AU pair food

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. Simply unbelievable.
And you think you're a "host"?

+1

I bet OP also makes AP buy her own laundry detergent and toilet paper.
I would LOVE to hear what AP says about this HF to other APs or LLC. 95% OP ends rematch and wonders why.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you are a terrible host to cook something and not offer it to your AP.

I completely agree. How incredibly rude.

[Anonymous]

With my first au pair, I was constantly stressed out about cooking for her, as well. Because I'd typically make a 'kid' meal for the baby&toddler and something quick for myself (sandwich) after a long day at work, but I always felt like I needed to make a 'real' sit-down meal so she could have something more dinner-like. (That I couldn't just make her a sandwich and call it dinner.) I hated having an au pair for this reason. Starting with my second au pair, I made it clear in the interviews that she would be cooking dinner much of the time for the kids and herself. We'd sometimes have family meals, but certainly not every night. And I started encouraging the au pair to add to my grocery list so she could make whatever she wanted for herself. This made things much less stressful for me. Now, my kids are older and I leave instructions for her to cook alongside my tween and for them to eat together. And sometimes even give the tween the 'chore' of making dinner and ask the au pair to oversee/help her so the family meal is ready when I come home...

[Anonymous]

HM here- if I'm cooking dinner (only 1-2 times per week), I always make enough for AP or leftovers. She doesn't always eat it.

The kids usually have mac n cheese or pizza, so AP can have some if she wants but usually doesn't.

Then I have AP make family dinner once a week- her choice as long as it is mainstream, like chicken or pasta.

[Anonymous]

I had assumed that inclusion in family meals was a given when hosting. Sounds like you don't have family meals most days, OP? If so, just ask AP which of the two dinner options she'd like to join on weeknights - eat with the kids or eat with the HPs, then include her, which means making enough for her to eat.

You must have some family meals on weekends right? Be sure to invite her to those.

[Anonymous]

Our first AP ate just about every meal with us. If she was awake and there was a family meal or snack, she joined us. We got to know her well and that made it easier to raise small issues as they arose, because the bulk of what we discussed every day was friendly, and not focused on problems.

Our second AP almost never ate with us. Mid-way through the year, I couldn't recall her eating more than 3 meals with us since she arrived. We almost never saw her, didn't have a chance to develop that rapport and it strained whatever discussions we needed to have about relatively trivial things.

I definitely preferred having an AP who joined us for dinner. The grass isn't always greener OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I suspect the challenge here is that you feel AP is expecting you to cook for her like an additional child without contributing to the process. For us, AP is on her own for breakfast and lunch. We have family dinners almost every night and she can cook for everyone (off the clock) and we'll do the dishes, or she can enjoy the meal and help out with the dishes. Staying in her room until the meal is ready and then retiring to the tv room the minute she's done is not an option.
If your kids already eat an early meal, it might be good to just have her cook a few nights, and when you ask her open the conversation to include that you will help with xyz when she cooks but she is responsible for xyz when you do. If she wants a family that has family meals, she may look for rematch, which is okay, too.

It really comes down to whether the AP expresses appreciation for having a home cooked meal. With our AP1, we got into the bad situation of the AP expecting us to cook every dinner for her. She did not help out, stayed in her room, need to tell her dinner is on the table before she came out, and went directly back into her room after she was finished even though everyone else at the table were still eating. There was no appreciation expressed. We were left feeling like her private chefs. We learned and with future APs, set clearer expectations about helping out (prep or clean up), was up front that sometimes we eat together, sometimes it is fend for ourselves, sometimes we cook, sometimes AP cooks for herself etc. We never tell her that that she has to cook any dinner for us - only if she wants to cook as part of sharing her food culture with us. This approach has helped and avoided the resentment feelings that we felt with AP1.

[Anonymous]

OP - this is a communication issue. When do you cook for yourself or the kids vs. just her? It seems like you could make her food while you make it for the kids, but at the same time if I just make myself a sandwich I don't want AP eating it Talk to her...figure it out.

[Anonymous]

Your famikybos clearly structured much differently than ours. So i will just share withbyiu waht we do.

We put a high premium on the ENTIRE family eating dinner together. Thisbis important because we are a two income home with people going in different directions and a family meal free of distractions is something we value. With that said, there are 6 dinners each week made at home. There are 3 adults in the house. Food is OF COURSE made for the AuPair as well. However each adult signs up on Friday for their 2 nights, starting Sunday for the comming week they pick to cook dinner and write down their chosen meal and needed ingredients which i shop for early Sunday morning. Whomever cooks on their night doesn't clean up.

We do this day 1 with our AuPairs. It is in our handbook. We are also a sports family and have a family calendar everyone has access to and ask the AuPair if they could take into consideration our crazy schedule and pick one of the busier nights to do their meal, which usually works well because out AuPairs dont like picking up dinner duties on weekends and we love voming home to a cooked meal.

As you can imagine, we don't ( and really cant) cook special food for the kids like frozen nuggets or pizza. They eat what we eat and it has aleays been this way.

[Anonymous]

First time HM here, very helpful thread. Our AP simply can't cook and it's not part of her responsibility as we only have 1 infant. My husband travels and I cook 1-2 times a week. She doesn't help with any food prep or clean up, yet she typically eats dinner with us and will eat our leftovers for her lunch. I've always advised that breakfast and lunch are on her own, but I feel like she expects to eat dinner without helping out at all. I've asked her to unload the clean dishes in dishwasher, only to find that she will unload only silverware and dishes, leaving cups, storage containers and other items in the dishwasher (lazy union worker). Please advise what chores you assign as related to meal clean up. I've always welcomed her to eat with us, but my kitchen is not a diner and AP need to be responsible for themselves at times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First time HM here, very helpful thread. Our AP simply can't cook and it's not part of her responsibility as we only have 1 infant. My husband travels and I cook 1-2 times a week. She doesn't help with any food prep or clean up, yet she typically eats dinner with us and will eat our leftovers for her lunch. I've always advised that breakfast and lunch are on her own, but I feel like she expects to eat dinner without helping out at all. I've asked her to unload the clean dishes in dishwasher, only to find that she will unload only silverware and dishes, leaving cups, storage containers and other items in the dishwasher (lazy union worker). Please advise what chores you assign as related to meal clean up. I've always welcomed her to eat with us, but my kitchen is not a diner and AP need to be responsible for themselves at times.

Did you read the post right above yours?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First time HM here, very helpful thread. Our AP simply can't cook and it's not part of her responsibility as we only have 1 infant. My husband travels and I cook 1-2 times a week. She doesn't help with any food prep or clean up, yet she typically eats dinner with us and will eat our leftovers for her lunch. I've always advised that breakfast and lunch are on her own, but I feel like she expects to eat dinner without helping out at all. I've asked her to unload the clean dishes in dishwasher, only to find that she will unload only silverware and dishes, leaving cups, storage containers and other items in the dishwasher (lazy union worker). Please advise what chores you assign as related to meal clean up. I've always welcomed her to eat with us, but my kitchen is not a diner and AP need to be responsible for themselves at times.

In our handbook we state that dinner is a family event. This means that anyone who eats the meal has to help in some way. Our kids set the table. AP may cook and we will clean, or we will cook and she will help the non-cooking parent clean up. She has cooked 1 meal in 9 months. In addition to helping with any meal she eats with us, her regular chore is emptying the dishwasher (always, regardless of whether or not she is working that day). We remind her that we have a housecleaner come and we do ALL other daily housekeeping tasks. Putting away clean dishes is a pretty nice chore.
With our first AP we had to backtrack and say that our kitchen wasn't a restaurant. I just assumed one would know to be helpful, but it wasn't so.

[Anonymous]

Is the au pair cooking for everybody once a week considered off-clock?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HM here- if I'm cooking dinner (only 1-2 times per week), I always make enough for AP or leftovers. She doesn't always eat it.

The kids usually have mac n cheese or pizza, so AP can have some if she wants but usually doesn't.

Then I have AP make family dinner once a week- her choice as long as it is mainstream, like chicken or pasta.

your kids usually have mac n cheese or pizza? Why?

[Anonymous]

This is a 4 year old thread so OP is almost certainly not following!

For the recent new poster, I think its allowed but probably highly dependent on the relationship with your AP - if things are healthy and friendly between you, and you don't count minutes or pennies with each other, I think asking her to do dinner once a week is fine as long as you (or your spouse) are cooking at least 2 other nights a week. I think what is important is that it is "splitting the load" not "piling the load all on the AP"