Au-pair - what to consider

[dessa_dangerous 13,315]

I realize this is probably not going to be taken very well by the community, but I have been speaking to so many au-pairs lately that I really feel it necessary to post this, even if I'm way out of line (and I hope I am).

 

Au-Pair would-bes, make sure you find out up front exactly what is expected of you, get in writing when your free time is, and have all of your duties and free times on paper before you move in. Your employer may want someone who "never loses their cool" which to me means s/he wants someone who will swallow every single thing that comes their way without a single complaint. Everybody loses their cool sometimes and it is completely unrealistic to demand that somebody never have a human reaction to anything ever. I know, I get it, you can't judge someone based on a couple of words on an internet forum. But having heard the stories, tens of stories, thirty, maybe forty stories of au-pairs moving into a home and never having any free time, or having free time promised to them but taken away again when the parents feel like going somewhere, of girls who clean the house from top to bottom and are expected to get up in the middle of the night to care for the kids, of girls who basically do all the jobs of the parent which would be very frickin expensive if they actually hired someone to do these tasks, I really wanted to warn all of you that may be reading this, please be really careful. Look for signs of over-stringency. Make sure your host home is not on the other side of the universe, if what you really want is to be close to the city. And most importantly, be firm about setting clear boundaries, as hard as that is to do when you're living in someone's home. But the last thing you want is to be a 24-hour nanny with no life of her own, who is never allowed to say no to anything lest she be kicked out onto the streets with nowhere else to go.

 

I just hate to think of girls crossing oceans to do what sounds like a cool easy-going job and get to learn another culture, while putting all their eggs in one basket and basically having no other choice but to stay with a family who makes their lives hell until they can find a new one. Be careful, and if something doesn't seem right from the beginning, you're probably right. Trust your gut, because landing with a bad family will literally make your entire life--your whole life, 24 hours a day--a living nightmare.

[sarabyrd 18,767]

If you are recruited by a company, check their bonafides. Most of all, ask if they have placed someone in this family before, how long s/he stayed and if there were any complaints.

[BadDoggie 1,576]

I am most clearly not a Dessa fan, but this post is one that every girl (or guy) thinking of becoming an au pair should read EVERY SINGLE DAY.

 

I'm going with "broken clock theory."

 

woof.

[gail123 434]

Then again, I had an au pair who came to us in the US (to replace one we loved dearly) , stayed with us through my maternity leave, had her mom over for two weeks for vacation, and gave notice two weeks before I was to return to work.

 

Clear expectations are key, but au pairs sometimes believe that they are in one's home to stay out all night drinking. As for clear head- we had an au pair who grabbed my two year old by the arm and dragged her because she didn't move fast enough. We had her removed by the agency, who "gave" her to another family after we suggested she not be in charge of children under 6. When we spoke to the family later, they were enduring what they called "a black hole of negativity".

[gail123 434]

Oh, she sent me an apology and a Friend request on FB two years ago (the one who precipitated my staying home from work and moving to Germany- not the physically abusive one)! So it wasn't just my husband and myself who were blown away by her behavior.

[Keydeck 9,248]

Which is why it is ESSENTIAL for both parties that all terms and conditions are clearly laid out on paper and agreed prior to commencement of the employment. I've known many, many au-pairs who have not done this and have suffered the consequences. Families can of course also get a bad au-pair though I've heard a lot fewer instances of that. Mostly it is parents thinking they've got themselves a sweet deal with a 24h servant for a few quid a month.

[Katrina 4,522]

 

Would like to know if it is ACTUALLY possible to please a German person. I am sorry but seriously! I work my ass off for you family 6 days a week, 6am - 8pm and when you go out I stay with your children until 2am when you finally decide to come home. I clean your home, I do YOUR laundry, not just the children's in fact you even have my making YOUR bed. Your children are so badly behaved that I regularly have bleeding arms from the scratching and tantrums your children throw and if they throw such a tantrum and I give out some kind of consequence like, no bed time story which is getting of pretty bloody lightly if you ask me... how dare you cuddle them and reward their terrible shitty shitty behaviour and tell me to read them a story because they are sad and crying. ALSO how about a little god damn respect!!! If you ask me to wake up earlier at 6am to make you breakfast then I expect you to be their earlier to eat your breakfast, do not come half an hour after its been sitting on the table sit their and poke at it with a disgusted look on your face and tell me how I did everything wrong.. AGAIN. This behaviour is no better than the children's, shut up and eat your bloody cold breakfast!!! Don't come home after I have cooked for your children, bathed your children, put your children to bed and cleaned up, vacumed the house, done your laundry, been to German school, and cleaned your fridge then swipe your finger along a shelf in the living room and tell me its dusty and I must learn how to clean!!! I do all this for $260 a month and I shut my mouth because at least I get my own separate room away from the house... So don't be surprised if when you tell me that you are going to start coming to my room every week for tea to make sure I have cleaned MY room because YOU invaded my privacy and took a peep in my room because I didn't think I HAD to lock it and you see a couple of clothes on the ground, my bed unmade and a few beer bottles BECAUSE YOU ARE FUCKIN DRIVING MY TO DRINK... THAT YES!!! IM GOING TO BE OFFENDED!!!

Quite.

 

If anyone has links to au-pair help organisations, it would be great to flag them here so those in a pickle can find them. Cheers.

Here's one (multi-lingual) one run via Caritas.

[ganzgeld 940]

Having a contract should've been mandatory in order to obtain the appropriate visa, assuming you're coming from a non-EU country.

 

From my experience:

-if at all possible, be in a place where you already have some friends. If not possible, find someone you can meet for drinks asap. You will need to get out of the house.

-be aware of what your duties will be and whether or not that is okay with you from the beginning.

-get used to being criticized the "German way", i.e. no-frills honesty. Once you get over that, you and your au pair mother will probably get along with one another much better.

-spend time with the family, yes, but don't be around 24/7 if you don't have to be. They will expect you to help with things (which, frankly makes sense, for example cleaning up after meals) but you will also feel taken advantage of. At least I did. When I "suddenly" started leaving on Fridays when I was free, and not coming back until late Sunday evening, I began to feel much more appreciated. Not to say that I wasn't appreciated before, but it was good to come home and see that I was missed. I also missed the kids, which makes me value my time with them more. When you care for someone's children, in my opinion, the need to hear thank you from the parents is important, because sometimes they seem to forget that without you, they can't run a smooth household.

-you will get as much out of your "indentured servitude" as you put into it. I mostly mean this in terms of language. If you are serious about improving your German, I personally think this is one of the best ways to do it, if not the best. What better way to be forced to speak a language if the people you talk to the most (the kids) can't even speak yours?? Plus, they don't tend to speak complicatedly, and can be very helpful to correcting you. Although they still can't spell and you can make them repeat things in English with lots of "th" and "r" that will be very cute and hilarious.

-don't expect the kids to love, or the parents for that matter, you right away. You have to get to know each other, and get used to one another, and that takes some time.

-if the kids are old enough, and your German is good enough, you can teach them a lot. For example, I will not do things for the kids, like say making a toast, unless they ask politely and say thank you. They never said please or thank you when I first arrived, to me or their parents. They also have a tendency to treat me and their mother as if we are servants (coincidentally their dad does the same, ahem), and they need to be reminded that that isn't how it is going to be.

-And finally, I hope you like Nudeln because you're about to have to eat them for every meal. :D

[Lavender Rain 7,859]

Good post DD.

 

I'd like to chime in and add, poor communication between the two parties is an important issue to overcome if any au-pair work situation is to be successful.

 

In addition, often times in an au-pair work relationship there is a lack of information for the proper accomplishment of the tasks necessary within the job.

 

So open and honest communication and productive feedback from both parties is another essential aspect of making any au-pair relationship work.

 

 

 

[beccakelly 116]

I know one major issue with choosing a family as an aupair is that even when you DO have a contract, more often than not said contract is in German. I knowthat 90% of the aupairs who come over here do not have a very good grasp of the language in the early days (those days, of course, being when you would sign a contract).

 

Don't sign anything unless you know for a fact what's written there. That can be even worse than not signing anything. Get a friend or someone to look over it for you.

 

Make sure you communicate. Don't be afraid to be honest with your host family, and encourage them to also be honest with you. If not, you can get yourself in some nasty situations. I dealt with this problem my own and was kicked out of my first hostfamily after two months, with less than 24 hours notice. This family was located in the countryside about 40km away from Nuernberg - I had not even made any friends in Germany yet. If I hadn't have had a friend living in Munich, whom I had met in Canada, I don't know what I would have done.

 

Luckily the next family I got was wonderful - we only ever had a few problems, mainly caused by the differences in expectations from Germans and from Canadians. For example Germans seem to think you should be able to read their minds (I'm being a bit harsh)... Well, as a Canadian, I'm used to having my directions given fairly straight-up.

 

Also (this is directed mainly at North Americans, but it could apply to anyone), don't feel too discouraged if your hostfamily doesn't praise you for work well-done. You will likely be criticized for a job not-so-well-done, but try to see this as how they mean it: they figure when you've done a great job, there's nothing to change and therefore nothing to say - whereas when you need to improve on something, they lay it all out so you can do a better job next time. This can be hard if you're not used to it, but they really don't mean it to be hurtful. Cultural differences sometimes appear in odd ways.

 

Main point: don't get too excited and sign a contract in a foreign language (without having someone you trust look it over first), and make sure you COMMUNICATE with your hostfamily. If you do this things will be much, much smoother, and you really can have a wonderful experience.

[Lavender Rain 7,859]

 

I dealt with this problem my own and was kicked out of my first host family after two months, with less than 24 hours notice.

 

I'm surprised it's not negotiated and a clause put in the contract that stipulates how much notice each party must give in order to discontinue the contract.

 

That's crazy business to only give you 24 hours and you're so far away from home.

[Lyra 507]

I think that the key is to be absolutely clear about what you expect on both sides - nothing will piss an au pair off more than the feeling that they're being exploited. For example, we were always clear that although we might sometimes ask au pairs to babysit at weekends, that was over and above their duties and we always paid them for it (going babysitter rates). They were free to refuse - after all part of experiencing the culture is to go out and get completely smashed at weekends, it is in Yorkshire anyway!

 

There are responsibilities too, no matter how mature the au pair seems there may be er, upsets. I remember comforting one nineteen year old who thought that she was pregnant. Fortunately she wasn't, because I had no idea what I'd have said to her mother.

[Noel Furlong 3,307]

Excellent contribution, Dessa. Those type of posts make Toytown great.

 

On a hopefully somewhat related theme, I've just seen in this week's Economist that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has recently passed the Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers. Once implemented by national governments, this should cover au-pairs and other live-in domestic workers. This is taken from the ILO website:

 

What concrete changes will it (the convention) bring for domestic workers?

The very first one is that they are recognized as workers and are entitled to the minimum protections that all other categories of workers enjoy, at least legally. The Convention establishes the right of domestic workers to be informed, in a manner they could understand, of what the terms and conditions of their employment are: what is the work they need to carry out, how long they are expected to work, and how much, when and in what manner will they be paid. It also establishes limits to the proportion of remuneration that can be paid in kind, and provides for a weekly rest of at least 24 consecutive hours. The Convention also provides for special measures to address the vulnerability of particular groups of domestic workers: young domestic workers – those above the minimum age of employment and below 18 years of age – live-in domestic workers, as well as migrant domestic workers. For live-in workers, it sets minimum requirements in terms of accommodation and privacy. It requires member States to set a minimum age of employment for admission to domestic work, and to adopt measures so that child domestic workers can finish compulsory schooling, if they have not been able to do so because they engaged in domestic work at a very young age, and to facilitate their further education and vocational training.

For migrant domestic workers the Convention requires that they be provided with a written job offer or contract of employment before crossing the boundaries to take up the new job in the country of employment. Member States are also requested to take measures geared towards affording progressively domestic workers with minimum protections in respect of social security, including maternity benefits, on par with other categories of workers. Another important provision relates to private employment agencies, which play a very important role in the domestic work labour market. The Convention requires states to have clear rules and procedures to prevent the type of fraudulent or abusive practices that unfortunately some unscrupulous private employment agencies have engaged in. The Convention recognizes the specific context in which domestic work takes place, namely the home, and strikes a balance between the right to workers’ protection and the right to privacy of household members.

 

Interestingly, noted domestic worker abuse hotspot Malaysia decided to abstain on the vote. The UK also decided not to support it, while the Confederation of British Industry joined Swaziland in actually voting against it :(