Rematch when AP endangered my child

[Anonymous]

Remember that 70% of car seats are installed incorrectly.

If you or the AP is doing the installation, your child is probably not "safe."

[Anonymous]

get to school, realise that there is no car seat. Walk the kid back home and carry on with day.
walk back to school after shift to collect car, or ask host parent to give a lift.

I would much rather be told "I took the car to collect Zara, there was no seat so I parked near school, could you give me a lift to collect it?" than "i drove zara without a carseat"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - just now checking back in. This is my fourth year of hosting an AP. She was driving our car. We had taken the car seat out so a friend could take our son somewhere and hadn't put it back yet. This should not have been a concern as there was no need for her to be driving anywhere. I guess she was running late to pick up my son at school and decided to drive. (School is only a few blocks away and we generally expect her to walk to/from school.) She not only drove him home without a car seat, she also drove past our house to go run an errand in the neighborhood. She did not mention this to us, our son did.

While she was absolutely wrong, so were you. Car seat should have been installed.

We move car seats around all thr time and our AuPair of average intelligence and basic common sense puts the seat in the car before driving.

If an AP cant manage to adapt to this situation, she needs to return home and start fresh on the fry machine.

OP put her AP in a lose/lose situation: Be late for pick up, or take the car without a car seat (or take the car and realize once there that you are missing the car seat?). This should be easily avoided by having a seat in all cars used to transport the children. Of course this could have been avoided if AP were early for pick up- but that is something that could happen to any of us and being 'almost late' or even late by a few minutes does not endanger anyone.

I think this is a prime example that we should not jump to conclusion. We often hear only parts of the story (from either side) and make the other party appear like a monster.

So was her extra unscheduled errand as critical as the pick up scenario you protray?

Sometimes you just get one as dumb as a box of rocks. This is one example. Time to go.

[Anonymous]

She ran an errand in the neighborhood?
So she presumably wasn't going shopping or to Starbucks.
It was more than likely an errand related to the family or children. Not an excuse, but come on. To no longer house her because of this?

[Anonymous]

I saw the rematch document. It says the au pair didn't even realize the car seat had been taken out until she arrived at school to pick the child up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I saw the rematch document. It says the au pair didn't even realize the car seat had been taken out until she arrived at school to pick the child up.

If that is the truth, the reaction of thr HM is very harsh

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I saw the rematch document. It says the au pair didn't even realize the car seat had been taken out until she arrived at school to pick the child up.

I saw it too and felt sorry for the AP to be in rematch over this. Still, she must not have been doing that great a job, because if she had been, no HF would have rematched over something like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw the rematch document. It says the au pair didn't even realize the car seat had been taken out until she arrived at school to pick the child up.

I saw it too and felt sorry for the AP to be in rematch over this. Still, she must not have been doing that great a job, because if she had been, no HF would have rematched over something like this.

Unless the host mom is a tyrant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw the rematch document. It says the au pair didn't even realize the car seat had been taken out until she arrived at school to pick the child up.

I saw it too and felt sorry for the AP to be in rematch over this. Still, she must not have been doing that great a job, because if she had been, no HF would have rematched over something like this.

That was definitely not my takeaway upon reading the document.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw the rematch document. It says the au pair didn't even realize the car seat had been taken out until she arrived at school to pick the child up.

I saw it too and felt sorry for the AP to be in rematch over this. Still, she must not have been doing that great a job, because if she had been, no HF would have rematched over something like this.

That was definitely not my takeaway upon reading the document.

Sadly, it wasn't mine either. As I said, I just felt sorry for the AP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I saw the rematch document. It says the au pair didn't even realize the car seat had been taken out until she arrived at school to pick the child up.

Again, mom must share some blame for this. Not wanting to let her stay the two weeks is cruel, unless we are missing other parts of this story.

[Anonymous]

Jesus. Maybe she's young and didn't know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:WTF do you expect when you hire a 19 year old? You expect these children to act like experienced nannies. They're not!!!

Have to agree with this. I made a similar mistake when I was 22 . It happens! Can't believe you're going to rematch over this.

[Anonymous]

It seems very harsh to me also. Our AP locked herself out of the car at the playground and in a panic, took a taxi home with the kids to get the spare key. It was about a mile on back roads that the taxi went - obviously kids were not in a car seat for the ride. We were upset and definitely had a talk about how that was not the best decision from our perspective, but certainly we didn't consider re-matching over it. But she is otherwise an outstanding AP and amazing with the kids, so that always influences how big a deal a mistake seems (i.e., when put into perspective of the bigger picture).

[Anonymous]

The mom should have made sure the car seat was installed.

I know other adults who care about safety who don't even understand what top tethers are for in forward facing harnessed seats! I would not expect an au pair to be able to install the car seat if needed unless they had been trained on it multiple times.