How to deal with negativity of new au pair?

[Anonymous]

Age DOES matter.

I'm 26 now, and the thought of a 21 yr old AP makes me laugh (and feel bad for her). She's probably old enough to be apart of the family as your kid. Like an older sister.

Most 21 year olds are getting excited about legally being able to drink, taking some college classes, working at the Gap, and still on mom & dad's health/car insurance. They're often not taking on a HUGE roll as a live-in caretaker like you're expecting.

I was a nanny at 21, a pretty good one, I think, but I certainly don't think 21 year olds are very mature overall (some are/were forced into it during life circumstances, or just born that way, etc).

Point is: you have a young adult doing grown adult things for a not-so-great wage ...and you wonder why there's a problem???

Moms out there - it's time to wake UP.

[Anonymous]

If she's frazzled from her daily job of caring for three children full time (and who wouldn't be?), I'm not surprised that something simple like the line at the DMV seems like a big deal. I've had some serious, major family stress the past week and I actually cried at the DMV yesterday. I literally could not take one more thing..... and I'm 37.

It's not productive for her to complain to the OP, sure. But think how young people are when speaking with theire friends: "Oh god, I just hadthe WORST LUNCH EVER." It's stupid, but normal. Ultimately the AP has to realize that the OP is her employer.

AP relationships are funny because we want "a member of the family" but hire 21 year olds and complain when they act their ages. So we hire a near-teenager and get irritated that she acts as a teenager....

As employers we're not interested in hearing their petty complaints, but these kids are usually acting within the bounds of normal behavior for a "member of the family" of that age. All of our kids will be annoying when they're 21, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If she's frazzled from her daily job of caring for three children full time (and who wouldn't be?), I'm not surprised that something simple like the line at the DMV seems like a big deal. I've had some serious, major family stress the past week and I actually cried at the DMV yesterday. I literally could not take one more thing..... and I'm 37.

It's not productive for her to complain to the OP, sure. But think how young people are when speaking with theire friends: "Oh god, I just hadthe WORST LUNCH EVER." It's stupid, but normal. Ultimately the AP has to realize that the OP is her employer.

AP relationships are funny because we want "a member of the family" but hire 21 year olds and complain when they act their ages. So we hire a near-teenager and get irritated that she acts as a teenager....

As employers we're not interested in hearing their petty complaints, but these kids are usually acting within the bounds of normal behavior for a "member of the family" of that age. All of our kids will be annoying when they're 21, too.

Well said. Host families get a preview of what's coming down the pike, but have to play nice.

[Anonymous]

OP, we had an AP who constantly made similar comments, and we finally just decided to take the attitude of "committing" to ignoring it as best we could, as one of the responders suggested. This AP was a really good caregiver for our children, and they loved her, but we (me and DH) just didn't like her. And part of it was this attitude. Now, I hate to stereotype by nationality, but I'm going to do it anyway: the propensity to speak this way seems more common to this particular AP's region than to the usual American etiquette. (Speaking of our AP, not yours, since you did not mention what country she was from.) And obviously I am making a huge generalization, but it is something cultural that we have noticed. (And we know it's a generalization, since we met some of this AP's family members who were not like this at all.)

We would joke that if we said to our AP, "the sky is blue," she'd say: "ah, but it is not as beautiful a blue as in my country," or "oh, I have seen much better shades of blue. This blue is really a bad kind of blue." And that was the key to getting through it - we tried to make light of it to ourselves, and ignore it as best we could. We really did start to notice it less. Of course, this was all helped by her being a really great AP to our children - we let the personality issues slide as best we could, though we are really hoping to have a better fit next time, since we had such a great AP (both in terms of childcare and personality fit) prior to this particular one, that we know it is possible!

I mean, this AP literally complained about EVERYTHING - general life-related, childcare-related, etc. But - if we actually pushed back on something (e.g. a complaint that was also a request that we accommodate her in some way that we weren't able or willing to do), she usually let it go. Or if, for fun, we actually asked a follow up question - it was usually pretty clear that she was just complaining as a way of talking, and not because she really cared. (e.g. AP: "It is so stupid how they check my ID every time I walk into my favorite bar." Us: "Well, maybe, but we do have a law here that says you have to be 21 in order to drink. How else would they enforce that?" AP: "I don't know, but it is just stupid." Us: "Okay.")

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, we had an AP who constantly made similar comments, and we finally just decided to take the attitude of "committing" to ignoring it as best we could, as one of the responders suggested. This AP was a really good caregiver for our children, and they loved her, but we (me and DH) just didn't like her. And part of it was this attitude. Now, I hate to stereotype by nationality, but I'm going to do it anyway: the propensity to speak this way seems more common to this particular AP's region than to the usual American etiquette. (Speaking of our AP, not yours, since you did not mention what country she was from.) And obviously I am making a huge generalization, but it is something cultural that we have noticed. (And we know it's a generalization, since we met some of this AP's family members who were not like this at all.)

We would joke that if we said to our AP, "the sky is blue," she'd say: "ah, but it is not as beautiful a blue as in my country," or "oh, I have seen much better shades of blue. This blue is really a bad kind of blue." And that was the key to getting through it - we tried to make light of it to ourselves, and ignore it as best we could. We really did start to notice it less. Of course, this was all helped by her being a really great AP to our children - we let the personality issues slide as best we could, though we are really hoping to have a better fit next time, since we had such a great AP (both in terms of childcare and personality fit) prior to this particular one, that we know it is possible!

I mean, this AP literally complained about EVERYTHING - general life-related, childcare-related, etc. But - if we actually pushed back on something (e.g. a complaint that was also a request that we accommodate her in some way that we weren't able or willing to do), she usually let it go. Or if, for fun, we actually asked a follow up question - it was usually pretty clear that she was just complaining as a way of talking, and not because she really cared. (e.g. AP: "It is so stupid how they check my ID every time I walk into my favorite bar." Us: "Well, maybe, but we do have a law here that says you have to be 21 in order to drink. How else would they enforce that?" AP: "I don't know, but it is just stupid." Us: "Okay.")

This made me laugh out loud. This is exactly what my AP does (I'm the earlier poster who suggested OP commit to ignoring her). I love your examples - I can literally hear my AP in my head saying the same things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would love to know from experienced host moms whether this situation is likely to improve (or not).

We have a relatively new au pair. She's been here about 6 weeks. She is a nice person, but seems immature. And, in fairness, I think my au pair "job" is harder than many-- (3 kids ages 4-10, pretty much 45 hours every week, minimal house work).

Pretty much immediately, I noticed that our new au pair seems to think that small inconveniences are a really big deal. Every day, I ask her how her day was (whether it was a work day or a fun day), and without fail, she tells me about how awful something was: her lunch was not good, she had to wait 30 minutes for the metro, the kids were "bad", she had to wait 2 hours at the DMV, etc. While she isn't generally sullen, the negativity is grating on me. I think we live in a great country -- and a great area -- but it's not "Oz". There are lines here, and mean people and bad service and bad drivers and all of these other things that are everywhere else in the world too.

You have 3 kids under 10. You ask her how her day went and so she tells you. If you do not want to know, do not ask.

Unless you want her to reply 'fine thank you' every time you ask.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Age DOES matter.

I'm 26 now, and the thought of a 21 yr old AP makes me laugh (and feel bad for her). She's probably old enough to be apart of the family as your kid. Like an older sister.

Most 21 year olds are getting excited about legally being able to drink, taking some college classes, working at the Gap, and still on mom & dad's health/car insurance. They're often not taking on a HUGE roll as a live-in caretaker like you're expecting.

I was a nanny at 21, a pretty good one, I think, but I certainly don't think 21 year olds are very mature overall (some are/were forced into it during life circumstances, or just born that way, etc).

Point is: you have a young adult doing grown adult things for a not-so-great wage ...and you wonder why there's a problem???

Moms out there - it's time to wake UP.

Having just finished our first (and last) year with an au pair, I have to agree with this a bit. We've had two au pairs that were actually both 21. The first was an extraordinaire (they have extra credentials) and the second was just a regular au pair. The difference in maturity was amazing. Since our first 21 year old was so great - came to us having already lived on her own and had a full-time job plus childcare credentials, I assumed that the regular program would yield me similar results. But no, surprise (!), she is a regular 21 year old.

I was fairly miserable this year as a person paying for a service that I wasn't getting, but on another level I blamed myself a lot (and the agency for presenting these au pairs as professional childcare providers). She acted like a 21 year old who was getting her first taste of freedom. I should have known, and I will not be repeating the regular au pair experience again. Not to say that there aren't great au pairs out there, but I wouldn't leave my kids with the vast majority of 21 year old American kids. For some reason I thought the 21 year olds that had self-selected into a foreign cultural exchange program would be more mature than normal 21 year olds, but no, I discovered I wouldn't leave my kids with most foreign young adults either.