Guidelines & rules

My Au Pair Is Selling Products on Facebook: Should I care?

by cv harquail September 29, 2017
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Au Pairs who want to make extra money, beyond their stipend and in violation of the State Department rules, usually stick to a few basic strategies — working a few extra hours for their family, walking a dog or two, or taking the rare emergency babysitting job down the street. None of these jobs are legal […]

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Counting On-Duty Au Pair Hours When You’re In A Car or Plane

by cv harquail March 15, 2017
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How does your family handle the Au Pair’s time spent with the family over a long car or plane trip? Formally and officially, we are supposed to count all of this time as “on duty” hours.   But, if you have a long haul to get to your vacation destination, you can use up a […]

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What If Only One Host Parent is a U.S. Citizen?

by cv harquail February 28, 2017
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Here’s one of those “finer points” of the Host Parenting situation where we need some of you Agency experts to weigh in. The US State Department (not the Au Pair Agencies themselves) “(1) Require that the host parents are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents”. What happens when one parent IS a citizen but the […]

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How to Help Your Au Pair Appreciate the “Au Pair Car”

by cv harquail January 20, 2017
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We all want to be generous, and we all want to be appreciated. And, there’s nothing like having a third car for your au pair to use to make you aware of the tension that can exist when you want to be generous and want to be appreciated. When we bought our first Volvo wagon […]

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Au Pair Getting High In Our Home

by cv harquail October 9, 2016
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When we know an Au Pair is doing something that contradicts our house rules, but we aren’t able to present positive proof of this, what can we do? We don’t want to be accusatory. But then again, we’re sure we’re right. We don’t need to see him or her rinsing out the bong in the […]

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Don’t Evaluate Your Au Pair’s Performance

by cv harquail October 5, 2016
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Occasionally I get emails from Host Parents wondering about “performance reviews” for au pairs.   These emails ask whether anyone has a form they might share that helps parents evaluate Au Pairs on their performance of specific tasks.  Or, they ask if we have a feedback tracking system, where parents can set goals for au pairs’ performance […]

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Alas, One Au Pair Can’t Cover Your “40 Hour” Work Week

by cv harquail September 5, 2016
au pair advice, au pair problems

It’s a horrible reality:  Even if you have your au pair work a full 45 hours a week, if you work 40 hours a week yourself, your au pair is not going to be able to cover all your childcare needs. Every one of us full time working parents knows– that job is supposedly “40 […]

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Any Way to Change Behavior of an Au Pair Who’s Always Late?

by cv harquail April 15, 2016
Running Late Au Pair

What do you do when you’ve organized yourself and been clear about your needs, but find yourself unable to influence the behavior of your Au Pair? When communication or training differences pop up, we usually go back to the basics: Do you have a handbook? Do you have regular check-in meetings? Were you clear about […]

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When Having An Au Pair Exposes Cracks in Your Marriage

by cv harquail January 30, 2016
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Getting an Au Pair can expose cracks in your marriage that you haven’t seen before. Getting an Au Pair can also force you to pay attention to dynamics that have been there all along but that you and your spouse have “successfully” avoided before. It’s not the Au Pair herself or himself that “causes” the […]

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If Host Parents Can’t Respect Au Pair Contract Rules, Nothing Else Matters

by cv harquail September 16, 2015
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For international Au Pairs/ Host Families Outside the USA There’s a hierarchy of requirements for a good Au Pair & Host Parent relationship. Much like Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs, you can’t achieve the higher levels of a good relationship without the basics being there first. Au Pairs and Host Parents ultimately have different hierarchies, […]

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