Reply to So… can we be honest for a second?

Forum Index » Au Pair Discussion

Reply to "So… can we be honest for a second? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our au pair completely over exaggerated her experience with kids. We basically had to teach her everything about caring for kids. To her credit she’s tried very hard and we are grateful for her. But yeah I’m pretty sure agencies will take pretty much anyone who claims “childcare experience.”[/quote]

Their experience is mostly babysitting family members or working at a childcare center run by the au pair recruiter in their home country. And sometimes it's just an outright lie, because how are you going to check their references if you don't speak their language?

I also think the "flexibility" is oversold, because every au pair I've had (3 of them through 2 different agencies before I gave up on the program) has been annoyed by evening or weekend hours. I'm not sure why these young women think I would hire an au pair if I only needed childcare during the hours that daycare is open (since I don't live in the DMV anymore, daycare for 2 kids is still cheaper than an au pair, and readily available even in the pandemic). But I think the real issue is that they don't *care* about what I need or want in a childcare provider-- they're here for the glamorous year of fun in America they were promised by the recruiters.

I've literally rearranged my career to avoid jobs with evening and weekend hours so that I can use daycare/ aftercare, because that was less trouble than dealing with a sulky, entitled au pair who doesn't want to work while her friends are out partying.[/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