Reply to Advice Needed from Host Families Adjusting to Lack of Privacy for the first time

Forum Index » Au Pair Discussion

Reply to "Advice Needed from Host Families Adjusting to Lack of Privacy for the first time"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, you are rigth in thinking that it can be a problem, especially since she is family. obviously you are the only person who can decide if this is going to work for you or not. but in your message you seem to have some assumtions you'd better clarify to her. you say it would be good to your DD to be exposed to another language. it is not obvious that a young woman spending a year in DC on a fellowship may want to spend time talking to a toddler. she may, she may not. if you expect that, tell her. also, one additional adult adds costs to a household, if you go to the refrigerator to start dinner and dinner is gone, you would be angry. make sure you talk about that. also, expectations about dating and personal life seem not reasonable to me. her boyfriend is in the midwest. how would you feel if he visits in your home  for a week? two weeks? if she brakes up with the boyfriend and finds another locally, can she brings him home? can she invite friends home? you need to discuss all this before. you say you expect her to keep her bathroom clean. you'd better clarify this too. life with two kids is hectic and your tolerance level toward your cousin will be much lower than when she briefly visited you in DC years ago before kids. a year is a long time. it may work, but you need to set expectations extremely clear well before she arrives, do not assume anything  [/quote]

PP, thanks for your response.  I guess I just needed to hear from others that this is actually a huge commitment.  I definitely do need to have a longer, deeper conversation w/ her.  it's just that i am less than a week from my scheduled delivery for my 2nd baby, and so I am just trying to get all my last minute stuff done.  don't have as much time to process this as I normally would.  I don't think she would object to hanging out w/ my 2.5 yr old.  She kind of stressed how much she missed seeing our daughter etc., and that's why I think she may have been hinting at the idea of staying w/ us (before she heard the news of our impending second baby).  w/r/t food, she's stayed w/ me for months at a time, so i'm not too worried about it.   she's like me and eats very little and the other times she mainly cooked cheap tv dinners in the microwave.  also, when she stayed w/ me in my small nyc studio one summer, i told her not to bring any guests back (really no space to entertain and not what most people in ny do anyway) and she did it once, and i called her out for it and she was fine w/ it.  i've met the boyfriend and he's a nice guy.  since he works in Illinois full time it shouldn't be too much of a problem for us to host him occasionally.  can't imagine she would expect us to let a new boyfriend crash at our place though.  (not part of our culture to have boyfriends regularly crash at a relative's house.) Plus, since she's not paying rent, she couldn't really expect us to house a local boyfriend.

I think it largely rests on whether I can deal with having another adult living w/ us full time for at least a year.  If she stays a respectful adult who cleans up after herself and pitches in here and there, it obviously would lessen my stress.  i believe my cousin is about 33 yrs old (too many cousins overseas to remember their exact ages).[/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