Worst Au Pair Experiences.

[Anonymous]

I am curious to hear about the worst experiences with au pairs. Would anyone be willing to share? I have heard of some stories that were kind of unbelievable but it does make a lot of sense when you consider that a young woman is living away from home for the first time, and they go wild with their new found freedom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am curious to hear about the worst experiences with au pairs. Would anyone be willing to share? I have heard of some stories that were kind of unbelievable but it does make a lot of sense when you consider that a young woman is living away from home for the first time, and they go wild with their new found freedom.

Is the snow making you hungry for some negativity?

[Anonymous]

Let's just say everything you've heard has probably occurred somewhere, sometime in the history of the author pair program. Young people away from home, after all, are not known as a group for having good judgment all the time.

But 95 percent of the time everything goes fine, and I refuse to join in on an automated pair bashing thread in disguise.

[Anonymous]

I'll bite.

As background, we've had 3 APs, currently in our 6th year.

Worst story I've got - one Au pair bleached our cream bath towels. But, considering she was doing our bath towels out of the goodness of her heart and this was waaayyy outside the scope of her expected duties, I never did nor will mention ever it to her. I just sincerely thanked her for being thoughtful and helping us out. Bleached towels work just as well cream ones.

[Anonymous]

I don't know any "going wild with their freedom" stories, but the worst thing that happened to us was the AP that came downstairs one morning 30 days after she arrived, told me she was too homesick and that she had booked her flight home for the next day. That really sucked, but I've had three really good experiences with au pairs otherwise, including her successor, our best au pair yet.

[Anonymous]

I have found that the unbelievably terrible stories about Au Pairs were always from 'a friend of a friend', and told by someone who 'would never want to have an Au Pair in my house'. We have had many 'funny accidents' we enjoy sharing with our APs. Most involve cooking or cooking.

I'd rather use this board to share the great stories, as opposed to perpetuating stereotypes founded on the few bad apples in the program.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, all, for posting these and not truly feeding the troll.

Our "worst story" was the AP who forgot to put DC into the GPS instead of Maryland and took the children over an hour into Southern Maryland to a playdate that was supposed to be five minutes away (same name of road, just in Southern MD so reeeeaaallly far away). She was new and was afraid to call and ask if we really wanted her to drive so far. We teased her for the rest of the year about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have found that the unbelievably terrible stories about Au Pairs were always from 'a friend of a friend', and told by someone who 'would never want to have an Au Pair in my house'. We have had many 'funny accidents' we enjoy sharing with our APs. Most involve cooking or cooking.

I'd rather use this board to share the great stories, as opposed to perpetuating stereotypes founded on the few bad apples in the program.

So true! I heard a "horrible AP story" from a SAHM about a friend of a friend. Said mother has never used a sitter aND has not gone out alone with her husband in over 9 years. She's afraid her kids might get molested.

[Anonymous]

I have a personal bad AP experience because we matched with a mentally ill AP and only discovered this 6 months into the year. The best way to describe having her in the house is "single, white, female" for anyone that remembers that movie. It took me a long while to get over that truly awful experience and yet there is a part in me that feels sad for her. But why oh why, when APing is a stressful experience anyway, did she choose to do this year???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have found that the unbelievably terrible stories about Au Pairs were always from 'a friend of a friend', and told by someone who 'would never want to have an Au Pair in my house'. We have had many 'funny accidents' we enjoy sharing with our APs. Most involve cooking or cooking.

I'd rather use this board to share the great stories, as opposed to perpetuating stereotypes founded on the few bad apples in the program.

19:22 here. My sister did have two pretty bad experiences over her 10 years hosting. But, as pp notes, there are bound to be bad stories. Through mine, my sister's and two close friends, we collectively have over 20 years of hosting experience and only my sister's two bad experiences stand out. And only one involved directly interacting with a child.

[Anonymous]

My friend crashed three cars within four weeks.

Car #1 wasn't her mistake. She was stopped at a red light, the guy behind her just crashed into her, car was totalled.
Host parents bought a totally new au pair car.
A week later she ran into a boulder (!) when backing out of their driveway. A boulder that had been sitting there forever (and that she knew about). She just "forgot".
Car got repaired.
A week later she kind of did not notice that there was other traffic on the road when she needed to make a left turn. Unfortunately some one going streight couln't stop in time and hit the passenger side. Fortunately nobody got hurt. Car was totalled.

She was not allowed to drive again. She didn't understand why.


My host family went into rematch with the au pair that they picked two years after me.
Because of a) not picking up the second oldest from baseball practice after school and leaving home without making sure he was somewhere safe (coffee with a friend was more important) and b) for leaving the babies (1 & 3) in the living room unattended while she was in her room on the phone (she didn't even notice host mom coming home for lunch).

***

As for "worst experiences" from the au pair side...

One of my friends left her host family (no idea why she ever matched with them) because the kids were professional contestants at beauty pageants. All she was allowed to do with the girls was curl their hair and work on their "talents". She hated it.

One of my friends had to complete a list of activities with her kids, a List with a capital L. They had five compulsory activities they had to do every week: zoo, science museum, art museum, library, park. They were allowed to chose when they did what but all five had to be done every week. If the weather was bad and they hadn't been to the park Monday though Thursday they HAD to go on Friday. She got yelled at if she didn't. No idea why she stayed with the family... especially as they made her do household chores like washing the floors (on her knees, with a sponge) and washing all kids toys with bleach in the bath tub once a week (which didn't only ruin some of her clothes but the skin on her hands as well).

One of my friends, again no idea why she didn't go into rematch, jumped between her host children when the older son (14) was beating up his little sister (10) with a belt. That was right before he threatened them with a knife and said he would kill them.

One of my friends is just now leaving her (non US) host family (after giving four weeks notice, she has the patience of a Saint) because she is working 60 hour weeks while mom is home (not work from home but stay at home). Local au pair regulations don't allow more than 30 hrs of childcare per week.

My worst experience? My host mom shrunk my favorite socks. They were light blue and had yellow rubber ducks on them. Oh I loved those socks. They fit the 1 year old when she was done with them.
Oh and I left my (European) host family because the son hit me when he didn't get what he wanted and instead of talking to me barked at me (that went on for four weeks, he kicked me when I barked back at him and told me it was rude to bark at people). Host parents were fine with it and really didn't see where he needed to be talked to. But then again it was also okay for him to push his baby sister (1) off the couch on purpose because he wanted to sit there. But I guess that is totally normal behaviour for an 8 year old [/sarcasm]

[Anonymous]

My worst au pair was a social media junkie. Always on her phone always on the apps...so much that my kids gave up on asking her to play with them. She would text in the car and even take videos. I asked her to stop and even had two mediations with her and our counselor. . She also was clueless and would start the car with the garage door down. She was passive aggressive and although I told her to take the boys outside every day, she would 'forget' or 'assume they didn't want to because they did ask to'. She claimed she was a slave because she had to play with the boys and be available when they were sick or had a snow day vs being able to be off/go to the gym.

I should have rematched, but I muddled thru instead. Never again.

[Anonymous]

Well.

I posted about mine when they happened.

Safety issues galore with AP2 which culminated in her totaling my car and then leaving for her home country lickety split.

Good (horrible) times.

[Anonymous]

I think the worst one was when the AP got in a car accident and died a few days before the end of her year. Her parents had to fly over and get her. My AP was a not-so-close friend of hers.

Besides that, one AP left a family because they were hoarders. I picked my AP up from her house and thought they had just moved in. Also, we got an AP in rematch whose family included an alcoholic.

[Anonymous]

We got an AP in a rematch because the parents where alcoholics and the father physically abused his kids and wife. The final straw was whEn the AP had to call the police and CPS removed the kids from the house. AP was horribly traumatized.