When I was in shock after being told I was expecting twins,
the best piece of advice I received came from another mum who had had twins and
also had one child already. “Get an au pair,” she said, “and it will be
alright.” As luckily we had a spare room - well we would once we had thrown
away everything stored in it - and the money didn't seem too much to cope with,
the only question was how to get one—or, to be more specific, one we could
contemplate living with in such an intimate way.
Having
talked it over with people who had au pairs, it seemed there were two ways of
going about it - the agency way, where you pay the money and they do the work;
or the other way, where you find your own au pair.
There were
pluses and minuses to both approaches but, for me, waddling about in the
head-in-the-clouds-whale state that is the last four months of twin pregnancy,
one of the most important things was to find someone who already spoke
reasonable English, and with whom I didn't have to spend any time trying to
explain why it's so important to lock the house when you leave or why you can't
leave the buggy and baby outside when you pop into the shops. We have done it
ourselves so, for anyone wanting to contemplate it, I am happy to pass on our
body of experience.
We found
our first au pair by putting cards up in newsagents windows in areas where you
could reasonably expect to find disaffected au pairs wanting to change families
- Muswell Hill, Golders Green, Hampstead etc. This is a good cheap way of
getting au pairs, but you will find a lot of other people telephoning as
well—particularly people who can't speak English properly just wanting
childcare work. If you go down this route put 'Live-in only' on the card.
When they
telephone you still have check that they want a live-in position as many won't
read the card, or don't appreciate what it is that you are looking for.
It will
also bring up the first issue you have to decide when you do it this way, which
is the matter of visa status: whether you are willing to interview/employ
someone who doesn't have an au pair visa, just a student visa, which is about
half the callers you will get.
Then there
is finding out whether they have what they claim. We had interviewed three au
pairs who all seemed OK until it came to the crucial question of references.
They all promised to telephone us with the details and never did.…
I was then
eight-months pregnant and beginning to despair of ever finding anyone when Mary
telephoned. She had a student visa, which I had previously said no to, but she
sounded nice so I said she may as well come round. And she wasn't just nice she
was terrific and wonderful and will be a friend for life. So we learnt that,
for us, the type of visa doesn't matter, it's the person who does (although I
draw the line at someone without any sort of visa). Mary was
with us for a year, and sadly had to leave to go back to Brazil in April.
By that
time I had been told about advertisements in The Lady magazine, which other
people had found useful. For £28.50 you get about 15 words—and lots of phone
calls. Again, it is best to put in 'Live-in only', but it doesn't matter what
else you write as they all phone all the ads asking for au pairs so the details
are a bit irrelevant. Again also you get a lot of students, though probably not
as many, some with tourist visas, the odd smattering of Aussies, others who
don't know what an au pair is and are expecting nanny work.
The second
thing I check with them on the telephone (after 'this is a live-in position, is
that what you want?') is that they are looking for work at the amount we are
offering. We upped it from 25 hours a week for £50 to 30 hours a week for £60
because many au pairs, especially ones who have been here for some time and
speak good English, are more interested in more money. There is, we learnt,
such a thing as au pair-plus, where they work 10 or so hours a day for £100 or
£150 a week, so it's best to check that on the phone rather than at the
interview.
Doing it
this way you will also have to make another decision, namely will you interview
a male au pair? I don't like to say no just because they are male, though I
admit difficulty with the idea of living with one. Having said that, we have
seen four and even offered the job to one. He didn't take it because I had
spent so long ensuring he understood that the job involved spending several
months playing with my eighteen-month twins every day, I think it finally got
home what the job really was. He decided to go back to Hungary instead.
This brings
up something else, which is what the priority is for you when employing an au
pair. In our case, having such young children, I really want someone who loves
being with children—not just someone who wants to learn English and is willing
to do a bit of housework. This is where the interviewing process becomes so
important.
All au
pairs say they love children and all claim to have looked after children,
usually their cousins or sisters, which to my mind means nothing. If experience
of looking after and liking other people’s children is your priority, what you
have to watch for is the look in their eyes when they look at your children. My
girls have been in their highchairs, doing their feeding each other and looking
cute routine, and I have observed some au pairs looking at them and their eyes
show nothing. When you get someone who really loves children you can see it
immediately and, male or female, they are in the minority.
So, you
have your list of au pairs to interview. The first thing to be prepared for is
half of them won't show. They won't phone and let you know, even if you ask
them, so don't bother. The second thing to know is that in the beginning it's
hard to tell who you may want, but it gets a lot easier once you've seen
several. You begin to get a feel for who you got on with, who wasn't faking
laughter at your jokes, who was really interested in the job, as opposed to
those who said they were, and who you could contemplate living with.
It's harder
to spot the liars, but the essential thing is to ask for references from
everyone they have lived with whilst have been in England. Do telephone
them—don't for one minute rely on letters. The very first au pair we ever
interviewed seemed OK we thought, and had a good written reference from the
family she had been working for. But when I telephoned I discovered the family
had only written the reference to ensure they got back the £200 she had racked
up on their phone bill; that she was anorexic, and had I spoken to any of the
other five families she had been with in the six months since she left them—and
which she had lied about to us, saying she had been working in a hotel.
Even if
they haven't worked for families there is always someone you can talk to, even
if it's just the host family of their student accommodation (as we did with
Mary), or someone in their home country who speaks English. On the other hand there may be a very good
reason why they don't want you to contact their family, as happened with our
third au pair Pavla.
She had
been made to sleep in a bed with another au pair - yes, you did read that
correctly - had been made to work from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm, six days a week and
was too intimidated and frightened to complain to her agency. She only left
when £80 was stolen from her drawer and it wasn't the other au pair. She was
lovely, adored the girls and worked far more hours than she needed. We were
very sorry when she had an accident after a month and had to leave.
A few more
pointers to see you on the way if you want to do it yourself:
We think it
is best if at all possible that, if there are two of you, you both interview
the au-pairs—because one can see what the other doesn't.
Don't interview
them while you are under stress, if you can help it. I offered the job to
someone I interviewed on my own when I was very stressed. I had completely
missed the fact that she could barely speak English and had to mime everything
(she only lasted three weeks and she seemed very depressed, again something I
had failed to spot at interview).
If you have
a bad feeling about them, even if it is vague, listen to it and check it out
with your partner. We had one au-pair about whom we both had had reservations
which we both ignored and therefore hadn't checked out. She was useless and
created more work for me than not having one at all.
Timing is
important so, for instance, getting an au pair in August through the Lady
produced loads as very few families were looking then; a few weeks later the
same ad will produce very little, as they all arrive in September. You have to
wait a few more weeks before getting loads of them who don't like their
families.
One final
tip: good au pairs go fast so, if you find someone you like, make it very clear
at the interview that you are interested. Also find out how many other families
they are seeing. Even if you have several days-worth of other interviews
arranged, if you find someone you really want you have to make sure you get
her. We saw our current au pair on a Tuesday evening. By Wednesday evening she
had been offered jobs with two other families. Luckily for us she liked ours
the best, but before now we had lost opportunities of good au pairs by waiting
until we have seen everyone else before phoning to offer them the job.
As I said
at the beginning, going through an agency is much less hard work, and will suit
some people a lot more. A list of agencies that have been vetted and
recommended is available at www.bestbear.com.
However, if
you do it yourself you get the benefit of starting out with someone you have
previously met and spoken to, who you can contemplate meeting over breakfast
for the next few months, and who hopefully meets your more rational requirements.
We wouldn't do it any other way.
Over a
period of some seven years, I have had about seven au pairs.
Several
left before three months were up. One didn’t return from her Christmas break.
Another barely ventured out of her room for 12 months. A few were serious
clubbers who tiptoed in at four in the morning. Most have been deeply
self-involved, as is only proper at 20. Few have known anything at all about
government in their own countries, their childcare systems, education policies,
political parties, healthcare, parental leave regulations or any other
potentially interesting political or social fact.
And while
entrusting your precious children to and sharing your home with a
self-absorbed, shopaholic, clubbing diva can occasionally be a little trying, I
have never (yet) had a theft, a child left uncollected at the school gates, or
an incident of drunkenness or drug-taking. (I have, however, had occasional
smoking in the shower.)
In an
attempt to fend off disaster, I prepare my au pairs with pages and pages of
hints, rules and regulations - about safety, how we do things, what is
acceptable, and how to get on with small children. Despite glowing references
from neighbours testifying to their many happy hours of babysitting, most au
pairs will have had almost nothing to do with little ones. They have to learn
quickly, on the job, so I think it’s only fair to give them something to think
about and hopefully discuss with their mothers before they come. It does make one look like a dragon, but to my
mind this is preferable to a girl arriving with the impression that she’s some
sort of honoured guest who might occasionally stack a dishwasher to help out.
Also, Home
Office regulations now expect the au pair to turn up at Customs with a letter
of invitation from the host family meticulously setting out hours and
conditions that are, let’s say, simply unattainable. For example, in your
invitation you will be expected to state that they are exempt from Saturday
night babysitting. But what’s the point of having an au pair if you can never
go out on a Saturday night? So I think it’s quite important to let the girl
(it’s usually a girl) know in advance that the letter might not represent the
real conditions that she will encounter, particularly during school holidays,
that it is in fact a formality. Most of my recent girls have had email
addresses, so it has been easy to enter into a correspondence.
After my first
few au pairs and occasional disasters, I thought that I’d discovered the recipe
for success – to fit in our girls had to come from families that were similar
to ours in education, background etc. But time has taught me that success in
fact arises out of an indefinable alchemy, and has nothing to do with the
girl’s background, education, photograph, first letter, country, or experience
with children (one of my disasters was a highly experienced German infant
school assistant). I have tended to get on with girls who have had a sense of
humour. But gut feeling has often proved completely wrong, and girls I’d
thought on first sight were utterly hopeless have turned out to be lovely
people, kind au pairs and remain in touch for many years, swapping Christmas
cards and photographs, and even coming back to stay.
Some people simply can’t take on an au pair without first
meeting, and so advertise in places like TNT [the Ausie mag], Loot or the Ham
& High. I’ve never found this successful and after advertising have been
called by streams of people who seemed surprised and affronted by the usual
conditions for an au pair in North London – that is, £50 a week, as well as
food and board (in West London they tend to get more, and Australian and New
Zealanders expect a lot more).
One way of
ensuring you get to meet first, if this is essential, is to phone the agencies
in October, so that you get the fall-out au pairs who have left their families
and are looking for new ones. You might of course end up with the permanently
disgruntled rather than the badly treated. The other problem with this is that
you won’t have the security of knowing that the girl has had her references
checked (police, health etc) by her home-country agency, so you are taking them
utterly on trust.
There are
obviously good agencies and bad. I’ve used Maggie Dyer of the London Au Pair
and Nanny Agency happily for years (7435 3891). Her fees remain a reasonable
£250-or-so and she does follow-up care, including putting au pairs in touch
with one-another.
Final words
of advice? Assume they know nothing about children, preparing food, big cities,
safety and security, first aid, choking, suitable bath temperature, dog poo,
shoelaces, how to make friends, ironing, or cleaning and tidying. Explain
everything in great detail. Back it up with written crib sheets. Have a list of
10 rules that cannot be broken concerning things that matter to you, for
example, smoking, friends in the house and staying over, curfew times,
telephones (when, for how long), part-time work (babysitting or in a pub), and
disciplining the children (I like to spell out that smacking is unacceptable,
and that shouting is only for mums). Have a separate list detailing exact
duties and times, pay, overtime and holidays. Food is often a problem between
au pairs and families, as is unpaid late overtime. Do whatever you can to
encourage contact with other au pairs. A sociable girl is a happy girl, I’ve
found.
While they
often arrive woefully ignorant of the ways of both children and the world, the
spoiled daughters of doting parents, girls learn very quickly, and are soon
surprisingly dependable and conscientious. And one usually only has to think of
one’s self at the same age to realise how amazing it is that it works at all.
Sandra
Smith