We choose which vacation weeks the AP can take and we tell her before even matching which two weeks they are (they are the same every year). In reality, she usually gets additional weeks off, since we often travel at the winter break and she is free to travel with us or not during those weeks. I don't feel bad for her as she accepted this as part of the terms of taking a match with our family. I understand that this may be inconvenient for her to schedule times to travel with other APs, but even if we didn't dictate the dates, she still may have a hard time finding a week that works well for 2 separate families (i.e., one family can't a certain week because the HD will travel that week)

Realistically, the AP has her 13th month with which to see any part of the US that she didn't get a chance to see during the year. In addition, ours has almost every weekend free to do day trips (in our area, there are a ton of things to see on a day trip or overnight). I don't feel like my requiring her to take two specific weeks for her vacation will ruin her year here.

We chose all of APs vacation & this was explicit at matching.

We are liberal with long weekends - tend to give "extra" holidays like Mem Day, Labor Day, etc

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One more thing, just read the other AP extended with the family... they can't be that bad then or is she is sucker for punshiment?

Sometimes it's just the devil you know. Our last AP who extended with us also had a few good friends in her cohort who extended too, even though they were in less-than-ideal family situations. But the APs wanted to spend another year in America, and wanted to stay in the same city with their friends. Trying for an extension year with a new family seemed like too much of a gamble. Also, the APs were very attached to the host children, even if the host parents did not always treat them well or fairly or within program rules. As much as many posters on this board will complain about "entitled" APs, the trust is - a lot of APs are very hard workers, and are scared to complain even when they are being treated wrongly. They value their opportunity to be here for a year or two, and don't want to risk not finding another match.

OP here. This is the friend's situation. She is also from a non-prosperous country so going home does not present many opportunities for her.

We ask that our APs take one week of vaction during our planned visits to out-of-town family (either at Christmas-time or in the summer), and the other week is of the AP's choosing. I think this is pretty common. This usually ends up in our APs getting "extra" vacation, since we are almost always visiting family at Christmas or for a week or two during the summer, and so the AP gets both of those times off no matter when she chooses to take her other week of "official" vacation.

I agree that it is difficult to try to work with an AP's desire to travel with friends - but most of them can work it out. For instance, it is very common for host families to travel to family or have their own vacation at Christmas-time, and many APs can travel together at that time (especially if they come from cultures where Christmas either isn't celebrated or isn't that significant, e.g. Asian or Muslim countries, or that celebrate Christmas at different times, e.g. Eastern Orthodox).

Anonymous wrote:One more thing, just read the other AP extended with the family... they can't be that bad then or is she is sucker for punshiment?

Sometimes it's just the devil you know. Our last AP who extended with us also had a few good friends in her cohort who extended too, even though they were in less-than-ideal family situations. But the APs wanted to spend another year in America, and wanted to stay in the same city with their friends. Trying for an extension year with a new family seemed like too much of a gamble. Also, the APs were very attached to the host children, even if the host parents did not always treat them well or fairly or within program rules. As much as many posters on this board will complain about "entitled" APs, the trust is - a lot of APs are very hard workers, and are scared to complain even when they are being treated wrongly. They value their opportunity to be here for a year or two, and don't want to risk not finding another match.

It's a great point to be careful of what your hear about other host families. A lot of what I hear my AP's friends complain could be totally different than the perspective they are seeing. Our au pair seems to think we "never" let her use our shared car. The reality? Sometimes on Saturday or Sunday during the daytime hours we say no because we have to run errands. We've never a single time said no to any other time she's asked (and it's available to her all day while we're at work too).

One of her friends whines that she has to work on weekends. I asked her what her schedule is and if it's different from the terms on which she matched. She works 20 hours a week (nowhere close to the 45 APs can work for) - picks the kids up from school and plays with them at the park for a couple hours. And yes, she does work 5 hours or so almost every weekend. The same schedule she agreed to when she matched.

Totally get that sometimes people just want to whine (believe me - I do that about my own job!). But remember the reality might be vastly different. All host families seem to be really nice and flexible on same aspects, and have particular rules or negatives in others. Hopefully it balances out. Not always, of course, but I've found that most of the au pairs dwelling on the negatives aren't remembering all the good things about their host families or all the things they do for them.