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[quote=Anonymous]Wow, your AP has expensive vacation taste. What are her plans? My 7 APs were able to save enough to have great vacations, but they involved cheap flights, buses, youth hostels and couch surfing. If your AP looking to travel in 5 star hotels?

Regardless, good for her for having the drive to save the money for her goal, but I agree that it should not come at the expense of your family. When an AP brought up the idea of working for another family a few years ago, I told her that if this family was in a pickle once or twice this year and really needed her help, I would be ok with it, but other than that we did not encourage that behavior. This was the only time this ever came up in our 7 years of hosting. And unfortunately we ended up rematching with this AP for a variety of reasons unrelated to babysitting on the side.

In your situation, you might have wanted to say something up front before she put her ad on the listserv (actually, you may want to add this rule to your family handbook, if you want to avoid this situation in the future). Now that she has found some clients, I agree that it makes sense to draw the line where you think you comfort level lies. How many hours per week are you willing to look the other way? Are there specific times in her schedule that are more or less conducive? Will you agree to lend her your car to go babysit other family’s children?

One last word of warning… I hope she doesn’t become more interested in other gigs than working with your family. She is getting paid regular rate for other sitting gigs by families who don’t pay 25k and go though all the programs hoops for the privilege of having a live-in sitter (and she may not realize the difference). It’s only normal that some APs might become more interested with side jobs, and may be resentful if their schedule prevents them from making more money. I am not sure how to avoid this situation altogether, unless we prevent APs from working illegally in the first place. But I hope your AP is smart enough to realize that the hourly pay she receives is more than just a dollar figure.[/quote]

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