YES

Any au pair with any sensitivity to the host child under her or his care should get that host child something to mark the child’s birthday.

NO

It doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be something as simple as a specially-selected yet store bought card with a photo insider. But, no, you Au Pair’s shouldn’t spend much money on a gift for your host kid. Host parents know not to expect au pairs to spend lots of money– we know how much you’re paid, and how much things cost.

It can be heartbreaking for a child (or an au pair) to think the a person who spends so much time with them has somehow forgotten or overlooked them on their special day.

Here as in just about everywhere else, it’s the thought that counts more than anything.

Explains MTR:

I know that au pairs do not earn a lot of money, but I expect an au pair to acknowledge my child’s birthday with even the smallest and cheapest of gifts. An au pair who knows my child would easily find $10 worth of things in Michael’s that my daughter will be very happy to receive. Our first au pair was with us for 1.5 months when my older daughter’s birthday came. She did not get her anything at all. Not even a card.

Most recent was my younger daughter’s birthday. Au Pair gave her a pillow pet that my daughter was craving, she baked her a cake from scratch (made frosting from scratch too), got her 6 fancy mylar balloons, one for each year of her age. The pillow pet is the most favorite toy now and the balloons are still around the house 1.5 months later, although they are seriously lacking in helium.

I just want to add, that although our current au pair gave all of us gifts for our birthdays and cards for other holidays and they were all very appreciated, I did make it clear that we, host parents, do not require or need any kids of gifts. She should really spend her money on herself. She did not listen to me.

Has your child ever been super-delighted by a birthday card or gift from your au pair? Or some other special gesture that celebrated the child?

Images: Happy Birthday Banner, by Devany on Etsy

Local mom and blogger Kristen Kemp wrote a post so important that I’m borrowing heavily from it to share with you all. It’s all about:

Parental Control Feature to Stop Texting While Driving

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that most host parents are preeetttyyy concerned about safe driving. Talking on a cellphone behind the wheel – or even worse  –  trying to text and drive at the same,  equals a recipe for disaster.

Lots of au pair’s “get it”. They are willing to let the call role to voicemail and leave the phone in their knapsack while they ferry our beloveds to Little Gym. But a text message? All to have to do it read it is take your eyes off the road for 30 seconds. Which is enough time for something awful to occur.

But consider this:

In 2007, AAA and Seventeen Magazine conducted a survey which revealed that nearly 50 percent of teen drivers admitted to texting while driving.

That would be one half. Now, these are American teens; our au pairs are likely more mature.

Kristen goes on to explain:

OTTER (One Touch Text Response) … is a smartphone app that has a GPS system. While a car is in motion, it fields all incoming texts you receive while driving and will automatically reply: “The OTTER user is currently driving”. Once you are ready to reply (it will deactivate approximately six minutes after your car stops moving), all texts that came in will be marked as new and you can safely reply.

You can enable it to remove the distraction for you and you can use the Parental Control Feature to stop your teen from texting while driving. Activated by a password only you know, your teen will not hear texts coming in and cannot text while his car is in motion.

OTTER is currently available for Google’s Android platform (version 1.6 or higher). OTTER for Blackberry and Windows 7 are on the way. Additionally, If you have an iPhone, OTTER plans to be available shortly. The full version (with the Parental Control Feature/GPS) is currently available for a one-time download fee of $3.99, and no recurring charges.

If you supply your au pair with a cell phone, you might consider offering her or him the phone with this app already loaded and activated.

Sure, it means that while s/he is the driver or a passenger in a moving car , your au pair can’t text… but s/he’ll live.

That’s the point.

See Also:
Want Safe Driving? Forbid your Au Pair to use the cellphone in the car. Period.
Using Your Car is a Privilege, not an Entitlement: Best practices
Why Safety Rules Matter

When a host mom emailed to ask for some specific suggestions around keeping the cost of cell phones down, I flinched. The whole cell phone thing, like recycling, is delegated in our house to my DH. Why? Because I just can’t stand to deal with it. Though I should deal with it, and stop avoiding it by remaining ignorant.

But hey, that’s my issue. It is, however, also related to this HM’s issue. And, with no knowledge to share with her myself, I turn to you, dear readers, for your knowledge of what cell phones (will) actually cost, and for you concrete suggestions about how to keep costs down.

Here is our Host Mom’s full email, with her specific information needs:

Does anyone have a really easy, painless way to deal with cell phone use so I don’t feel like I’m paying too much, and yet she won’t feel cut off from her friends?


Is 50 bucks a month about how much the au pair cell phone is going to cost, even if we shift around our cell phone accounts? We have an opportunity to do this.


I was looking around the site last night and didn’t quite find these answers. Lots of conversations about billing for overuse, but by doing the go-phone we have built-in limits. Even so, I was reviewing our pay-as-you-go phone account and it looks like I’ve been spending 50 bucks a month on au pair cell phone use, which surprised me.


I don’t want to turn into a shrewish host, I HATE accounting, and just I’ve never wanted to get into nickel and diming the au pairs about cell phone use. We have VOIP, so I encourage them to use the house phone as much as possible and don’t charge them for calling another continent from home, since it’s the same price as calling a neighbor.


The problem with using the self-limiting go phone arises when I need to reach my AP, for example, to tell her that I will pick them up in a different spot, only to discover she has run out of funds and I, the parent, cannot reach her at all. The point of the cell phone is for ME to reach her with kid-related information, not her convenience for chatting with friends.

She is a very responsible AP, and does not stay on the cell for hours, so I’m trying to figure out if this is just the price of doing business, or if I’m spending a lot too much.

My Pink Hello Kitty Cell! from fatcatinakomona
Hello kitty cell phone casefrom Pinky Anela
Talking on my Hello Kiitty cell…from ironic1

Has your au pair ever gotten a speeding ticket? That you know of? Or that you found out about later, after several summonses arrived in the mail? How have you handled this?

Tell it to this Host Mom:

Our au pair got a speeding ticket– a surprise for her and for me. Now I have to figure out how to manage it, since there are some technical issues.

First, the background:

We have hosted over 6 au pairs and none have ever gotten a ticket. There have been minor dents and dings along the way, but no tickets. This particular au pair is an excellent au pair, mature for her age (she’ll be 21 next month) and very trustworthy.

Our au pair has been with us for 5 months, and usually is a careful driver. She is an excellent driver, and when she first started, she was very careful to observe every law. I think she has become too overconfident with her driving skills. This ticket was a surprise to both of us.

We don’t know how much the ticket will be. But, we do know that she has to go to court to conference with the A.D.A..

Now, here is the sticky catch- I work at the same court where she has to appear (although not in the same courtroom).

And there’s more….

The ticket is defective- the cop forgot to write the speed on it.

From a legal perspective, it would be common for the person getting a defective ticket to enter a plea of not guilty and demand a supporting deposition on it if the prosecutor wanted to pursue the case. I don’t really want to give the cops or the court the chance to fix the error.

Many judges would dismiss the ticket as it is written. However, I have no idea what the prosecutor will do, or how the judge might react. For obvious reasons, I can’t even talk to them about it.

Given all of this, I am wondering whether to ask an attorney friend appear on her behalf. I am concerned that her ticket might affect our insurance (although I don’t know whether it will).

To top it off, since she has to come to court while I’m working, I will need to get a babysitter! So, do  you think if she has to pay a fine for the ticket, that I should also have her pay for the cost of the babysitter?

Really, though, I mostly want to hear how other parents have handled anything related to speeding tickets.

Clocked At 67mph/124km from Runs With Scissors
Speed Demon from Caitlinator [ note: photo is not the 'actual' au pair mentioned in the post. This photo is creative commons licensed from Flickr as are most of the phot0s I use as illustrations.]

Although this blog is not really for au pairs, there are times when other host parents are the best folks to offer advice to an au pair. This particular situation is a tough one, since the problem concerns how the Host Dad treats his son, and how (or even whether) the Host Mom and the au pair can change the situation.

Au Pair Lucy recently wrote with a question about some dynamics with her Host Dad that are turning out to be quite difficult. She’d like our thoughts about what to do.

Hi I’m an au pair in France, currently in my seventh month with the same family. I feel like I got so so lucky with this family and I’m really happy with everything, except with the Host Dad.

I feel like the Host Dad is really really negative towards his eldest son. I cannot handle it anymore. The child has difficulty taking care with his handwriting, and I’m always next to him helping with his homework and reminding him to take care with his handwriting. He has been getting punishments because of this, so I try to make him do his best at all times. One day he had taken so much care with his handwriting and I was so proud, I told him to go show his father, who was playing video games in the room next-door. His father refused to pause the game to look at his son’s work, and what’s more, called him selfish for it, and he came back into the room to me in tears.

I really can’t understand how someone could have decided to have a child, which he did, the children were planned, and treat them like that?

The father has blown up at the child, 8 years old, quite a few times over these past 7 months.

I really feel like, as an au pair, I can’t say that I disagree with how he treats his children. I feel like that is a conversation that would ruin my relationship with the family, whom, apart from him, I absolutely adore! On the other hand I can’t sit back and let him abuse a child emotionally, because I feel like that is what he is doing.

Do you have any advice for me about this situation?

Start with the Host Mom ?

SInce the first thing I’d advise would be to talk with the Host Mom, I wrote Lucy back to aks her if she’d done this already, and what had come of it. Lucy replied:

My Host Mom evidently has spoken about this with the father, because she mentioned to me that he would be making an effort to be less hard on his son.

Which worked for about a month, around Christmas, when all their family was around, but he no longer seems to be making the effort.

And I feel bad for my Host Mom because I’m pretty sure she knows how I view the situation, and I feel like she is trying to please everyone. She doesn’t contradict her husband, then she has to comfort her son and then reassure me that she is not ok with what is going on. It really isn’t fair on her, so I don’t know if I could bring it up with her, I feel like she has enough pressure as it is.

Having an au pair around has usually helped me be a better mom. I’ve wanted to be a good role model, and frankly also not embarrass myself. I have occasionally been aware that having my au pair around has prevented me from acting out my own worst Mom behavior. And, I’ve also been embarrassed to not have acted as warmly towards my kids or my spouse in front of (not to mention away from) my au pair.

But, other than being told that I wasn’t teaching my kids enough about Jesus, I’ve never had to respond to implicit or explicit criticism from an au pair.

So, I wonder what the best way is to:

• Protect the Host Child
• Support the Host Mom and Host Dad in better behavior
• Kindly confront the Host Dad

Parents and au pairs, what should Lucy consider?

Temple of Philae, Dec 2008 – 27 from Ed Yourdon

Green Pencil by Pink Sherbet Photography (D Sharon Pruitt)

Many parents find that 45 hours a week is not enough childcare.

Either you have an emergency late night at work, a kid home sick, a snow day, or a bookclub meeting. Some parents have work + commute combos that mean they’re away from home 10 hours a day, m-f, even if they stagger their departures and returns.

In a perfect world, we’d have low cost back-up childcare — a friend or parent, a high school babysitter, or even a second au pair — who could pick up the childcare hours that go above and beyond your au pair’s 45 hour limit.

But we don’t live in a perfect world, and so host parents (and au pairs) break or bend the 45 hour/week rule.

Let’s agree that we know that this rule exists, and the reasons why it exists. Given that some parents feel they need to break this rule, and given that many au pairs would be happy to earn some extra pocket money — let’s tawk:

Is there a fair way to ask for & pay for extra on-duty hours?

The host parent who emailed to ask that we discuss this has two key questions.

One question is easier– what to pay per hour?

The second question is a bit dicier — how to make it fair?

Here’s the email from the parent who suggested this post:

Dear APM readers-    My question is about extra hours.

I know this subject may be a little taboo, but I have spoken with my current Au Pair and many of her friends, and I’ve learned that many families have made arrangements for their Au Pairs who work over the 45 hour limit.

My spouse and I both commute to NYC and even working 9-5, the commuting makes a typical week 52-55 hours long. During our interviews with prospective au pairs, we discussed our longer work week and also discussed how we would compensate her monetarily for this. We also discussed what other ‘perks’ we would offer an Au Pair – things such as:

• Full car use on weekends
• Her own private bathroom and tv room (for the most part)
• Cell phone and texting plan
• A computer for her use only
• Almost never having to work weekends (unless she was off a bit during the week – and we always try to clear this with her first)
• Only one really sweet baby to watch — our now 10 month old daughter, who lucky for all of us is an angel, never crying, fussing, etc. Compared to the many au pairs we know who are in charge of two or three hyperactive 6-10 year olds, our one baby seems to be easier work

What we tried to make clear was that we were offering a somewhat cushy set-up. In addition, we felt with my wife and I being young (31) and in our eyes, relatively cool, we offered an all around good deal for a prospective Au pair, short of the extra hours.

Our Au Pair agreed to this arrangement before matching, and it’s been working well for us. That said, she is also a fabulous au pair in every way.

Here are my main questions:

What do you think is fair to pay your au pair for these extra hours?

What are other families who require north of 45 hours paying their au pairs?

If you simply offer the Au Pair her hourly rate for the extra hours (weekly pocket money divided by 45 hrs), it comes out to $4.33. I feel like that is taking advantage a bit, but I don’t have a different way to assess what other amount might be ‘better’.

I’m looking looking to hear other host parents’ (and au pairs’) thoughts.

What makes this Host Dad’s concern ‘unique’ is that this arrangement is not temporary or occasional — it’s an ongoing thing. So, I expect that host parents will have some specific & different concerns about this arrangement as opposed to ad hoc extra hours here and there.

Some concerns I had–

What if the au pair changes her mind about the arrangement?
What if your work schedules change and she stops earning ‘extra’ money?
What if your au pair ends up chronically tired, or grumpy?

Okay host parents and au pairs, off we go.

Just ONE request– if you want to comment anonymously, choose & use a pseudonym. We need to keep track of all the participants as we unfold our conversation.

spazimal rainbow from jek in the box
spazimal pink spotted splat from jek in the box

See also:

Do you pay your Au Pair for her orientation days?
Should you share your au pair?

Most of the time when I get an email for us at AuPairMom, I do my best to hold back. I usually want to let you all take charge of an issue, so I restrain myself from sharing my opinion first.

But in this case …. well, you can tell from the post title, can’t you?

Here’s the email:

Our au pair moved in with us on Friday. Saturday night my husband invited her to a movie and left me and our child at home.

I told him that it upset me and I thought it was inappropriate for him to take her out and leave me at home. His response was that we are supposed to make her feel like part of the family.

She doesn’t have a license and can’t get around on her own.

I told him that it was unfair for him to expect me to let him take her out and leave me at home and that I was not okay with it.

He thinks I am being ridiculous and feels I shouldn’t have a problem with it and he plans to continue to do it.

If I was the au pair I would know that it is inappropriate but she seemed willing to go along with him with no problems.

I am 7 months pregnant and just want to make sure I am not overreacting and wanted someone else’s opinion on the issue. Thanks!

Mom, you’re right, he’s wrong, and this is a problem.

Let me first mention that probably the only place I disagree with you is in your expectations of your new au pair– if I were her, whether I thought it appropriate or not, I might feel unable to bring it up as an issue. She’s been with you for such a short time, she probably is still trying to figure things out for herself. Who knows, maybe she’s concerned about it or felt awkward too?

You and your spouse need to have a heart-to-heart now -

about how having an au pair (or any other adult participating in your family) should influence the relationship between the two of you, or for that matter between your and your child(ren).

Here are some “absolutes”:

• One host parent’s relationship with an au pair should *never* take precedence over the host parents relationship with each other.
• No au pair should be used as an adult confidant- or friend-substitute in place of the other host parent.
• No host parent should prioritize the au pair (or any other adult) over the other host parent.
• No host parent’s issues with the other host parent should be shared with the au pair.

These are all corollaries of one standard principle of a good marriage:

No one should come between you and your partner.

Your spouse should not take the au pair out without you, especially not to an activity or an event that is remotely like a date. Not even remotely. This decision was clueless at best. And that’s a generous interpretation.

He is insensitive, if not cruel to you, to assume that he can do this in spite of it upsetting you. Who cares whether or not it seems ‘ridiculous’ to him’? No respectful husband or partner would do something that upsets his/her spouse in spite of her explicit request that this not be done.

In the future, your spouse should not invite the au pair to do something even remotely date-like, ever, without your explicit agreement (and the au pair’s agreement). Even taking her to church without you might be inappropriate. It’s not the place, it’s doing it in spite of your objections and discomfort.

[Just to be clear: the issue is not whether or not the HD and AP should do things together, but whether they should do things together if the HM explicitly says she objects. In this case, the HM has clearly expressed her feelings and her concerns, and these are being ignored by the HD.]

Whether your emotions are running high due to pregnancy, or to general concern over having an au pair, or welcoming a second child, is immaterial here.

If this is a small thing, and it turns out you were ‘overreacting’, treat this as an invitation for you and your spouse to have a quiet conversation, outside of the house and away from child and au pair, to talk about how your relationship should be treated and valued.

If this is a symptom of a larger issue, get good counsel now.

Whether it turns out that this is a big thing or a little thing, it is not about having an au pair.

It is about having a strong marriage.

Everything you do now to strengthen your marriage will make any of these other challenges easier to manage.

Other host parents? Forgive me for taking the lead, and chime in, please!

LA: Buds and Blooms Stand Down from cobalt123 on Flickr

I got an email from “Undercover Host Mom” — she is struggling with this dilemma:

Although we have a strict and absolute non-smoking policy, and discussed this before we matched with our au pair, I have come to wonder whether she is smoking in our car and maybe even in the house. (It’s hard to tell whether the smell is from her clothes or in the room itself.) Before I bring this up with our au pair, I am tempted to snoop around in the AP’s room to check for cigarettes.

But my question isn’t about the smoking part. It is about the snooping part.

This is actually one of those ‘tough topics’, when it is hard for us to talk candidly for fear of getting others upset.  Here’s what I’d like to know:

• Do host moms (or dads) snoop around the AP’s room, ever?

• Just to see what’s there, anything contraband or inappropriate?

• Or do they do snoop only if they have suspicions about something bad?

Or do other host parents simply never, ever, ‘look ‘?

Let’s also take a snapshot, with this poll:
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Parents, you are welcome to respond anonymously to this post. However, please choose a fake name that indicates whether you are a mom or dad (or au pair).

[Au pairs, please do not 'flame' parents who want to discuss this issue candidly.]

Also, let me provide a formal definition of “snooping”:

Snooping is walking in, looking around, and leaving.  Opening drawers, opening closets, opening suitcases, and opening journals is not “snooping”. I’m not sure what to call that, but that’s worse than snooping. Let’s just deal with plain vanilla snooping here…

Peek-A-Boo from Lucy James Photography

When a host family takes their au pair with them to work during part of the vacation, what should they provide for her during her off-duty time? Especially, what should you provide on a ski vacation, where costs are relatively high and your au pair can’t afford to pay for her own skiing?

A European Host Mom Ann asks:

Our au pair from America is a nice girl. She has been here since start of January. In two weeks we will be going on a wintersports holiday. She will travel with us to the hotel (so travel expense is covered) as is the hotel including dinners and breakfast. She will stay in a room that she shares with the boys. We will make sure she will have privacy there.

My question is: who should pay for what? Skipass, ski lessons and a rental of skis & helmet will be necessary (also she needs glasses, a warm jacket and snowpants) if she wants to go skiing. She is supposed to work this week, but if the kids are in ski-lessons, she is off-duty, so she could use this time for skiing.

I would appreciate your advice very much–

thanks, Ann

Let me start of with some general principles for taking your au pair on vacation:

• Anytime you take your au pair with you to work, when you are on vacation, you should provide her with comfortable lodging, and all the same kinds of food, etc. as you would your kids. (However, don’t let her run her own bar tab on your room account!).
• Make sure she knows that, while it’s vacation for you, it is largely work time for her.
• Set aside some off duty time for her so that she can explore wherever you are and spend a little time vacationing too. Also, make sure you’re giving her a decent chunk of time off (like, an afternoon to sight-see, not time after dinner when it’s dark and everything is closed).
• Make sure she has things to keep herself busy not bored.
• Make sure that she has a way to stay in touch with family and friends (e.g., internet access).

You are already planning to do much of this, and thinking about the other details now is definitely good.

The hard part is always whether you can afford to have your au pair vacation in the same style as you parents or the kids are vacationing.  After all, it’s your vacation and not hers.

In an ideal world, you’d have enough money (we all would) to be able to pay for your au pair to ski during all of her off duty time… However, given that it costs around $100 per day to have your au pair ski, this may be out of the question for you.

You’ll want to talk with your au pair about how much it actually costs to pay for each skiing adult. Here in the US it’s horribly expensive– maybe it is less so where you are going? But you want to make she that she knows whether or not it’s easy for you to afford. Not that you want to make her feel beholden if you can afford to treat her, but you also don’t want her to misperceive the extent of your generosity. To imagine that two days of skiing equals a week of pocket money sure puts that into perspective.

You might consider how much you can afford to spend to entertain your au pair… and then offering her the opportunity to chose how to use this budget. She might prefer two days of skiing, or maybe she’d prefer extra time off to do something less costly (skating, movie marathons, hiking).

Make a special effort to identify some interesting and less expensive activities that she can enjoy, and make sure she packs what she needs for those activities. For example, your hotel may have a pool, whirlpool and fitness room. Or, you might bring a laptop and a video camera and encourage her to make a few movies. You might identify historic sites near to your hotel and get her tourist information. I know this may seem dorky and unglamorous compared to skiing, but everyone can remember that this trip is part of her chance to see other areas of the world, and she could take advantage of that regardless of the skiing.

Keep in mind that, when you take an au pair with you on a ‘fancy’ vacation, she may thing that you have a lot of disposable income and that if you aren’t paying for her, too, you’re simply being cheap. It is hard for au pairs, kids, relatives, anyone but the adults in charge, to know how a vacation fits into the family’s overall budget.

My personal opinion is that you should try to spring for two days of skiing… maybe her two off duty days, or a few half days while the kids are busy. It would be hard not to come off as mean to take her to a ski resort and not help to make it possible for her to ski a bit too.

Talking about all of these issues is difficult, and with an immature au pair it can be impossible. But, you are starting with a good foundation.

Remember, and mention this to your au pair, that being able to talk about money, about privileges, about role differences, and so on is not easy, but it is the only way we can make sure that we are correctly understood — in both directions.  This is part of the life lessons for host parents and au pairs.

What else should Ann think about? What do you advise??

Also see:

Don’t take your Au Pair on vacation during her first 3 months!

Family Skts from jgscils598f08 Pretty young woman in white and…from nigel67

I’m a believer that different members of a family have different privileges and responsibilities, depending on their roles and their ages. Parents have more privileges than do children, and employers have more privileges than do employees. The rules that we follow can be different, as long as they are fair.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, uses my chef’s knife. When I’m driving, I get to choose the music. And guess what– if I want to leave my lunch dishes in the sink until dinner, I do.

I also have different expectation for myself when the kids are with me than I’ve had for our au pairs when they are on duty with the kids. I’m usually doing many other things in addition to being with my kids (like, oh, cooking, cleaning, laundry, paying bills, stuff like that). I don’t ignore my kids, but I don’t spend all of my time engaging them in educational play.

However, when our au pair is on duty, I do expect her to focus her attention on the kids, since that’s her job.

And, yes, in can be awkward when I expect her to focus 95% on the kids, when some times I focus only 65% on the kids. I think it’s fair, but it is also awkward, precisely because the differences in privileges point out that parents, au pairs and children have different roles in a family.

Host Mom-with-The View sends in this question, hoping for some advice on how to work this out a specific situation, where she wants a   different set of privileges for herself vs. her au pair.

I am expecting my first au pair in 3 weeks. She is 22, German and speaks great English. I have a 21 month old son who is extremely active, and I am expecting a new baby in March. I work 3 days a week outside the home, full time, 12 hours days. As I know her now, I like my au pair very much. I am very eager to start with a positive, fair, respectful relationship.
I am writing out family handbook, and trying to decide if it is fair to tell the au pair that she may not watch TV while the children are awake. I almost always have the TV on when I’m home. I don’t watch shows I have to pay attention to, but I like to have the Today show, or the news on in the background while my son and I play or do other things.

Occasionally, when my son is occupied, I will watch a show I have recorded that does not require much attention, or I will just rewind if I miss a part because I’ve been paying attention to my son. My son rarely watches TV, just the occasional 20 minutes of Sesame Street if I need to remove him from my leg to cook dinner or iron clothes.
My concern is that the au pair will half-ignore the kids if the TV is on and she really wants to pay attention to what is on TV. I know how I am with my son, and that he does not lack for attention or engagement while I have the TV on. I don’t know if this is something the au pair will be able to do.

I want to be fair, but I also think of this as her job, where she should follow the rules, but I’m afraid of the concequences of setting such an obvious double standard. I imagine this double standard will be very evident to her since I will be home for 12 weeks on maternity leave about 4 weeks after she arrives, in addition to the 2 weekdays days every week I’m home with her.

Can I ask her to do something I am not willing to do myself? Thank you for your help!