the 'other au pair'

I am now the proud au pair of four children these past few days. And it turns out that au pairing is bloody hard work when you have four children to look after so this blog post will now be more of a summary of the some of the more memorable moments…

When the two girls arrived it transpired that the family had an au pair last summer as well from York and it also quickly transpired that the girls preferred her. This is particularly bad for one’s self esteem I must admit. The nine year old was quickly won over with a cut and stick puzzle game I had brought with me and watching me fail miserably attempting a head stand. However the thirteen year old proved more of a challenge and I was faced with an evening alone with her and her sister Saturday night. This meant having to deal with a child who wouldn’t stop crying and who spoke very little English. She spent most of the evening on the phone to her mum or exchanging words with her sister in broken French while glaring at me. Not the best situation for an au pair I must admit.

The day after with the four year old we went to the beach with the parents who seemed oblivious to there being a problem. However ‘other au pair’ syndrome did begin. They kept mentioning the ‘other au pair’ and confusing our names. This other au pair better have been bloody good!

Fortunately I can report there is a happy ending to this story and it turns out all the thirteen year old needed was for me to create a school like atmosphere and as soon as I brought out my French learning books all was good.

Fortunately for me having her on my side was definitely required as when the eleven year old arrived as well, I now needed to drive them all about to do various activities. Monday morning I was therefore faced with four children, driving on the right side of the road, and driving a land rover I had never even sat in before. Oh and to add to the fun I thought it might be a good idea to teach them English directions too. Therefore at every turning we had frantic yelling of ‘yes’ ‘oui’ ‘non’ ‘gauche’ ‘right’ ‘no’ ‘left’ combined with me stalling at every occasion. One particularly memorable incident was the eleven year old ensuring me it was all right to drive across a junction and the rest of France clearly disagreeing. It was not until the undercover French police flashed their badge at me I decided just turning left was probably the better option. Luckily I am looking after four children who are incredibly understanding and despite me slamming on the breaks repeatedly and stalling a thousand times they remained pretty calm and the four year old still managed to sleep. Another memorable hill start involved the eleven year old having to do the hand break for me while I did the peddles and the most horrific smell of clutch seeping through the car. The nine year old cautiously asked if the car was ok and I assured her the car was absolutely fine but yes that smell was coming from us.

When we eventually did get somewhere, our first outing led us to a park called ‘Amazonia’ which is a forest type adventure park for children. Personally I think the park was rather cunningly devised as it is meant to look like abandoned jungle ruins meaning that gardening and touching up the paint work are clearly foregone under the excuse they add to the atmosphere. It looked like an abandoned fair ground in an overgrown forest to me but the children thoroughly enjoyed it. The four year old was also on top form accident wise, falling repeatedly just to test my heart rate. The best thing about him is that he just gets up and laughs every time. At one point he decided to attempt to balance along a high rope and proceeded to fall off into the mud face first. All the other parents were gasping and looking horrified as me and the other three children stood and laughed at him. This time I will admit he did cry but I picked him up and gave him a kiss as he spat mud in my face and off he was again! In an attempt to get back at us, he later pulled down his shorts and pants and peed everywhere in the middle of the park attempting to aim his pee at us. The hardest part was trying to keep a straight face as I told him off.

Despite an outing with the French police and the four year old sporting a now very distinct cut right down his noise (he enjoys looking in the mirror at it) the parents just laughed as the children relayed the stories to them. Luckily the parents are EXTREMELY relaxed BUT unfortunately the children ensure the parents hear about every detail of what I do…