Reply to How to deal with negativity of new au pair?

Forum Index » Au Pair Discussion

Reply to "How to deal with negativity of new au pair?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Age DOES matter.

I'm 26 now, and the thought of a 21 yr old AP makes me laugh (and feel bad for her). She's probably old enough to be apart of the family as your kid. Like an older sister.

Most 21 year olds are getting excited about legally being able to drink, taking some college classes, working at the Gap, and still on mom & dad's health/car insurance. They're often not taking on a HUGE roll as a live-in caretaker like you're expecting.

I was a nanny at 21, a pretty good one, I think, but I certainly don't think 21 year olds are very mature overall (some are/were forced into it during life circumstances, or just born that way, etc).

Point is: you have a young adult doing grown adult things  for a not-so-great wage ...and you wonder why there's a problem???

Moms out there - it's time to wake UP.[/quote]

Having just finished our first (and last) year with an au pair, I have to agree with this a bit.  We've had two au pairs that were actually both 21.  The first was an extraordinaire (they have extra credentials) and the second was just a regular au pair.  The difference in maturity was amazing.  Since our first 21 year old was so great - came to us having already lived on her own and had a full-time job plus childcare credentials, I assumed that the regular program would yield me similar results.  But no, surprise (!), she is a regular 21 year old.

I was fairly miserable this year as a person paying for a service that I wasn't getting, but on another level I blamed myself a lot (and the agency for presenting these au pairs as professional childcare providers).  She acted like a 21 year old who was getting her first taste of freedom.  I should have known, and I will not be repeating the regular au pair experience again.  Not to say that there aren't great au pairs out there, but I wouldn't leave my kids with the vast majority of 21 year old American kids.  For some reason I thought the 21 year olds that had self-selected into a foreign cultural exchange program would be more mature than normal 21 year olds, but no, I discovered I wouldn't leave my kids with most foreign young adults either.[/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