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Handbooks & Manuals

New Year Review: Reset Au Pair Expectations for 2012

by cv harquail January 7, 2012

There are several times each year, and several times in each AuPair year, when it makes sense to reset your expectations with your au pair. The start and end of school, the start and end of summer, when there is a big change in your family’s routine (like the end of maternity leave), or when [...]

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What if Au Pairs came with their own “Handbook”?

by cv harquail April 16, 2011

For every new host family, our #1 recommendation is to write a family handbook. Most of us here at Au Pair Mom firmly believe that getting our household rules and family-related expectations down on paper helps us be clearer about what is important to us as host parents, family members, and heads of household. Plus, [...]

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Daily Checklists & Logs: Two examples

by cv harquail April 1, 2011

A while back I asked if any of you had forms, checklists, or other organizing tools that you’d like to share with AuPairMom readers… and several of you (who are better organized that I) sent some in. Just a few days ago, I got a request from Talliecat: My friend has a very… shall we [...]

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When should we send our Family Handbook to our incoming au pair?

by cv harquail January 6, 2011

As every reader of this blog knows, we are big fans of the concept of the Family Handbook. And by “we” I don’t mean the royal  moi, but all of us host parents (and even au pairs). It really helps to create a handbook to get your expectations and needs out into clear language, and [...]

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Share with your Au Pair your system for ‘disciplining’ your kids

by cv harquail August 10, 2010

Usually I shy away from offering or requesting parenting advice on this blog… I know what has worked for my family and I also know that every family’s systems have to fit within its own values, norms and culture. So, when it comes to questions of “how should my Au Pair discipline my kids” I [...]

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Read My Diary, please! : Guest Post

by Sherina June 23, 2010

A Host Mom was prompted by an earlier conversation on coordinating family schedules to offer her thoughts on keeping it all together. What I call a family notebook or family log she calls a diary– but regardless of the name, it is the same thing: One, single, solitary, concrete place where every appointment goes. Here’s [...]

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Is Your Host Family Handbook Too Long?

by cv harquail June 21, 2010

Eleven Au Pairs and 12 revisions after first being written, our Host Family Handbook is now, officially, “long”. Excluding examples of kids’ and au pairs’ schedules, and excluding the basic information about emergency phone numbers and the like, our rules/guidelines section runs 16 pages, with almost 4500 words. Is that too long? Host Family Handbook: [...]

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What exactly is a Host Family Handbook?

by cv harquail June 21, 2010

We’ve got a lit of different terms floating around to describe the written information that we give our au pairs. We call them handbooks, manuals, guidelines, and rules. (And who knows what our au pairs call them!) For the purposes of our conversations here on AuPairMom, let’s try to lock down the terminology. A Host [...]

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R.T.F.M. Making sure your Au Pair Reads the Family Manual

by cv harquail September 17, 2009

Long before there was OMG, ROTFLMAO and WTF, there was RTFM. R ead T he F (your favorite F word here. We use “family”) M anual We put a lot of work into those family manuals and handbooks, and we expect them to be useful to our Au Pairs. However, before the Au Pairs find [...]

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