Au pair schedule/responsibilities during Covid

[Anonymous]

Our au pair was hired for a morning/evening schedule for 3 kids (ages 1.5, 4 and 7 - boy, girl, girl). Now she is scheduled for 9-5 Mon.- Fri due to the current crisis. Both DH and I work full time and have been busy throughout this time (lots of calls, work project etc). Our au pair has taken to only watching our son (1.5 yo) except for making lunch for the kids. Granted my son is at a very busy and destructive age but watching the older girls has fallen on us. When our son sleeps from 1-3/3:30 she takes the time off. Once or twice a week she'll do some laundry but generally she is doing nothing. Then when he wakes she takes him on a long walk until she is off at 5PM. He comes home ready to play and is up until 7 for bed. Ive asked her to watch the girls but she doesn't do it unless I specifically instruct "please take all kids outside now" and she doesn't want to do learning projects with the girls as she claims its a different language. However, her English is pretty good and a 4 year old is minor learning. Sometimes she'll procrastinate even watching my son by starting a long complicated lunch from scratch.

I realize this is a very hard situation on all of us and not what she signed up for so I've tried to be flexible and understanding and thankful for help with my son (i.e., without it things would be MUCH more difficult). Though, I do feel more and more frustrated. Thoughts on whether I should say something, ask for more help, or leave things as they are? If this was only a 2 month situation I would not say anything but as it could potentially be long term, I want to make sure there are clear responsibilities set out.

As an aside she did fine with our morning/evening schedule. She's just not adapting to a "during the day" schedule with 3 kids.

[Anonymous]

Have a very clear conversation with her. Acknowledge it is not what was expected, but is what is needed, and it is now her job.

Our au pair also decided our two older kids were no longer her responsibility (other than she’d make meals, but even then she just ignored our oldest if he didn’t come to the table - and he NEEDS to be made to come to the table because he takes a medication that suppresses hunger, but his blood sugar will crash without food). We ended up sending her to rematch because it was not worth it to us to have an au pair doing only half the job, as the other half the job still required almost a full day of attention from me. We needed someone who was either going to do the job or acknowledge she couldn’t/wouldn’t and just move on.

In your situation, I’d hope she’d understand that it is not an option to decide she is an au pair to only one of the children. She needs a reset. Get your LCC or area director involved as needed.

[Anonymous]

OP I think you need to be clear but also be flexible. You have a total change of duties, the best way to approach this is to imagine that she just arrived from her home country and she is supposed to watch your 3 kids situation, so what would you have done the first few weeks: I would say write a daily schedule for her.

Also was your 1.5 year old going to day care before this?
The part where you should be flexible is not make her do the distance learning stuffs, it is hard enough for her to watch 3 kids full time but distance learning is stressful even for parents, and then you have the foreign language issue.
My AP is also watching 3 kids, mostly our toddler, we do the distance learning stuffs for the other two.

[Anonymous]

Oh please. The distance learning is a GREAT opportunity to practice her English. Shouldn’t be a problem for such young kids!

[Anonymous]

None of us signed up for this. She needs to step up. I had to a lot more at work then I had ever anticipated. And right now I may need to stay in a hotel to avoid exposing my family to covid because of my clinical work. It’s hard on all of us.

[Anonymous]

Is tread lightly. She might just pack up and go home like many have. You are getting someone for 40hrs a week for $200. If she walks you'll be on the hook for quadruple that.

[Anonymous]

^^this. Talk to her but figure out where your line is. If it is worth her leaving. Would you get a rematch?

[Anonymous]

You get what you pay for!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is tread lightly. She might just pack up and go home like many have. You are getting someone for 40hrs a week for $200. If she walks you'll be on the hook for quadruple that.

It’s not $200/week! That’s just the cash out of pocket direct to au pair. We ALL know this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is tread lightly. She might just pack up and go home like many have. You are getting someone for 40hrs a week for $200. If she walks you'll be on the hook for quadruple that.

It’s not $200/week! That’s just the cash out of pocket direct to au pair. We ALL know this.

Right. Comes to about 25k/yr. I'm a host mom.

You still aren't getting FT household help for that. Anyone who has had to pay for a Nanny or even a babysitter knows that.

When my kids were little we had a nanny. This was over 5 years ago. I paid $21/hr, fed rate for mileage, and employer side of FICA, plus a payroll servihe, excluding bonuses and gifts our bare minimum nanny expenses were 49,221.52.

For most people with out an AuPair to hire In house help, assuming they skip paying taxes, skip payroll, and skip any sort of perk will be paying $800/wk. This is still almost double the all AuPair cost.

No idea why people are so sensitive to the facts. Paying $25k per year for live in in call childcare is cheap cheap cheap. And that's ok. That's what the program is for. You're not getting that out of even an illegal immigrant.

[Anonymous]

I think she is doing ok and helping you keep things together, so I wouldnt have a tough convo with her. Take the advise of sitting down and talking through specific tasks/schedule. But START THAT CONVERSATION WITH A BIG THANK YOU.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You get what you pay for!

All the families paying nannies to stay home aren’t.

[Anonymous]

This is a difficult convo and I would also tread lightly because I wouldn’t want to push AP to go home but I wouldn’t be afraid to have a talk. I’d take her out for a drive, maybe get a takeout dinner and chat in the car.

It sounds like she feels overwhelmed. Maybe ask what can be done to help with that. Maybe she wants to talk about it.

It sounds like she is having a hard time overseeing curriculum. Can you work together to make it better? E.g. we have a giant sticker chart of the week’s homeschool tasks and the kids earn money. Maybe she would have some creative ideas too, if asked.

It sounds like she isn’t keeping the kids out of your hair for enough hours. Would it help her if you locked yourself in your bedroom? Set firm “no talking to mommy or daddy” hours?

[Anonymous]

Do you expect her to increase her hours substantially without some matching increase in benefits? At the very minimum, you need to increase her pay, if you haven't already. That should be part of your reset talk.

If she's unhappy, she could easily go into rematch and some desperate family with snatch her with bonuses and more.

To be frank, watching 3 kids, including a 1.5 year old, for 40 hr/week is a lot.

[Anonymous]

I could not imagine my AP just deciding to watch one of my kids and not both of them ?!? We have her on duty from 9:30-4 (because seriously, it’s too much to be stuck at the house/backyard with someone else’s kids for 40!! Hours a week). My husband and I split the other schedules.

I have an extensive schedule created that includes art projects, yoga, experiments, etc / because it makes the day go way smoother and quicker for all of them).

You need to have a reset conversation, provide her a schedule and include fun activities for her and the kids (I just ordered this yesterday from Amazon for one of next weeks projects: ) and increase her pay (we are paying $50 extra a week).