Au Pair and Friends During Pandemic
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Anonymous
| Our Au Pair is in a bit of denial over the pandemic. She insists on seeing other au pair friends. For example, tonight she went over to her au pair friend’s house (the host family is traveling and not home) to cook and hang out. She is also seeing other au pair friends and taking car drives and camping trips. We recently shut down a planned trip to Florida that she wanted to take in January with friends. My question is: how careful should we be about her seeing friends right now, particularly indoors? We hear that we should avoid non-household people right now. Our family is generally very careful, but our au pair breaks out in tears whenever we bring up restrictions related to the pandemic. We want to be reasonable with her (don’t want to control her) but also be responsible. What rules are people adhering to with their au pairs and socializing? |
Anonymous
| I think you should send her into rematch. It doesn’t sound like you really need childcare, and there are many families looking right now who might be a better fit for her. You might do better with getting a family member to cloister with you for occasional babysitting. |
Anonymous
I didn’t see anything to indicate lack of need for childcare. However, given the mismatch in terms of covid awareness, yes, I think they should rematch. |
Anonymous
She has posted before. It’s not really “Covid awareness” Fauci has said that calculations for healthy 25 years old are very different than calculations that boomers or HFS with co-morbidities would make. Fauci is elderly - and gets haircuts indoors and goes to the grocery store. APs as younger healthy members of the public want freedom of movement to buy their own sanitary napkins at CVS, take a socially distant hike with a friend, or buy food (since many host families routinely fail to provide adequate food for APs). There has to be a general risk match with families and APs. There are some APs who send every dime home to El Salvador or Columbia and feel they have no options but being locked up in the basement by HFs. Others really are here for the cultural exchange and expect their HFs to understand this. |
Anonymous
|
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. |
Anonymous
You know there's a pandemic out there right? Are you a Trump voter from Alaska? |
Anonymous
Hi OP, We let our au pair go home in the spring. But before she left, we built a pod with two other host families. Our au pairs we best friends and all three sets of host parents agreed that we are in it together. (Our kids went to the same preschool, so we knew the parents.) APs agreed not to see anyone else outside their pod. But the three of them were able to spend time together: go to the beach, hike, drive to Annapolis, come to each other’s houses. It was a compromise that worked for us. Can you figure out something similar? If that does not work for you or your au pair, you need to rematch. Good luck! |
Anonymous
Nope. Huge Biden supporter. Trump wouldn’t care about human slavery. |
Anonymous
1. Rematch is the way 2. Best wishes for the HFs who don't believe in science |
Anonymous
| HF who believes is science. Just won’t engage in slavery and bring a girl here for cheap labor. |
Anonymous
+10000000 |
Anonymous
| I’m sorry but you cannot expect her to not see ANY friends. It is reasonable to ask that they not fly to covid hotspots or go to bars / large gatherings. But you can’t ask her to forsake any kind of social life! That is completely unreasonable. If your family member is too high risk, then you are not a good candidate for an au pair right now, quite frankly. |
Anonymous
| 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. |
Anonymous
No, you don't. You just think you do. The science right now tells us indoor gatherings with non-household members is high risk. Full stop. An ap can meet friends outside with masks on and social distancing. This is not trafficking, it's doing a community service by not contributing to spread and transmission. Honestly, I can't tell if you are a HF or the bitter nanny poster trying to instigate. In any case, I wish you well. |
Anonymous
This can be explained and it has. The pandemic is global, and many APs are in lockdown mode regardless of where they are, and want to be somewhere different. It's on the HF and agency to be crystal clear on what the rules and restrictions are. AND, it's also on the AP to make a decision based on the restrictions. It's deceptive if the HF says "Oh, yeah, you can do x, y, and z" but in reality the situation is different. It's also deceptive if the AP says "YES" to everything and comes with their own agenda. |