Reply to New au pair arriving...how to handle "trivial" items?

Forum Index » Au Pair Discussion

Reply to "New au pair arriving...how to handle "trivial" items?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]You're not a control freak and you're not OCD - you're a human being who has preferences for her children and her home.  To a degree, you get to say how the person you're employing to care for your child and to live in your home manages certain tasks.

To use your examples, you are 100% fine saying during training (and put it in the handbook if you're handbook is that specific) - "this table will get damaged if you put hot things directly on it.  Here are the placemats - please make sure you put one of these down first."  That example is very typical - I would think most APs would have had furniture in their house that they wouldn't put hot things directly on.  That's a perfect example of something to say specifically during training.  In fact, if you didn't say this and she burned the table and you were irritated - that would be pretty obnoxious of you.  Tell her how your house works.

The hair example is borderline, but if you have just a few of these things you could say (also during training) - "So I admit this is silly, but it really bothers me when DD's hair is in her face.  Here is where we keep the hair ties.  She likes it best when her hair is tied into a ponytail in the morning.  If it falls out, please help her put it back in."  It sounds like maybe her hair is really long and tangles easily though, so this might not be silly.  The au pair may even understand after she has to work the tangles out herself once or twice.  In that case you can say "As you can see, DD has long hair and it gets tangled really easily.  She throws a fit when we have to comb her hair, so it's best to keep it tied back during the day."

Those examples are perfectly normal things that you would ask your au pair to pay attention to.  Now of course over the year, you have to pick your battles.  One by one you'll decide (even if you've trained her on certain things) whether something is a big enough deal to harp on.  
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics