Welcoming your AuPair

Effective Ways to Socialize with Your Au Pair?

by cv harquail May 21, 2018

When parents welcome an au pair into their home, it’s important for everyone to get to know each other. A few conversations around the dinner table and an occasional one-on-one trip to Starbucks were the ways that my DH and I made time to get to know our au pairs. I don’t know if we […]

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Help A Brand-New Au Pair Get Better At Her Job

by cv harquail June 24, 2017

It’s not easy to settle in, whether you’re the new Au Pair or the First Time Host Mom. The American college student who sent this email hasn’t had the benefit of a formal Au Pair orientation, and I suspect that her host mom hasn’t had the benefit of a local counselor or group of moms […]

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Your Au Pair’s Bedroom: What to provide to make your Au Pair comfortable and welcome

by cv harquail October 11, 2016

Picture yourself in this room. Imagine that you’ve just spent 8 hours with energetic kids, talking in your second language, driving on unfamiliar streets on the wrong side of the road. Wouldn’t it be lovely if you could walk upstairs, open the door, and step into a room like this? It doesn’t have to […]

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Brand New Au Pair’s Extreme Homesickness — Can we turn it around?

by cv harquail August 16, 2016

It seems like this brand new host mom did everything right (or, rather, took all of our recommendations) for getting started with an Au Pair. Careful consideration, lots of advance learning, deep interviewing, a handbook (!), and lots of positive energy. Even after their new Au Pair arrived and presented the challenge of extreme homesick, […]

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How Can We Develop a Connection with our Socially Detached Au Pair?

by cv harquail June 4, 2016

The Goldilocks Conundrum Your connection with your Au Pair is too heavy, or it’s non-existant. Your Au Pair is either a homebody, sticking close to the house demonstrating little interest in the world around her/him. Or, your Au Pair is always gone — whether physically or socially. S/he does the job, and then disappears. We […]

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How Soon To Schedule Au Pair’s First Day Off?

by cv harquail April 24, 2016

Venturing into the grey areas of Au Pair regulations and scheduling, a First Time Host Mom asks– how many days might a brand new au pair work before she must be given a day off? (I phrased it differently in the headline of this post, but essentially it’s the same question). She’s thinking about […]

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Share Your Schedules for Training Your AuPair — The First Week

by cv harquail April 3, 2016

Looking over the many posts about getting started with an au pair, I made an interesting discovery: We have no posts with actual, recommended schedules. We have one really solid post from 2008 (!) where I list 5 strategies for orienting your au pair in the first week: 1. Start with the typical day’s tasks. […]

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Tips for a Nervous First Time Host Mom

by cv harquail March 16, 2016

Do you remember how excited you were, once you’d matched with your first au pair? Wondering what s/he’d really be like? How the kids would take to her/him? How you’d all get along? I myself was in a bit of a haze, getting ready to return to work from maternity leave, starting up classes again, […]

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Welcoming Your New Au Pair While You Say Goodbye To Your Former Au Pair.

by cv harquail October 24, 2015

How do you manage to welcome a new Au Pair and create room in your heart for the Au Pair in your home, while you’re still missing your former Au Pair, the one who’s gone home? This question is not so much about “overlap”, when you have two au pairs in your home. It’s more […]

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Toddler “Hates” New Au Pair. What to do?

by cv harquail October 8, 2015

Our third Au Pair just arrived and has been here for almost three weeks. She is very sweet, is trying hard, and while she may be too meek for our family, we are hoping she will come out of her shell with time. We may have made a mistake by overlapping her with our last […]

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