My “End of Au Pairs” Story – A Short Summary

As of yesterday, we no longer have an au pair. For real. Our family has decided to stop hosting au pairs and take advantage of a local afterschool program instead.

If you have been reading closely or know us personally, you know that our au pair arrived in late February, which means we ended mid-year. Everyone who has heard this news keeps wanting to know my story. I have been retiscent about telling it publicly, not because I’m saving it for the book – which I still hope to publish one day – but because I realize that anything I say can become politicized. People who are pro-au pairs may feel like I’m a traitor to the cause, and people who are anti-au pairs may say, “See, even a host mom who is committed to the program [can't make it work]….” Not that I care what people think, but I want to be thoughtful and careful about what I put out there in the blogosphere.

So here’s what I feel that I can say, and I preface these thoughts by noting that we probably would do it all over again – hosting since February 2005 – if we found ourselves in the same circumstances and knew then what we know now. Probably.

1) As you know from my prior post, I was just diagnosed in March with celiac disease. To oversimplify, that means gluten is bad for me. At first, this diagnosis felt like the end of life as I knew it. (No more bread, croissants, you name it.) Well, it was, but not in the way I expected. Since I changed my diet, I am like a new person. Among other things, I feel like I’ve gained another hour in the day, since my energy and concentration levels have peaked. I decided that I want to spend that hour with my kids. What better to use it for? I want to take a more front-and-center role in their lives. I never could do that before, and I always wished I could. I thought it was being in a demanding job (law), which I wasn’t willing to leave, or something else that was wearing me down or taking my attention, but it turns out it was actually that I was eating the wrong things. I now believe that getting one’s biochemistry right is the key to the good life, but that’s a story for another post. So, given the above, I frankly don’t need as much help as I did before.

2) Our last au pair wasn’t a bad “nanny” by any means, and in fact I would readily recommend her to another family (and already have). Our kids were well taken care of, but she just wasn’t working out for us. After hosting five au pairs before her, we have a pretty good idea what we expect, personality and workwise, and her style, manner and expectations did not match ours. To be fair, the au pair before her was amazing and was with us for two years, so our new one had a tough act to follow. Finally, she was sick for about ten days during her first month, with a high fever, and it threw us all a bit off track on the training and “getting to know each other” phase. I always say things happen for a reason, and all of these factors made it easier for us to make the break with au pairs, which we have always known that eventually we needed to do. At the same time, this au pair deserves a family who is committed to the program and her year in the U.S., not one biding its time until the year is over.

3) The switch from one person to the next is often difficult, and the older our children got the harder they found the transitions (especially my seven year old). So another simple factor is that we all started to get “au pair overload”. There were just too many changes, instead of the consistency that should be a hallmark of childhood. The fact that this new au pair had a personality in stark contrast to our prior one – which was not evident in the phone interview – simply highlighted the change. The fact that I was less willing to invest my energy trying to “smooth” it out – wanting instead to spend it on my kids full stop – did too.

4) My daughter starts turns five years old and starts Kindergarten in the fall. Once we decided that we might stop hosting au pairs, I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t want to lose even one more minute being frustrated (because once you make a decision like this, even the littlest annoyances become frustrating), so that I could instead focus on being happy and available for my kids in their precious young years. (You only get them once!) There was a day or two where I thought – “Hmm, maybe we can try another person until next February and then call it quits” – but I quickly dismissed the thought and went with my gut.

5) We considered spending another few months to try to make it work and ending at the end of the summer if things didn’t fall into place. However, we realized that the longer we hosted this au pair, the less chance she would actually have to rematch, since families usually don’t want to match with an in-country au pair who only has six months or less left of her year.

6) God, it is good to have our house back to ourselves. The room has already been remade into an office, and we can walk around the house in our underwear (if we ever wanted to do that). ‘Nuff said.

The funny thing is, our last au pair left yesterday morning. Our four year old was excited, because she knew that this meant mom and dad would be the go-to people all the time. But it didn’t mean she hasn’t taken away something precious from the host family experience. She spent the afternoon watching (at her request) videos with cartoons of Thai songs and schoolchildren, courtesy of another former au pair. She said, “Mommy, come watch the sixth one with me. I love that one!” I watched it, having no idea what they were singing about, and my daughter intuitively translated for me what is (or what she thinks is) the storyline.

All of our former au pairs have actually been extremely supportive of our decision to “move beyond the hosting stage” – and I am sure they will be in our lives for many days to come. In fact, we may even appreciate them more now, since the au pair clock has stopped and we can reminisce about old times!