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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I will be honest.  I have no desire to host AP's family for weeks on end.  We will allow a visitor for perhaps a week and AP's friends are welcome to sleep over on weekends, etc.  I'm not running a hostel, though.  I know I'll be called inhospitable, but I do think it's unreasonable to have visitors for a week or more and expect someone else to feed and house them.

We love our AP and I do consider her to be part of the family, but even my family members do not visit for that long.  We are very generous in many other ways, but this is one I just can't handle.  It's not the food issue.  I just really need my personal space and my downtime.  I tend to not be friendly when visitors are there for too long.

We are up front about it, though.  I actually rejected a candidate solely because in the interview she kept talking about all the various friends and family that would be coming to visit once she was in America.[/quote]

I'm a PP that has had visitors but I 100% back you on this. Particularly if an AP is going on and on about all the visitors she wants to have - that would be a huge red flag to me that she doesn't get at all how stressful that would be for the daily and basically would see your house like a hotel. I do think nether of my APs have reply understood that having friends and family visit is really tough. Life goes on when their visitors come for us - when I work all day, the last thing I typically like doing is entertaining or doing extra cleaning because people are all over the place, or sometimes even talking to people at all (particularly difficult with people you don't know).

You have to be stressed that she's still paying attention to the kids, worried about issues related to food, car, schedule, etc. having to deal with stuff like cooking a big dinner and the sister just picks at it and then leaves (been there done that PP). It can be fun and I do enjoy meeting a great AP's friends and family, I really do. But I'm with you, PP, when our own friends come, they don't stay longer than a weekend typically. I feel like that's enough time - any longer really uproots the fsmily's routine.

We allow visitors anyway, because I know from experience that all APs will typically have at least one person that really wants to visit them and a year is a long time. But you have to be very clear up front - our rules are that they can stay for up to a week, we tell our AP she needs to consider buying/replacing some extra food items. When one of ours had four girlfriends come, we said they could stay with us for 3 days and that we'd help them find a hostel for the rest of their visit.  I found out that having four 21yos in my house for a long weekend was about my limit and I'm glad I was honest about that.

Know your own limits be upfront, and you will find the AP that works for you. Knowing how stressful it is to have visitors, I don't blame you a bit. If you thought about allowing some occasionally, one suggestion would be to require her to take her vacation days when visitors sre here. That would limit it at least to two weeks. And it would be weeks that your schedule is messed up anyway some you dont have Childcare. [/quote]

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