That being said, I understand that my APs have to work a lot harder than most. Picking up a 25 kg. (54 lbs or so) child, changing the diaper of someone who gets her period, and feeding someone who’s capable of launching a bite of food right back at you, is not pleasant. However, the benefit to APs that live with us is that we understand that they are adults, doing a job we would only ask an adult to do. Most have joined us at the dinner table, on family vacations, cheered on our son’s soccer games, and embraced the exchange part of the program. We also understand that they are young woman forming intense friendships, and that they want to go out and party, visit friends, and explore the country. We don’t impose a curfew on either our APs or our car (well, with the exception of our current AP who is a novice driver).

If you are not happy with your APs participation in your family life, then ask yourself a couple of questions: 1) Is she fantastic with the kids – have they bonded with her (some APs are great with kids and lousy with HP), 2) is her failure to connect with you as a family impeding your interaction with her (meaning – are you angry at her for not wanting to be with your family more). If the answers are no and yes, then it’s time to have a chat with her.

Our current AP is extremely private (to the point that we have not met one of her friends since December) and does not want to participate in family life. Life with The Camel means that the venn diagram of available special needs willing APs in rematch who are able to drive is almost nil at any given point in time, so we took a deep breath and said the AP is fantastic with The Camel and we can survive. Her failure to meet the benchmark goals we established (getting an American driver’s license by 8 months into her stay was one of them) meant that it was easy to say, “Good luck with the rest of your life, but we’re going to look for someone else.” She’s not a bad person, just not a good fit for our family.

We invested an extraordinary amount of time and energy into making this year’s relationship work: driving lessons, family meetings, establishing benchmarks, encouraging family participation, and quite frankly, having done it – I wouldn’t do it again. And I have changed some of my interview questions to seek out dynamic and curious women.

I do think, however, that if an AP takes lots of photos of other things, but never of the kids, it would make me pause for a moment. It doesn’t mean that she flat out doesn’t like the kids or is a bad AP, of course, but it could be an informal indicator of how she views her role, the HF, etc. For example, one of our APs viewed her year as an adventure in which she wanted to experience as much of “American life” as she could and was very much ‘part of the family’. She took lots of pictures – of her own adventures as well as life with us and the kids (e.g., her 1st thanksgiving, xmas morning). Another of our APs was a wonderful caregiver to the kids but viewed her role as an employee and never participated in family life, either in activities or even routine things like dinner. She rarely took any pictures of our kids, but lots of personal pictures of she and her friends out partying. Didn’t mean she hated our kids (in fact, I think she really cared deeply for them), but it was a telling sign of the type of ‘fit’ we had with her.