I stopped reading after page 2 and am just responding to the OP. Don't feel guilty for using up to the allowable 45 hours but don't make a habit of scheduling AP if you really don't need her either, just to burn through the hours.

In my opinion, I'm not paying her for hours worked exactly anyhow. The stipend is coupled with room & board & education fees & blahblahblah that we pay for (which totally adds up).

We have an 11 and 10 year old, so we only use maybe 25-30 hours during the week and honestly most weeks it is closer to 20-25 hours. But sometimes we need more. Snow days, weird admin days off school, stuff like that.

We have an au pair because of the flexibility. If a kid is sick, guess who stays home with kiddo (assuming it's not a serious ailment)... AP does. Sorry if she made plans to hang out with a friend that day -- she'll have to reschedule. But on the whole, our AP admits that she has it the best of any AP in our cluster. She's appreciative and wonderful. We give her as much time off as we can. We certainly would not make her work on a holiday. She's here to experience American culture, too.

Anonymous wrote:I have recently looked at a few discussions on this forum and it seems like a number of posters do not use all the au pair hours permissible per week. We follow the rules religiously, and so I make sure to use all 45 of the au pair's hours, we give at least one weekend off per month, and she never works more than five hours on a weekend day and never more than 10 hours per day. The handfull of times we have offered her the opportunity to babysit for extra hours and money, she typically has had something else going on (boyfriend, etc.). Are we in the minority? I was recently chafing at the idea of her having off four days for Thanksgiving because these are hours we won't get back, but in reality we do not need her since neither I nor DH will be working, so why not give her off. But I WOULD like to get some of those hours back. Am I off base? Should we have her work fewer than 45 hours?

You are certainly not doing something wrong but keep one thing in mind.
Whatever you do to or for your Aupair will come back to you.
What i mean is, if you are so strict about all the hours and days off, of course she is not giving you anything extra.
If you give her those 4 days off, do it because you want to do it and not because you might get an opportunity to get
those hours back.
I had two host families. The first one was very particular with the hours. 45 hours, every week, not more than 10 hours a day.
One weekend a months off. But i never got an extra hour off even though the parents were home, the kids were in bed and there was nothing to be done.
Nothing!
When they asked me if i wanted to stay for dinner i was gone! When they asked me if i wanted to go with them to church i was gone!
I felt like they were so focused on the hours instead of common sense and me.
Did they do something wrong? No, not at all. They followed the rules.
But then why would i work extra hours? Nope. Not part of the contract, sorry.
Then there was my second family. BUSY, BUSY, BUSY!
Twins and a little girl, exact the same rules BUT when the parents were home and settled i was off.
On holidays i was off.
I saw they think about me and have common sense and that make me work extra bc i love them.
Extra hours? Sure! They were fair and nice and understanding, plus a happy Aupair usually works better.

I hope that helped a little!

Don't engage the trolls - I don't know why they are even on the Au Pair Discussion board. It's so not helpful to the conversation.