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Scheduling

Vacationing at DisneyWorld with your Au Pair in Tow: What’s worked for you?

by cv harquail March 5, 2012

I have a confession to make. My kids are 11 and 13, and I have never taken them to DisneyWhere. I probably never will. I know, it doesn’t count that I *have* taken them to see WIcked on Broadway– I’m still a bad mom. Worse, I don’t know much about the excitements and demands of [...]

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Should You Wake Your Au Pair When You Leave For Work REALLY Early?

by cv harquail February 19, 2012

Hi AuPairMom, We are welcoming our first au pair in about 3 weeks, and we are very excited. Your blog really helped us decide that this was the right type of child care for our family. We need someone with scheduling flexibility, because we have an always-changing, somewhat odd work week. I have to leave [...]

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Should au pair rules be changed, to allow for “extra vacation without pay”?

by cv harquail January 25, 2012

Within the legal boundaries of the au pair program, both host parents and au pairs like to have a bit of personal discretion. We want to be able to satisfy family demands and any sensible au pair dreams. We want to be flexible when issues come up, and we want to be accommodating and reasonably [...]

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Would you ask your Au Pair to help out at someone else’s party?

by cv harquail January 22, 2012

Do you think it’s appropriate to ask an au pair to got to your kids’ school and help out at a birthday event there, for someone else’s kids? Here’s the email that prompts the question: Dear AuPairMom – I am mostly satisfied with the family I am working for. We’ve had a few problems but [...]

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Will your au pair be on duty this Christmas?

by cv harquail December 9, 2011

What will your au pair be doing this Christmas day?     If you have asked your au pair to be on duty and work during part of Christmas Eve & Christmas day, how did you present this plan to him or her? Did you discuss it during matching, or months ago, or just this [...]

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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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Best Practices: Scheduling an Au Pair with a Stay-At-Home Mom

by cv harquail August 21, 2011

We don’t really have a good term to describe moms who work in the home taking care of their home & family 24/7. Personally, I’m not a fan of the label “stay at home” mom, because it sounds like a command (Stay at home, mom!). And while work-at-home mom is descriptive– she’s a mom, working [...]

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Take Advantage of Your Summer Re-Sets: Revise expectations

by cv harquail June 27, 2011

Every year, I know it’s coming, but I’m never ready when it arrives… I’m not talking about Christmas (though, I could be). I’m talking about summer recess. Vacation for your school kids, and a new routine for everyone Last Weds. was my kids’ first day of summer recess, and already I’m going crazy. All those [...]

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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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What if we don’t follow through to rematch, when we said we would?

by cv harquail November 19, 2010

One of the most important lessons I learned when my kids were toddlers, and one of the important lessons I’ve tried to impart to our au pairs, is that actions have consequences. If we said no drawing on the wall and you drew on the wall, well then you would not be able to use [...]

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