Snowstorms in weird places (like Oregon) and snowstorms in predictable places (like Chicago) have raised the question for many aupair host parents –

Do you allow your au pair to drive in the snow?

Of course, there are a million variables that affect this decision. Here are the ones I came up with off the top of my head:

• Is snow frequent or rare?
  Is the snow deep, light, icy?
  Does your car have 4 wheel drive?
  Is your car a Volvo?
  Is your car already beat up, or rather new?
• Is your au pair a good driver?
  Has s/he got lots of experience driving in snow?
  Is s/he from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Northern Canada?
• Is the specific trip urgent or discretionary?
  Daylight or after dark?
  With children or without?
• Are drivers in your area generally comfortable in snow?
  Do you live on a hill?
  Are your town roads well-plowed?
  Can you avoid hilly or unplowed roads to get to where you want to go?

• Can you afford to lose your (au pair) car to a body shop for a week or two?

As this host parent put it— many many variables! So, how do you decide?

Dear AuPairMom-

Our family has recently moved from a warm weather area to the east coast and we’ve never had to deal with snow before. We just had our first real snowfall of the season and I’ve very hesitant to allow our AP to drive in it. She has experience driving in snow in her home country (probably more than I do!) and says she is not afraid to drive in it.

For those of you living in areas that get snowfall, do you let your au pairs drive in the snow?

I’m in foreign territory here because we’ve never had to think about this before and would love to hear how others handle it.

And does it depend on where she is going or while working or not? What about when it’s not a huge storm, some cars are out on the road, and some roads are likely plowed, but sidestreets and such are icy and temperatures are still below freezing?

I feel that if she doesn’t HAVE to go out, I’d rather not take that risk. But I see it differently depending on the need. Going to the grocery story, taking the kids to school (if  schools were open), or going somewhere a planned important event like a going-away party for another AP, I see as more of a need than her wanting to go to Starbucks or the gym.  

Also, HD and I are doing some minimal driving (nearby errands), but I feel more comfortable with us taking that risk than her. DH has had years more driving experience and frankly, it’s our own car that we’re risking. And I just don’t feel like the headache right now of having to pay for car repairs because our AP felt she needed to drive to Starbucks in the snow. But, I feel like I’m being contradictory or unfair if I say she can’t drive, while DH and I continue to use the cars. Is this at all reasonable?

Some additional background — we love our current AP, who is leaving soon, she’s very responsible & mature and very good natured. Not at all whiny or immature. She rarely asks much of us, but she is pushing a little with this. However, she is very used to having a car at her disposal (we have a very nice 3rd AP car with very few restrictions). I know this is inconveniencing her and she is not thrilled. And, to top it off, my brand new SUV was recently stolen, so we are currently using our AP car and a rental car as our means of transport. We have her on the agreement so she can drive the rental, but again, I just don’t want to take the risks of any more car headaches right now.  

I really want to be reasonable but I am a little confused at the whole situation.

Image: Not Driving Today…. Some rights reserved by subsetsum

Dear AuPairMom-

The posting from the host mom offering the fancy host family situation make me think of the choices that I made when I was matching with my host family. I talked to many different families. All of them had some different things to offer, cars yes or no, no Saturday nights, babies and bigger children, and different kinds of town situations.

I did feel that some families tried to impress me and other au pairs by offering very many things.

Myself, I don’t come from a rich family, and yes all the benefits that host families offer are appreciated, really.

I don’t want to seem rude or have a lack in respect. There was this sense that maybe the families were not as nice as they told me they were, and that they were maybe trying to cover up for that by offering nice situations. It seemed like some families were talking a lot about the kind of car, how nice was the room, my own bathroom, but underneath they did not seem confident or warm in their hearts.

I know that we can’t really tell this from emails and skype, even with many interviews, but still we have to respect that inside sense we have of what is right for us.

I did talk to a few familys who really did seem like they had a kind of attitude where they could bribe or “buy” me. But I would not want someone who thinks can “buy me”. If a host mother talks a lot about “We are offering you this that and that how can you say no?” and also does not talk about how much se loves her kids and what kind of persons she wants to take care of them, this made me feel like I was being bought.

There are probably many au pairs who would like a very wealthy family, and that is fine. They have to find the right family for them. As for me I want a family generous with their love and their respect and their understandings. I knew that there were families like this to be found from looking at websites and from reading this blog. So I kept looking until I found a family that seemed generous in these ways.

Now that I have been an au pair for almost a year, I feel good that I made a good choice. My host family has many nice things that they share with me (and some nice things that the parents keep apart, ha ha like the fancy chocolate). But they are fair and honest and they love their kids with all their hearts. Even when we have had disagreements and not been happy with each other, we have been able to work things out.

So this is just to say — too many things can get in the way of what is really important for finding the right au pair for you.

MadeAGoodChoice AP

Image: Al-Fatihah Some rights reserved by ?usn?@w|©kedf|lm

A while ago I got a request for advice — a host mom was mystified that her desired au pair candidates seemed uninterested in the opportunity she had to offer.

After all, what au pair wouldn’t want a situation that required only 20 hours per week, paid vacations with the family, her own apartment underneath theirs, on Lake Shore Drive, with a Mercedes SUV for her own use? Oh yes, and tuition reimbursed at a major Chicago University?

Dear readers, I thought the email was a hoax. So I replied with an email of my own:

Are you fur reelz?

Indeed, she claimed. Very real.

After several rounds of emails, I concluded that her situation is pretty real.  And even if it’s exaggerated, the central question remains:

When we offer a great situation, why don’t we easily find great au pairs?

You all will have a lot to say.

Here’s her dilemma, put together with details from a few rounds of correspondence between us:

We are a first-time host family from Chicago, IL. We are a family of 5 (me, hub, 3 kids aged 6 – 15). We have been looking for our AP for almost one year, because we wanted “the perfect candidate” for us. We were not looking for someone PERFECT, but someone who was perfect for us.

We found an amazing girl on Site Y about 2 months ago. She was exactly from the country we wanted, from a country/2nd language we wanted, 21 years old, 13years education, proficiency English, wonderful human being. She provided us references, which we contacted, who wouldn’t stop saying how amazing and smart and skilled she is. Straight-As at school but also street smart, generous, fun, down to earth, very talented.

We talked a lot by email first, and then on skype more than once. She was already wonderful, even on skype. She was very honest and upfront about everything we talked about, even things that could have made her “lose points”, and so were we with her. We fell in love with this Au Pair and so did our kids.

We knew she was in contact with other families and that she was close to a match with more than one family and that she was close to a decision, but honestly, as arrogant as it might sound, we thought that no family could “beat us out”. (I know, I’m not supposed to say that but… that’s how we felt.)

She made a short video for me and my family in which she told us that she finally made a decision and she chose another family. It was a cold shower for us, even if during the matching process she kept telling us that she was hearing from other families and that she had to decide (we already asked her for a match and so did the other families I guess). I have to say it was very nice of her to make a video to tell us that, because an email would have been easier, required less “emotional energy” and so on. But still, she chose another family and I know we won’t find another AP like her (we have been looking for months!!)

I know I can’t do anything to make her change her idea, even if I will – and yeah, I know I’m not supposed to do that – but I feel she is “the one”! But in all of this I really don’t understand how come she chose someone else!
This AP wanted to go to Chicago very badly … but then she took the advice to choose the family over the place…

Before she declined, we had already stated some nice benefits in the AP handbook we sent her. I don’t want to raise jealousy but like I said, we are very prosperous so we wanted this girl to have some nice perks. These included:

• We offered her a 500$/week stipend, which means 2.000$/month

• 20h/week schedule, and she could take classes every day 9.30 am – 4 pm

• We told her we could pay for her tuition at X University where she had already been accepted. (She’d been issued a scholarship opportunity from X University last year, (she was in Chicago to study english and has an amazing talent for writing. Her teacher knew someone at University X so he had her go there and present an application and they offered her a scholarship to study there). The scholarship would cover about 8,000 $ and she would have to pay like 6,000 $ more (because she would be a sort of a part time student). She said she would cover the cost for her university but I know she doesn’t come from a wealthy family and those 6K would “cost” more for her than they would cost for us if that makes any sense.)

• We were going to buy her a brand new Mércedes ML (Suv) to drive our kids and told her she would have unlimited car usage and that we would pay for gas for her personal use as well. (B/c it’s among those cars that have ONSTAR system. Safety is among our primary concerns so the aupair car MUST have that system on it. (It’s a General Motor service and not so many cars have it. If we were going to buy a Chevrolet Escalades (which has it) or something similar, the price would not be that different, so we had our 15 years old girl choosing the car that she liked because hopefully in about 2 years or so, she will drive and we won’t need an aupair or full time nanny anymore, and the AP car could be my daughter’s).

• We have an almost new condo right under ours (but on one floor), that would have been her apartment

• We go on vacation once or twice per months (depending on our children schedules), usually to very fancy (and expensive) places and told her she was welcome to come with us (we wanted her to!)

• We live in the city she is in love with.. which I know was priceless for her.

To be clear, when we first contacted her, we didn’t offer all this information up front, and we did not post it on Site Y. I didn’t want an AP to choose us just because of our whealty lifestyle. I just wanted to make sure that an AP would choose us because of our family and not because of our money.

I can’t imagine that the other family could make as good of an offer, e.g., teenagers (who don’t require much work), brand new suv, high stipend, over-the-average perks, and a warming loving family who was looking forward to have her.

She never promised us “anything” but we were maybe too confident in hoping that she would be OUR ap? As a first time host mom, with this big disappointment, I’m wondering -

- where did I do wrong?

- what can we do to get the kind of au pair we want?

I don’t want to sound “stand-offish” with all I said. But yes, we can afford to give the AP some nice benefits and we would be happy to do that FOR THE RIGHT PERSON who deserves that. And the right person was this girl.

Please PLEASE please, let me know if you have any advice on how to convince her to say yes to us and tell us what did we do wrong.  She is so amazing I know we are not going to find another her.

LakeShoreMom

There are two kinds of host family schedules

— those that use up all of their 45 hours during the host parents’ Mon – Fri work week, and

– those that don’t.

I can pretty much guarantee you that if your host family schedule is the second kind, and you try to use your au pair hours regularly to have an au pair on duty Saturday nights, you’re going it get a lot of crap for it.

I know that we did– in fact, this is the issue over which one of our two rematches occurred. That au pair “just couldn’t stand it any more” that she was being asked to work one or two Saturday nights a month. Our schedule was “ruining her social life”. yeah, right.

Even worse, our LCC told me that we were being unreasonable, asking our au pair to work on Saturday nights when “all the other au pairs” had Saturday nights off. She also told me that it didn’t matter that our au pair usually worked only 30 hours a week anyway– Saturday nights were still ‘not fair’.

(Insert string of expletives here )

I’m sure we have posts about this issue way back at the beginning of this blog, becuase I know that the Saturday Night Situation rankled me seriously. But the email below brings it up anew:

Hello – I’m a first time host mom and we just got an au pair last week. Because my husband and I work full-time, what works best for our family is an au pair who will handle mornings, evenings and weekends with the children (who are in school during the day). Unfortunately, our au pair went to a peer event and was told by other au pairs that they all have every weekend off. So now our au pair wants every weekend off.

One of the primary reasons we got an au pair was to give my husband and myself some downtime on the weekend. She only works about 5 hours a day during the week. She has every Friday off until mid afternoon on Saturday and of course, one full weekend once per month. I’m already irritated and she’s only been here a week. The au pair isn’t demanding that she be off but I sense this is going to be a problem because she’s requested it. I’m really hoping this doesn’t get contentious and unpleasant because I want this to work. Any thoughts?

Thanks,   Concerned Host Mom

What can you do to address the Saturday Night Situation?

I’ve tried very hard to make working on a Saturday night both “normal” and not such a big deal, by doing things like:

• Stating up front in our family letter and during interviews that we scheduled our au pair to work one or two Saturday nights a month
• Stating up front in our family letter and during interviews that at least one of these Saturday nights ended at 0:30, leaving plenty of time to get out and party.
• Balancing our this ‘horrible’ demand with liberal use of an au pair car, a cosy room, and well-behaved host kids.

• Scheduling our new au pairs to work on a Saturday night their first weeks here, so that it was already part of normal.
• Asking my host mom friends to do the same, and trying to coordinate with them so i wasn’t alone with this.

• Talking to my LCC and asking her to make it clear (to herself and) to the au pairs that Saturday nights were indeed fair times to ask an au pair to work.

• Planning these Saturday nights out way ahead so our au pair could schedule around them.

The whole ‘on duty on Saturday Night’ thing is both a practical issue and a philosophical one for me.

Practically, one of the reasons to have an au pair is so that you and your dear partner can have a social life yourselves. Call me crazy, but I’m often too tired to go out on a weeknight/worknight, and I’m also too cash-constrained to pay an additional $60 to a babysitter so that my au pair can be off duty.

Philosophically, the Saturday Night Situation is one of those that surfaces a tension around au pairs and their motivations. Do they understand that the childcare part of their jobs takes priority over their leisure time, at least occasionally?

And, for host parents, do you feel comfortable asserting your own needs and saying- “Yes, we need you to work because we need to have time off ourselves”?

Let’s hear what you all think about the Saturday Night Situation…..

Image: id Saturday outing from kodomut

A Host Mom writes:

Hello! I am writing because I have a bit of a princess situation on my hands — a princess situation with nuance. I am looking for advice on how to try to make this work.

Our new AP, 19 years old, arrived about a month ago from a Western European country. She is our 3rd AP – 1st was wonderful, but left to return home to university after nine months. 2nd was horrible – simply put, was mean to my kids. She didn’t even last a month with us. Had a temporary nanny for three months until new AP’s arrival.

I already have two kids. I don’t want a third. I want to be able to feel comfortable leaving AP in charge. How long do we give this situation to work? What else can we do to help her grow up and toughen up? Thanks so much for your advice!

My focus in interviewing for this AP was to be sure that we found someone who was nice and gentle. It was also important to us that she be committed to developing a social infrastructure here quickly. She is nice and gentle – she is good with the kids (obviously this is the most important thing to us and the reason that we’re not willing to rematch at this point) – and has already made lots of friends.

The issue is, I think, in how she was raised and the expectations that has created in her mind; instead of the princess mindset coming from “I deserve this,” instead, I think it’s just how she has learned to be treated. She is certainly not self-sufficient. I think her parents doted on her. I think they coddled her and treated her as a child and she simply was raised to expect those things from “parents.” We were very upfront about our expectation that she join our family as an adult, with all of the attendant responsibilities.

I think she is experiencing culture shock of a different type – the shock that comes with having “adult” expectations thrust upon her.

We have addressed each issue as it arose and have been firm and consistent. She seems to understand each time I provide this feedback and mostly works to rectify the issue. She’s never been negative to me about the feedback.

It’s just that as we address one issue, another comes up! I don’t think she realizes her sense of entitlement. I have been at the point multiple times where I believe that there really can’t be any more issues to address, then another crazy one comes up.

A few examples of the “princess” behavior:

Again, she is good with the kids, but each issue has caused me to question her underlying sense of responsibility – her ability to have my kids’ interests at heart at ALL times, versus her own kid-like (self-absorbed) interests.

I trust her at home with the kids, with me here (I work from home). I do not trust her to walk my oldest to school. I do not trust her to take my youngest out in the stroller. I don’t think she could handle a morning without my husband or me working alongside her to get everyone ready. My husband and I have been upfront about this and have told her that she needs to work to gain that trust.

I have kept our LCC in the loop and she will talk with AP as well (I asked her to do this yesterday).

Dear Host Mom —

You seem to be putting a lot of effort into being positive and optimistic, so I feel a little mean in saying this but –  Rematch.

Unless you have already seen your au pair start to ‘get it’ and start to take on a more adult and self-sufficient approach to things, you need to rematch. You are not going to be able to change her perspective and her behavior very quickly, if at all. It will take a lot of effort to nudge her towards self-sufficiency; this effort may or may not pay out in the end, but it will take a lot out of you. If you don’t want another child, you need to get a different au pair.

Your situation is exacerbated by your being a work-at-home parent. As long as you are in the house you are theoretically her safety net. She doesn’t have any psychological incentive to be self-sufficient, because you will always be there. And, you don’t have the opportunity to just leave her alone to work things out, which a work-outside the house parent would. She doesn’t have the upbringing, and you don’t have the work situation, that will move her towards self-sufficiency with any urgency.

Even if you put all the ‘princess’ concerns aside, you comment about not trusting her to get the basic job done would have urged me to suggest rematch. When you can’t trust an au pair to do the job, you should not keep that au pair.

I appreciate that you tried very hard to find an au pair that had the loving qualities that were so lacking in the au pair who came before her. That you were concentrating on qualities you really needed, and somehow missed whatever signs of a princess that this au pair might have displayed, probably makes it harder to recognize that this relationship cannot be saved.  (Dear Host Mom, that list of examples is to long to be “a few”.)

Start planning for a rematch.

Get the kind of childcare help and au pair relationship that you need and that you deserve.

See also:

Choosing an Au Pair: How to Avoid a Princess
Choosing Your Next Au Pair: Beware of the Contrast Effect
Classic Case: We’re in rematch… Now what?
Have you ever regretted that you initiated a rematch?

Images: Princess Kitty from Mi’Tu Princess Kitty from emilybean

Dear AuPairMom,

I’m a mom, employed part-time, who is thinking about getting an au pair. I’m thinking of having an au pair to (1) care for my kids while I’m working, (2) work with me as a mother’s helper as I care for the children, and (3) make it possible to get other things done (like, have date night, etc.).

This would be a less structured situation than most au pairs have. I’d certainly add structure by having a weekly schedule.

I’d also probably start the “year” by working about 15-20 hours a week when the au pair first arrives and increase throughout the year to 30 or 35.

Any tips on how to do this? Thanks! JHM

Dear JHM–

For most of us, that kind of distribution of au pair time would be terrific. Many of us use all our on-duty hours for childcare while we are working full time, but those of us who work less than 45 hours a week love to have an au pair cover date night or even a trip to the grocery story. It is less common for au pairs and host parents to double team active childcare, but many do it and it works out just fine. So, I don’t see too many challenges with the distribution  of your au pair’s on-duty schedule. And I’m sure that host parent readers will have some suggestions on how to make this work.

The bigger concern is with the idea of starting light and then ramping up the schedule over time.

In general, our advice is to ‘start firm, then relax’. This way, changes feel like they lighten up the burden and/or add privileges. In the other direction, starting light and ramping up, every change increases the burden.

I’d advise against giving your au pair a very light schedule, with the intent to ramp up as you go.

It is very hard to prepare an au pair to easily accept these increases. Regardless of what we say, it’s what we do that makes the impression. And when you schedule your au pair for only 15-20 hours the first several weeks, that’s the schedule s/he comes to expect. Later, when you want to ramp up to a fuller schedule, your au pair may understand this intellectually but still resent it emotionally.

S/he has set her / his psychological contract to be 15-20 hours of work for $190, so when you ask for 30-35 hours for the same $190, s/he feels cheated or asked to do too much. While a very mature au pair can handle this, and while you can be very explicit in advance about how her/his schedule will change over time, you can’t rely on au pair maturity or advance warning to prevent the feeling of being asked to do “more”.

Many host families have a similar kind of challenge when their au pair joins them during a ‘light work’ season (for some families, this is summertime – day camp season, for others it’s the school year) and then the whole family’s schedule changes with the new season. In these situations, au pairs often succumb to Seasonal Schedule Shift Syndrome. Even with explicit preparation up front (like, showing an au pair during match how the summer schedule compares to the winter schedule), families and au pairs find this shift to be challenging.

One way to try to avoid this problem would be to get an EduCare au pair.. Their work expectation is 30 hours a week with pocket money of $147. Asking an EduCare au pair to work 15-20 hours per weeks is still asking him/her to work just more than half a week, but is more in line in terms of hours to pocket money.

Another alternative might be to ask yourself if there are ways that you (alone or with your host parent partner) could use some additional hours of childcare for projects, initiatives, and activities you haven’t considered. This might be your chance to volunteer for something important to you, to start an exercise program, to spend some focused one-on-one time with each child, or even do all those endless chores that otherwise just get transferred from one to-do list to another.

What else should JHM consider if she wants to ramp up au pair hours?

See Also:
EduCare or Regular Au Pair?
4 Ways to Reduce “Seasonal Schedule Shift Syndrome”

image: So many scenic hills to climb … from Mark Stosberg

Our au pair car was a naughty, naughty car.

Its very first year as an au pair car, it often stayed out kind of late.

Once, it got left behind at a bar and didn’t make it back until Monday. Another time, it was hanging out 95 miles away from home, without permission, and tangled with a deer. At 4 am.

Naughty, naughty car.

After the encounter with the deer (though, surprisingly, not after staying over at the bar) I decided I needed to be more firm with our au pair car.

You now have a curfew, Miss Maxima. Weeknights, you must be in by midnight. Weekends, you must be in by 1 am.

I don’t care if “all the other au pair cars” get to stay out later. You’re my au pair care and you will follow my rules.

The end.

As our au pair car matured, and demonstrated more responsibility, I did allow it to stay out overnight IF parked at someone’s home by 1 pm, and if I knew in advance where the car would be. I expect (in fact, I’m sure) that this curfew was occasionally broken, but since I am usually asleep by midnight I rarely noticed.

How about the car that your Au Pair uses?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Image: New Car….. from scarynaughtyduck

As Host Parents, we have an odd role in our Au Pair’s lives. We are responsible for keeping them safe, housed, fed, and supported in their work with our children. And we also often play a role that I call Pseudo In Loco Parentis.

Pseudo In Loco Parentis

Like the fancy Latin?

Years ago, women’s colleges were expected to take the role of “in loco parentis” — being the “local” parent of the student. This meant that the college was expected to protect the student’s health and safety, by forbidding men in the dorms, requiring curfews, limiting date nights, and even screening phone calls. Whatever it took to keep these young women and their reputations “safe” was sensible and expected.

The idea behind this was that the local “adults” would care for the student on behalf of that student’s parents, enacting the same rules and expectations that s/he’d experience at home under her or his own parent’s roof. This expectation — that at some times you’ll act like your au pair’s own parents — is also part of the role of Host Parent.

One easy way that this in loco parentis role plays out is in the promise that I make to my au pair’s parents about how I’ll treat them in an emergency — I will care for our au pair as though she were our own child, in a personal,  natural or political disaster. If the nuclear reactor at Indian Point melts down, that au pair will be in the back seat with my kids and the dog as we speed west on Route 80.

Other situations are less clear. Some of our families’ values and moral codes are pretty common. We can feel comfortable expecting our au pairs to live up to certain expectations for honesty, reliability, self-control and cleanliness. S/he may or may not share our religion, or attend services, and we’re usually fine with this.  But, when au pairs start to socialize (and by this I mean drinking, partying, staying out late, meeting people on-line, and doing all kinds of young adult social behaviors), they can often cross lines we didn’t even know we had.

From “anything goes” to “not under my roof!”

We’ve talked here on AuPairMom about our concerns regarding Au Pairs’ and their social lives.

Many of us simply do not care what our au pairs do socially, as long as they are safe and back to work rested and on-time. Others of us take more of an in loco parentis approach, and seek to guide our au pair’s behavior to stay within (or at least close to) our family’s moral values and moral code(s).

Every host parent-au pair partnership finds a different place on this spectrum,  from “anything goes” to “not under my roof!”

Regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, you need to know what your limits are and how you’ll handle it if and when your au pair steps out of your moral and ethical comfort zone.

An active reader emailed with a question about her au pair’s social life… and how she as host parent should respond:

We have a 20 year old au pair. She is terrific and we are extending with her and couldn’t be more happy in general. She is very responsible and puts me to shame sometimes !

My question is that I’ve just learned she’s now telling people she is in a relationship with a gentleman (mid 20’s) who previously was described as “only a friend.” I fully expect she’s going to ask us pretty shortly about things such as spending the night at his house and driving our car over to where he is and that area. That area is not close to mine and not in an area I am familiar with. It’s about 35 minutes away and you need to travel on some four lane highways to get there. My husband did allow her to drive there one time, but made clear it was only a special occasion.

On the one hand, she is mature and responsible, including in her driving (as far as I know, but we trust her). She deserves to be treated as an adult and make adult choices which I personally think she is fully capable of doing and with sense. I’ve met the boyfriend and he strikes me as also very mature and responsible (but who really ever knows?).

On the other hand, I would not let my own daughter stay the night at a boyfriend’s (patriarchal and naïve as that may be, but it’s the truth).   I have no idea if her own parents feel like I do or not. I have met them, am very comfortable with them, and can get a hold of them to ask, but I’m really worried if I do that or require that our relationship will be worse off than if I had just said no, and let her suggest she connect us on this issue.

Also, I really don’t want our car that far from home. It has nothing to do with her or her freedom, but more do with our property and where we want it and what risks we are willing to take with it.

Both the overnight stays and the driving far distances are no’s in our handbook, but of course, that is written more for training a new au pair and for reminding an existing au pair of our house rules if need be. I’m leaning towards allowing the overnight stays on nights when she is not working the next morning, but not the car. He will have to pick her up. That’s the price of connecting with someone far away by choice.

What should I do? What have you done and did it work?

Dear Host Mom,

I really appreciate how carefully you’re thinking through this situation!

I think it’s the right thing to do to have limits on the car’s whereabouts… for the reasons you state. And I’d go with you on being okay with overnights if I knew not to expect her to come home and she wasn’t working the next day.

The hard part is separating those two things when you discuss this with your au pair, so that she doesn’t see the restrictions on the car as a backhanded effort to control her social life. While in truth the expectation that her boyfriend must pick her up and drop her off may cut down on the number of nights she gets to stay over at his house, that’s not the point behind the restriction. You’ll need to find a caring way to make this distinction– maybe even by acknowledging how the car restriction might feel.

I’d anticipate that she might want to stay over on some work nights, and may eventually ask for that. And, since she’s already ‘proven’ she can drive their safely, she may also ask you to loosen this restriction too.

You should think in advance about whether you’re ever going to be willing to loosen up, and what you might do if she broke one or both expectations either behind your back or ‘by accident’. Even the most responsible au pairs can get their heads turned around by romantic dynamics. You don’t have to expect that she’d cross your line, but it’s happened before with even great au pairs.

With regard to talking with her parents… I don’t think I’d do this. My sense is that, once an au pair is in the program, she is an adult who makes her own decisions. I’d only call parents in the case of a health or safety emergency.

• Other parents and au pairs, what do you think about this host mom’s plan? Anything else she should consider before talking with her au pair?

• Have you found yourself in other kinds of situations where you questioned the “parent” part of your host parent role?

See also:
Awkward: It’s not a walk of shame if we know you are safe
A Good Au Pair Relationship Requires Your Emotional Investment
How to Handle Under-Age Drinking
Using Your Car is a Privilege, not an Entitlement: Best practices

Images: a few red chairs late at night from shioshvili Late at night on the bus from wonderferret

One of the best things a host parent can do with a new au pair is to pay some professional driving lessons.

Driving lessons are something that you should consider in addition to having the au pair go out driving with one or more host parents, and in addition to having the au pair study driving regulations of your state. Professional driving instruction can’t substitute for host parent efforts, but it can really help.

In my town, we have a retired high school teacher who charges about $25/hr. In two-hour sessions, he will take your au pair all over town and even out onto the highway testing her/his driving skill and instructing her/him on the finer points of using a turn signal. When Gerry brings the au pair back to our house and gives her driving the thumbs up, we relax a bit– we’ve got a skilled, objective observer who has unemotionally evaluated our au pair’s driving.

Benefits of a professional driving instructor include:

• Professional driving instructors actually know all the rules of the road.
  They can handle situations like rotaries where, admit it, you don’t really recall who has the right of way.

• Professional driving instructors know how to teach folks to drive.
  They don’t do things like grip the dashboard and scream as your au pair drives the wrong way up an exit ramp.

• Professional driving instructors use professional instruction cars.
  The kind with the extra brake pedal, and the big yellow “Get the hell out of the way Student Driver” signs.

• Professional driving instructors are not invested in your au pair relationship.
  They care only about driving skill. They won’t fake it if your au pair is someone you already adore, and they won’t be mad or disappointed in your au pair if s/he takes a while to get used to American driving. Also, your au pair may be less concerned about impressing the instructor and more open to learning.

• In some areas, you can even find professional driving instructors who speak languages in addition to English.
  Here in NJ you can find instructors who speak Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, and Lithuanian! Not having to translate your instructions as you shriek takes the drama down a notch for your au pair.

Our Experience with Professional Driving Instructions

We got the idea of professional driving lessons after we discovered that our third au pair’s experience was mostly driving tractors. In our former town, we called up Sears and scheduled a session with one of their instructors. Two sessions on the road later, our au pair was confident and we were confident.

The driving lessons haven’t always solved the driving skills & safety issue for us, though. When we moved from Virginia to New Jersey, the au pair whose driving was fine in a small town (even though she had a fender-bender) was simply unable to cope in the more competitive driving situation of the NYC area.

After a session with Gerry, we realized that she wasn’t going to get confident enough to drive our kids around.

We briefly considered rematch, but we had only three months to go so we held our breath until our new au pair arrived. (Does this sound familiar?) In the meantime, I bought a double jogging stroller and had her walk the girls to and from their preK (which was about a mile away from our house). The walk was long and took more energy, but it was safer.

And, since our au pair had already ruined the au pair car’s appearance with the fender bender, we let her continue to drive it for her personal use, although she rarely went further than Starbucks.

Your Au Pair Agency might help out with costs.

Later, when a neighbor’s au pair got a ticket for blowing through a stop sign on her very first day, we discovered that our au pair agency was willing in certain cases to pay for driving lessons. Apparently it was worth it for them to spend $200 on lessons to avoid the problems of rematching the au pair or returning her to her home country after only two weeks.

Although I was a little irked to discover after we’d hired our own instructors that the agency might have subsidized the driving lessons, I was glad to hear that the agency did make an effort. I suspect that this is only in severe cases, not in most cases. It might be worth a phone call to find out.

All of this has come back to mind with this query from Argus, au pair who is anxious about driving here in the USA:

HI! I’m an Au Pair in USA for 2 months now and I’m having problems. I mean, I love the host family, I LOVE the kids! and the place. Everything is perfect.

The only thing is my driving. In my country I’m a good driver, I know so. But here I’m not. I’m used to old manual cars and here I drive a new automatic car. I’m getting better used to the car. But I still can’t get it right. I know is partly the place. Laws are different, miles and kilometers.. the signs are reeeally different.

And I’m nervous!! Really nervous!! I usually drive with my host mom or host dad, and that makes me more nervous. But I can’t say that to my host parents because it would sound like excuses. It is the true. Im practicing and doing my best… but doesn’t seem enough. I heard from an Au Pair that she left her host family because they weren’t comfortable with her driving. I’m scared. I don’t want to leave this family!!

Argus’s family, if you read AuPairMom, will you consider spending $98 to keep this au pair confident and safe on the road?

See Also:
How to Assess an Au Pair Candidate’s Driving Experience
7 Ways to help your Au Pair get a US driver’s license
Using Your Car is a Privilege, not an Entitlement: Best practices

Images:
California driving school. monterey…from eyetwist
Student driver from _jessica

Seasonal Schedule Shift Syndrome:

AuPairMom’s fancy name for “when your au pair gets grumpy because all of a sudden the whole schedule changes, and now s/he has to work an occasional Saturday night.”

When school ends and ‘summertime’ begins, family schedules change.

Rhythms for your kids’ days may change, as may your own work schedules. And, your au pair’s work schedule will change align with everyone else’s.

Supposedly, at some point in our parenting journey, we host parents start to get the gist of the seasons and what they mean to family coordination, and begin to plan ahead. I have not quite hit this place, but I  look forward to it.

For host parents, the Seasonal Schedule Shift means that you have to reorganize daily schedules and weekly rhythms, add or subtract lunch, snack and dinner-making, calculate your au pair’s on & off duty hours and patterns, and get a whole new set of activities coordinated and organized. You want to do this smoothly, because you want it to be easy for kids to transition from a school-year to summer-time schedule without feeling disrupted or out of control.

(Note: Even the schedules of very little kids change with the seasons. The seasonal shift may correspond with new nap times, new playdate times, the end of Kindermusik and the start of the kiddie pool, etc. So it’s not all due to ‘school’.)

I think many of us host parents overestimate the degree to which an au pair (or anyone else in the family for that matter) is thinking ahead as the seasons change. In my family it always seems to come as a surprise that school is ending, day camp is upon us, the town pool closes at 7 on Mondays, and that the library has great craft activities.

For au pairs, the Seasonal Schedule Shift can be problematic. Why?

• Au Pairs have to learn all the pieces of any new routine.

They’ve got the current schedule down, and now they have to learn something new. They may feel anxious about managing the day camp bus scene, or driving to the town pool, or whatever.

• Au Pairs have to adjust their own personal schedule to the family’s revised schedule.

This can be harder than you’d think, because we forget how hard au pairs work to coordinate their off-duty times with each other and build their social lives around who is off duty & when.

• There’s no guarantee that your kids and Au Pair will even get into a routine… Not all 10 weeks of summer vacation are spent dong the same things, and the schedule can change dramatically from week to week.

That means that the Tuesday afternoon spin class is no longer an option, because they now have to take kids to swim team practice. Until August, when we’ll be at the beach and you won’t be able to go to spin class at all.

• The amount of time that your au pair works may change.

Many of us with kids in school full time only use 30 or so au pair hours in a given week… but with shorter times at day camp, or weeks when there is no camp, or weeks when camp is a half-day, you may end up scheduling them to be on duty all 45 hours.

• You au pair’s total weekly on-duty hours may change.

Instead of having your au pair be off-duty every Saturday night because you’ve used up their on-duty time during your work week, day camp may free ups a few of his/her hours so that you can your DP can actually go out on a weekend day or evening.

If there is anything the average au pair resents, it’s something that messes with her social life– especially in summer, when livin’ (and partyin’) are supposed to be easier.

To Reduce Seasonal Schedule Shift Syndrome, try this:

1. Make each new routine as clear as possible. Write it down, organize it on a daily agenda, sketch it out on a weekly calendar.

2. Be as clear as possible about what hours s/he’ll be certain to be off-duty, and what times may be changing week to week.

3. Offer an overview of the full summer’s plans. Plot out what is expected all 10 weeks– to the best of your ability. Note when “Magic for Muggles” camp ends and “Robotics” camp begins. Mark changes in drop off & pick up times clearly on your family calendar.

4. Plan ahead to discuss changes in weekly on-duty hours. Be explicit about what it used to be, what it is going to be, and that this is fair.

As we’ve discussed before, the most difficult situations to manage are those where the Seasonal Schedule Shift means that your au pair will be working more hours and/or be on duty during desirable socializing hours. S/he will have to get used to the “new normal” and you’ll need to help with that.

For example, explain that the 30 hour weeks will end with school and that 45 hour weeks will be normal. Where work hours increase to a full 45 hours, acknowledge that this is more work, that pay stays the same, and that this is still fair. Be able, gently, to point out that the previous six months s/he has (only) worked 30 hours per week, which is 67% of a full week. Having it lighter before doesn’t mean this new schedule is heavy– it’s normal.

Even if you went over all of this before you matched with your au pair, even if s/he knows it all ‘intellectually’, there will still be some emotions involved in making the Seasonal Schedule Shift. Be prepared, be empathic, and be kind.

Seasonal Schedule Shift Syndrome is something we can anticipate, but it is not likely something we host parents can prevent. Changing our routines is hard, changing our work expectations is hard, and dealing with ongoing variation is particularly tough. And, it’s part of life.

The best we can do is:

• • Anticipate the issues
  • Be ready with plans and explanations,
  • Be available to ease the transitions, and
  • Make it as easy as possible for our au pairs to (continue to) do a good job.

Do you have other ideas for reducing Seasonal Schedule Shift Syndrome? Share them, below!

See Also:
When your Au Pair complains about working too many hours, but still less than 45… what can you do?
When Your Au Pair Breaks Your Psychological Contract
What’s the cure for “Summer Fever”?
It’s YOUR vacation, not hers. Okay?

Image: Zoe at the beach by mathewingram