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Phones & Cellphones

Texting: Taming the Au Pair Distraction

by cv harquail February 10, 2012

Who’s got an au pair who texts a lot?  Sometimes at inappropriate times, and often without any understanding of how this behavior distracts them? Raise your hands. Okay, you can all put down your hands. It annoys me hugely that people have bad manners when it comes to texting. In our family, we have rules [...]

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Au Pair Advice: New App to Manage Texting While Driving

by cv harquail April 14, 2010

Local mom and blogger Kristen Kemp wrote a post so important that I’m borrowing heavily from it to share with you all. It’s all about: Parental Control Feature to Stop Texting While Driving If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that most host parents are preeetttyyy concerned about safe driving. Talking [...]

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Au Pairs and Cell Phones: Concrete tips to hold down costs?

by cv harquail March 5, 2010

When a host mom emailed to ask for some specific suggestions around keeping the cost of cell phones down, I flinched. The whole cell phone thing, like recycling, is delegated in our house to my DH. Why? Because I just can’t stand to deal with it. Though I should deal with it, and stop avoiding [...]

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Why Safety Rules Matter

by cv harquail January 30, 2010

I get a lot of crap from people about the safety rules at our house. Apparently we’re a little strict. Probably our most prominent safety rules have to do with driving. For example, I don’t use my cellphone when I drive. I just don’t. I’m that person who waits ’till she gets where she’s going, [...]

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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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Want Safe Driving? Forbid your Au Pair to use the cellphone in the car. Period.

by cv harquail July 1, 2008

The announcement that California and Washington will ban the use of hand-held cell phones while driving prompts me to write about safe driving and cell phones. For a long time, we didn’t even give our Au Pair a cell phone, but now she has one for her own use and for family emergencies. So, we [...]

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