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Your au pair’s social life

Our Au Pair is Headed for Heartbreak: Should we intervene?

by cv harquail April 4, 2012

Ah, young love. One joy of having an au pair in your home is that you get to relive (however vicariously) the drama, adventure and sometimes romance that your au pair entangles herself in. You hear about the handsome guy/beautiful girl your au pair met, you offer your opinion on what outfit to wear for [...]

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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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Our Au Pair is Dating My Husband’s Close Friend. Now what?

by cv harquail February 4, 2012

And speaking of trying to maintain some privacy around ones adult social life, Here’s an email that has me completely stumped.  How do they stay “host parents” to their au pair, and friends with their friend, and have any separate adult social life? We really need your ideas here, folks. Dear Au Pair Mom, I [...]

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Don’t Let BedBugs Take a Bite out of Your Au Pair Relationship

by cv harquail January 13, 2012

As a host parent, you’ve worried about car accidents, flu shots and even head lice. But did you ever think you’d need to worry about bedbugs? HMJ didn’t think so. But now, bedbug-related fears — all very reasonable — are challenging her relationship to her terrific Au Pair. Dear AuPairMom – We are 18 months [...]

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Extablishing Expectations when an Au Pair Has Guests

by cv harquail November 30, 2011

There’s something about hosting a friend of relative of your au pair that can mess with the fine balance between “part of the family”&  “childcare provider” and between “host mom” and “house elf/slave”. For lots of us, we forget to check our assumptions about how we should act towards other people’s guests, how much of [...]

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Invasion of Privacy: Time for rematch?

by cv harquail October 19, 2011

Here at AuPairMom we get some very interesting emails from host parents and au pairs facing challenges in their relationships. Sometimes these questions are easy to answer, other times the whole group of us has to band together to come up with useful advice. Sometimes these emails make me sad — so much struggle, such [...]

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Is it fair to schedule an Au Pair for Late Night baby feedings?

by cv harquail August 31, 2011

The help we need is the help we need. Depending on your situation as a host parent, you might need driving, or cooking help, or child-minding on weekends, or flexibility when a child is sick. We each ask our au pairs to help us with different childcare tasks. As long as the tasks are within [...]

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Family Invitations: Should your Au Pair be included?

by cv harquail July 27, 2011

How do other people see your au pair? When you tell them that she or he should be treated as “part of the family”, what do your think that means to them? Grandparents, next door neighbors, teachers, and mail carriers all have their own ideas about whether, when, and how an au pair is or [...]

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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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The Saturday Night Situation: When your Au Pair doesn’t think it’s fair that s/he’s on duty

by cv harquail May 21, 2011

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 [...]

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