why a HP would want to inform the other HP. However, as an AP I also know how I would feel nif my HM betrayed my trust. Under no circumstances would I advice the Hm to do ANYTHINg without talking to her AP about it.
The thing is, there are different levels of friendship. Amongst APs, you sometimes hang out with people you usually wouldn’t hang out with but every now and then, a real friendship can happen. If the AP who’s about to leave was a so-so “friend”, ratting her out would be a small price to pay for doing what’s right. But what if the APs are really close friends? Would you rat your close friend out if she was cheating on her husband? I personally would tell her I think it’s wrong but I wouldn’t rat her out. So if the APs are really close, FORCING your AP to rat the other one out may lead to a destroyed friendship which will lead to a destroyed AP-HM relationship. If confiding in my HM about something I feel conflicted about led to her destroying my friendship (maybe one of the only ones I made during my AP time…) I know for sure I would never ever tell her anything again.
So I would definitely talk to the AP again, inquire about how strongly she feels about keeping the secret for this friend, urging her to do the right thing if they are not that close and tell the LCC but I would not tell the HM or the LCC without talking to her again.
If you know the HM personally, maybe even have to interact with her regularly, tell your AP what kind of situation she has put you in and find a solution together.
While I get that HPs want to stick together, friends also need to stick together and as it seems like you have a very trusting relationship with your AP, you kinda also need to stick together, especially if you don’t know the HM.
The posters who said that the AP wanting to help her friend deceive the HP shows what she would be willing to do to her own HF…again, if you kept the secret of a friend cheating, would that mean you would cheat, too? Some issues aren’t just black and white. And since the AP isn’t going to leave the family over night or doing anything to endager the kids, I don’t necessarily think that the HP-pact trumphs the AP-pact or the HP-AP pact…I would rather not tell a stranger something than ruin two trusting relationships if that’s the case.
I would stay out of it. January is months away and aupairs plans can change at the drop of a hat. I found out recently from another HP mum that my last aupair had been telling her girl that she was planning to leave us last Christmas but the mum didn’t know my details to contact me. However, AP obviously changed her mind and never did leave and I was none the wiser until she was near the end of her contract. If the other mum had told me at Christmas what she heard I would been really upset and trust in the AP would have been gone. I probably would have sent her packing. She would have missed what turned out to be six great months with us and it would have probably put me off aupairs entirely.
I would say to your own AP to encourage her to give more notice but otherwise I wouldn’t interfere – Give her the chance to do the right thing herself or change her mind entirely. What she is planning to do may seem wrong to you but if she is within her rights to leave with two weeks notice then its her choice and its not up to you to take it in to your own hands.
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