Anonymous wrote:Our au pair has been with us for 3.5 months. I hesitated about matching with her because her English is pretty limited but she’s our first overseas AP so I figured there was a learning curve and that it’s something I could live with. Needless to say, communication has been challenging even though my husband speaks her native language and I’ve tried to communicate in writing (so she could translate) whenever possible. She has been our most subpar au pair by far. She does the absolute bare minimum. Even though she has a pretty easy schedule (25 hours a week), weekends off etc it seems like she’s constantly trying to get off of work early. She regularly dismisses herself, puts the kids in front of the tv so she can go shower, and then pressures my husband to let her get off so she can go out and socialize (as early as 5/530). My husband doesn’t like to say no so he allows her but what this means is that it feels like she’s mostly a glorified Uber service. I’ve made my expectations clear but she’s either not getting it or ignoring me. I’ve been thinking about rematching because we’ve had several reset conversations and she doesn’t seem to be getting it / it’s not a great personality match but I’m afraid of the unknown. I’m hesitating to rematch because I’m worried that the pool won’t be good this time of the year and that the APs in rematch will be even worse. We haven’t had a major safety issue with her, so I’m just wondering if a general dissatisfaction with an AP is a good enough reason to rematch. I should mention that I think part of the issue is she’s made minimal effort to get to know us or spend time with us outside of her working hours.
You are all over the place with your post. You made your "expectations clear" but she "pressures your husband to get off early and he does not like to say no." Does your husband know your expectations for the au pair? It sounds like you and your husband are not on the same page and or a "good cop/bad cop" situation. Is your husband such a wimp that this young woman pressures him to do something that you don't approve of or is there a pay off for him (for example the "feeling of being liked."
Maybe she needs to work more than 25 hours a week in order to get things done. What is she taking a shower while she is scheduled to provide care? This is the answer: because she is allowed to do so. If you have have reset conversations and things have not improved you should either accept the way things are or rematch. Its going to be a loooooooong year. You probably should have a reset conversation with your husband too. The both of you should have shared expectations and the AP should come to you with requests and concerns since it its important to your husband to be the nice guy.