Au Pair and Friends During Pandemic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HF who believes is science. Just won’t engage in slavery and bring a girl here for cheap labor.

When you troll this bad, no one takes you seriously.

Agree with this. Clearly there is someone on this forum who is or was an AP and who has rather intellectually deficient reasoning skills and probably a significantly atrophied emotional IQ. The point is that we are in pandemic, and following guidelines from the CDC is not "human trafficking" or "slavery". Rather, these points prove that the troll is actually quite immature and would probably lie to the host family and take no precautions, which ends up underscoring the legitimate concerns of the HF. Thus, little troll, you actually prove the point of the concerned and responsible HFs.

Different HM. Well, you seem to be suffering from a pronounced narcissistic personality disorder. Not sure you are a good judge of character...au pairs shouldn’t lie, but people like you shouldn’t host, either. Yuck.

[Anonymous]

Our ap has 2 close friends who we've been allowing her to see. Until about 3-4 weeks ago, they were allowed to stay at each others homes overnight on their weekends off. We know that the other host families are very cautious and basically living in the same type of remote work/school type of bubble that we are, plus one family (as well as ours, but not all of us) had Covid in the spring.
Now that things are getting worse, we've asked her only to socialize outdoors with her friends. She is fine with it and is very careful. We are considering letting her invite one of her friends to spend Christmas with her, since her host family is planning to travel without her (to see family, which I think is stupid on their part), but I'm not sure if we are comfortable with it at this point. We'd probably only do it if the friend self-isolated and got a negative covid test before (and this is the friend who had covid already).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have asked our au pair to always wear a mask indoors except at our house (so including in the homes of her friend APs) and to avoid crowded places. We said she could choose two friends to bring into our home, masked, and see them only in the basement (which has her bedroom, bathroom and TV/lounge room plus its own entrance). We have given her complete free reign with our car -- even to the extent it impacts us -- and free gas with the understanding that she will not use any public transportation. We ask her to discuss her plans with us in advance if there are gray areas to these rules and told her we will always do our best to come up with a compromise that works for both of us. So far, so good.

So far so good or she just lies. We are being completely flexible with our au pair (we are somewhat desperate and luckily have no risk factors), but our au pair has told us all her friends just lie to their host families.

If you would assume your au pair was lying to you about this — not like a one time slip or deviation, but in general — then how could you possibly trust them to watch your children? I trust my au pair. I have no reason to think she’s lying to me.

[Anonymous]

I think what makes it difficult also is that LCCs are also not exactly up to snuff on the science and tell APs that if they go on vacay they should get tested and that's it. Nothing about quarantining afterwards, so APs (and many in the public for that matter) think a negative means they are in the clear, when in actuality, they need to quarantine for longer than that

[Anonymous]

whew, the crazy nanny knows how to derail threads on this forum, especially now that she probably doesn't have a job anymore. You know who you are, get a life!

With that said, we have stopped hosting since July because we didn't want to deal with this type of issue. You're probably going to end up in rematch, which might be a good thing. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please see the thread on APs and traveling. You are proving what most suspect -- you want an AP for cheap childcare, not for the cultural experience.

I personally agree with others, that at some level, you are engaging in human trafficking. Please tell me what your AP is getting out of this. And please don't say you explained it all to her when she came. No way a young woman from another country (may impoverished) knows what it means to be stuck at home with her boss and kids.

Please rematch.

You know there's a pandemic out there right? Are you a Trump voter from Alaska?

Nope. Huge Biden supporter. Trump wouldn’t care about human slavery.

huge Biden supporter here and I am not in favor of the AP program as it is designed now, but you are dead wrong. we are in a pandemic and young people going around socializing have been among the reasons the pandemic spread last summer both in Europe and in the USA. they go around, have no or little symptoms and then infect their middle aged parents or older grandparents who end up at the ER. yes, staying home and isolation is bad ( I have been home since February, my teens have seen one friend each a few times, always outside, since schools closed in DC so I know how hard this is) but this is a matter of health. OP's AP does not even limit her contacts to one person, she is seeing multiple friends and was planning a trip to Florida in January, when based on all the dats we have know we can expect virus raging all over the US and overwhelmed hospitals? OP is right and the OP is being profoundly immature (the entire world has been down the drain in the past few months, millions of people in the US have no jobs, soon no home and go hungry and need to rely on charities to eat, so yeah, she can suck it up for a few more months as we have all done, juggling full times jobs at home, kids doing school online, cooking, cleaning and so on). I think OP should just rematch. the OP may find a family that is more flexible and does not care. although she may end up in places like CA with a stay at home order and then she back to square one. because the reality is that there is a pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please see the thread on APs and traveling. You are proving what most suspect -- you want an AP for cheap childcare, not for the cultural experience.

I personally agree with others, that at some level, you are engaging in human trafficking. Please tell me what your AP is getting out of this. And please don't say you explained it all to her when she came. No way a young woman from another country (may impoverished) knows what it means to be stuck at home with her boss and kids.

Please rematch.

You know there's a pandemic out there right? Are you a Trump voter from Alaska?

Nope. Huge Biden supporter. Trump wouldn’t care about human slavery.

huge Biden supporter here and I am not in favor of the AP program as it is designed now, but you are dead wrong. we are in a pandemic and young people going around socializing have been among the reasons the pandemic spread last summer both in Europe and in the USA. they go around, have no or little symptoms and then infect their middle aged parents or older grandparents who end up at the ER. yes, staying home and isolation is bad ( I have been home since February, my teens have seen one friend each a few times, always outside, since schools closed in DC so I know how hard this is) but this is a matter of health. OP's AP does not even limit her contacts to one person, she is seeing multiple friends and was planning a trip to Florida in January, when based on all the dats we have know we can expect virus raging all over the US and overwhelmed hospitals? OP is right and the OP is being profoundly immature (the entire world has been down the drain in the past few months, millions of people in the US have no jobs, soon no home and go hungry and need to rely on charities to eat, so yeah, she can suck it up for a few more months as we have all done, juggling full times jobs at home, kids doing school online, cooking, cleaning and so on). I think OP should just rematch. the OP may find a family that is more flexible and does not care. although she may end up in places like CA with a stay at home order and then she back to square one. because the reality is that there is a pandemic.

the AP is immature and the AP may find a family that is more flexible. sorry for the typos

[Anonymous]

I don’t think the pandemic is consistent with having au pairs & a cultural experience. Our current au pair is going home and we won’t get another until we won’t need to put restraints on travel. It sucks—we do need childcare—but our safety needs and an au pair’s need to travel and socialize are just too out of sync.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think the pandemic is consistent with having au pairs & a cultural experience. Our current au pair is going home and we won’t get another until we won’t need to put restraints on travel. It sucks—we do need childcare—but our safety needs and an au pair’s need to travel and socialize are just too out of sync.

Just look for a homebody. All the HP who complained about the AP who never left the house should be happy now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think the pandemic is consistent with having au pairs & a cultural experience. Our current au pair is going home and we won’t get another until we won’t need to put restraints on travel. It sucks—we do need childcare—but our safety needs and an au pair’s need to travel and socialize are just too out of sync.

This. The program should be suspended now and there are so many other problems with it. How risk averse are you? Many AP's are now becoming aware of their rights and are hiring attorneys and suing their HF's and their agencies. And winning their suits.

https://fairlaborrecruitment.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/shortchanged.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think the pandemic is consistent with having au pairs & a cultural experience. Our current au pair is going home and we won’t get another until we won’t need to put restraints on travel. It sucks—we do need childcare—but our safety needs and an au pair’s need to travel and socialize are just too out of sync.

This. The program should be suspended now and there are so many other problems with it. How risk averse are you? Many AP's are now becoming aware of their rights and are hiring attorneys and suing their HF's and their agencies. And winning their suits.

https://fairlaborrecruitment.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/shortchanged.pdf

This link refers to pre-covid existence. If HFs are not adhering to the rules and pay, then by all means, hold them accountable.

In Covid, you don't get to put the health of others at risk just because you need an "experience". Of course you and APs who think this way are welcome to join the militia men and anti maskers.