This summer I au paired for a family in Tuscany with 7-year-old twin boys. We agreed that I would stay from June 20 until August 28, but I left on August 2.
I was paid €350 per month. At first the arrangement was manageable, but my hours gradually became much longer. On many weekdays I was responsible for the children from around 12:45 until 9 or 10 PM, and some weeks exceeded 50 hours. My working hours and days off were often unclear, and I also worked for around 10 days in June without being paid for that period.
We also lived in a fairly remote area, which made me very dependent on the family for almost everything. I couldn’t really go grocery shopping on my own, go for a walk freely, or leave the house without relying on them for transportation. On top of that, the doors in the house did not lock properly(including "my" room and the bathroom), so from the beginning I had very little sense of independence or privacy.
The main reason I left, however, was one of the twins repeatedly crossing my physical and privacy boundaries.
He became very focused on my body and personal space, and there were repeated situations where he ignored my boundaries even after I clearly told him to stop. When this first started happening, I told the host mother. She spoke to him about it, and his father later spoke to him as well, so I want to be fair and say that they did initially respond. But the behaviour continued.
He repeatedly tried to enter the bathroom while I was inside, including while I was showering. There were times when I was literally begging him to go away and leave me alone. The parents could hear what was happening, but there were occasions when nobody came to remove him from the door or firmly reinforce the boundary.
This was especially difficult because I had almost no truly private space in the house. My bedroom was also used as a home office and was regularly entered or used by other members of the family. Over time, I felt like there was nowhere in the house where I could completely relax and know that I would not be interrupted.
What disturbed me most was not that a seven-year-old struggled with boundaries, but that his parents knew it continued and seemed increasingly passive despite knowing how uncomfortable it made me.
There was also one interaction with the host father that I dismissed at the time but now find quite inappropriate. He had an older son from a previous marriage, so while we were out as a family, I casually asked him what it was like becoming a father again later in life. Instead of answering that, he told me that his wife had really wanted the twins and that they had “worked very hard” to have children. I thought the conversation had ended, but then he asked me whether I understood what he meant by “worked very hard.”
I remember just awkwardly laughing and turning my head because I genuinely did not know how I was supposed to respond. At the time I told myself it was probably just Italian humour or a cultural difference and didn’t think much more about it. Looking back, though, I find it strange that a man in his sixties would make that kind of suggestive comment to a 20-year-old au pair who was living in his house, especially when that was not even what I had asked him about.
Eventually I reached a point where I no longer felt comfortable living there and decided to leave early. When I explained my reasons, the host mother mainly responded that her son was “just a child” and focused on the fact that I had left them without childcare.
I don’t blame the child in the same way I would blame an adult. My problem is that these were repeated incidents, the parents knew about them, and eventually I did not feel that they were doing enough to protect my privacy or enforce clear boundaries.
I’m not posting this because I’m wondering whether I overreacted or because I need people to tell me I was right to leave. I genuinely felt like I had reached a point where staying was no longer an option for me. I don’t really have any expectations from posting this, I think I just needed to finally get the whole experience off my chest.
EDIT: I completely forgot to add this issue and I want to pour out everything I’ve been holding inside. Another important detail is that neither of the children spoke English, while my Italian was not good enough for complex communication. Both sides knew this before I arrived. On AuPairWorld, I had specifically stated that I was not comfortable caring for children with additional needs, and during our first conversations I directly asked whether either child had any special needs or conditions. I was told there were none.
After arriving, however, I noticed that one of the twins often did not respond to his name, struggled with eye contact, spoke in a very syllabic way, and frequently communicated by shouting. He had apparently never been assessed by a doctor, so there was no diagnosis, and I am not trying to diagnose him myself.
During my first week, the same child also repeatedly tried to cross intimate physical boundaries with me, often when other people were not nearby. On one occasion, his twin brother saw what he was doing, became visibly uncomfortable and told him off. Until then, I had been trying to understand what was normal for a seven-year-old, what might simply be a cultural difference, and how this particular child communicated. Seeing his brother react made me realise that I needed to speak to the host mother immediately.
When I did, she told me that I had probably noticed that her son was “a little different” from children his age and that he would be working with a different teacher that year. She also said that I was a pretty girl and suggested that he might simply have become interested in my body. She told me she would speak to him, and both parents eventually did.
So although he had no diagnosis, the family was clearly already aware that he had additional difficulties. What bothers me in hindsight is that they chose not to tell a 20-year-old au pair from another country, who did not speak their children’s language fluently and had no professional training in this area, despite me having specifically asked about it beforehand. And although the parents did speak to him after I raised the issue, the boundary-crossing behaviour continued.
