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Computers & Internet

Au Pairs and Online Romances: Your role as a Host Parent

by cv harquail June 10, 2011

As host parents we feel responsible for keeping our au pairs safe, since they are under our roofs and with our families. However, we recognize that what they do on their own time is (largely) their own business. Au pairs deserve social autonomy, privacy, and the chance to experiment with new things and new relationships. [...]

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Checking Facebook for Insights About Your Au Pair’s Experience

by cv harquail October 13, 2010

Who needs to snoop in an au pair’s room or flip through an au pair’s journal, when there is Facebook to tell us our au pair’s inner thoughts? Not that any of us would intentionally snoop.  (As we’ve already discussed, there are very few and very specific times when snooping seems even remotely reasonable.) And, [...]

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Who Should Pay When an Au Pair Downloads Movies, Illegally, by Mistake?

by cv harquail October 4, 2010

We all have a sense of what kinds of issues regularly present host parents & au pairs with relationships challenges — food, cars, late nights being chief among these. I’m becoming aware of a new category of challenges, centering on ‘Who pays for a mistake?’ We’ve had mistakes related to car damage, lost cell phones, [...]

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Au Pair Advice: Getting enough sleep & being noisy late at night

by cv harquail March 14, 2010

If there is anything about having an au pair — or anyone, really — in the bedroom on the third floor that bothers my DH, it’s noise after 10:30 pm. He is a fussy sleeper, and it drives him nuts to be able to hear a tv, or a phone conversation, while he’s trying to [...]

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Moms & Au Pairs: Can I hold us to different tv rules?

by cv harquail February 4, 2010

I’m a believer that different members of a family have different privileges and responsibilities, depending on their roles and their ages. Parents have more privileges than do children, and employers have more privileges than do employees. The rules that we follow can be different, as long as they are fair. Nobody, and I mean nobody, [...]

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O. M. G. My Au Pair is “Sexting”

by cv harquail December 29, 2009

I can’t even figure out how to begin this post! Where do you start, when you find out that your au pair is sending lewd photos of herself from her/your cellphone, and downloading lewd photos of someone else onto her/your computer? We got this request for advice from a host mom who is, to put [...]

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You’re on YouTube! Is that okay?

by cv harquail May 13, 2009

In the post Help: My Au Pair is Blogging about My Family!, we’ve addressed the question of how folks feel about their au pairs blogging about the family and/or posting information about the family on Facebook or MySpace. Lots of host parents weighed in with their opinions. We agreed that your family should have a [...]

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