Is it normal to go abroad as a nanny and for the family you are staying with to speak in their foreign dialect the majority of the time so that you can never understand them? Apart from an occasional translated sentence here and there some nights, if you're lucky, but most of the time they speak in their foreign language, which has a dialect so it's even worse! And also is it normal for them to ask if you will allow a 17 year old boy, who they don't really know, to come stay in the flat with you? And when you say no , after they've asked twice already, they get a bit upset and say you were 'b***hy' and acted wrongly because you got upset at them asking again. The dad is also creepy as well. Please let me know. I don't know whether to leave or no. Just want to know. Thanks.

Certainly they can speak in their native tongue amongst themselves, but when you are around, it would be the polite thing to do to speak a language everyone understands.

Why are you still working for this family in which the father has the hots for you?

I suppose because I keep feeling in the back of my head that it's my fault, or that I've provoked it. Or that maybe he's just being really friendly? I keep justifying it. I also feel awful leaving the wife in the lurch with absolutely no childcare options. Know what I mean?

The wife will just have to find another nanny. Does she know about the father's moves toward you, and does she really approve of the son's staying with you in your room? (Why would he need to do that?)

I don't really know what she knows. She seems to encourage us going away together on our own, and encourages him asking me over for drinks. But I've only known her to do that once. I don't know what she thinks about it, that's why I have a feeling that if I mention it, she will turn it around on me and say I'm making it up or thinking that something is happening when it isn't. I keep thinking that it could be nothing, just him being friendly. But my gut instinct tells me that it's more than that. Although he hasn't tried anything completely directly, its all little things that suggest something more is going on.

It isn't their son they want to live with me, it's a 17 year old boy who is going to be working in there shop over the summer. They've only met him once and he is from their country. When he came up they gave him a guided tour around my flat and told him he'd be living there. Without even telling me this until I'd arrived and after id been there say a week or so. I told them no way, as I wouldn't share with a strange man back home, he could be anybody, and even they don't know him. They couldn't understand why I was upset over this but said it was fine. They've now mentioned it three times and are guilt tripping me in to doing it. But I expressed that I wouldn't have came if I knew this initially. Eventually they decided it was OK for him to stay in their house. And I got up and went to my bed. Anyway the next day the father told me he thought I reacted badly and that I was 'B****ing' and being 'B****y' and he didn't like how I acted, because I was upset at them asking me so many times and making me feel bad for not saying yes. I told them they were presurising me and making me feel slihgtly uncomfortable.

It sounds like a clash of two cultures, yours and theirs. If you continue to work there, you will have to be on guard and set good boundaries at all times and not let anyone bamboozle you into doing something that makes you uncomfortable or with a personal risk. (That 17 year old could be an axe murderer! If nothing else, they are setting him up for who knows what. Now that I think about it, it almost sounds like you are considered to be just a piece of property, a hireling to be moved around anywhere they please on the chessboard of their life. )

Yeah that is how I feel at the moment, like I am some sort of rag doll they take about and show off to other people, but they don't really care for how I feel...

Now just the problem of leaving, how to do it.

Thanks for the help Wondergirl