Snowstorms in weird places (like Oregon) and snowstorms in predictable places (like Chicago) have raised the question for many aupair host parents –

Do you allow your au pair to drive in the snow?

Of course, there are a million variables that affect this decision. Here are the ones I came up with off the top of my head:

• Is snow frequent or rare?
  Is the snow deep, light, icy?
  Does your car have 4 wheel drive?
  Is your car a Volvo?
  Is your car already beat up, or rather new?
• Is your au pair a good driver?
  Has s/he got lots of experience driving in snow?
  Is s/he from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Northern Canada?
• Is the specific trip urgent or discretionary?
  Daylight or after dark?
  With children or without?
• Are drivers in your area generally comfortable in snow?
  Do you live on a hill?
  Are your town roads well-plowed?
  Can you avoid hilly or unplowed roads to get to where you want to go?

• Can you afford to lose your (au pair) car to a body shop for a week or two?

As this host parent put it— many many variables! So, how do you decide?

Dear AuPairMom-

Our family has recently moved from a warm weather area to the east coast and we’ve never had to deal with snow before. We just had our first real snowfall of the season and I’ve very hesitant to allow our AP to drive in it. She has experience driving in snow in her home country (probably more than I do!) and says she is not afraid to drive in it.

For those of you living in areas that get snowfall, do you let your au pairs drive in the snow?

I’m in foreign territory here because we’ve never had to think about this before and would love to hear how others handle it.

And does it depend on where she is going or while working or not? What about when it’s not a huge storm, some cars are out on the road, and some roads are likely plowed, but sidestreets and such are icy and temperatures are still below freezing?

I feel that if she doesn’t HAVE to go out, I’d rather not take that risk. But I see it differently depending on the need. Going to the grocery story, taking the kids to school (if  schools were open), or going somewhere a planned important event like a going-away party for another AP, I see as more of a need than her wanting to go to Starbucks or the gym.  

Also, HD and I are doing some minimal driving (nearby errands), but I feel more comfortable with us taking that risk than her. DH has had years more driving experience and frankly, it’s our own car that we’re risking. And I just don’t feel like the headache right now of having to pay for car repairs because our AP felt she needed to drive to Starbucks in the snow. But, I feel like I’m being contradictory or unfair if I say she can’t drive, while DH and I continue to use the cars. Is this at all reasonable?

Some additional background — we love our current AP, who is leaving soon, she’s very responsible & mature and very good natured. Not at all whiny or immature. She rarely asks much of us, but she is pushing a little with this. However, she is very used to having a car at her disposal (we have a very nice 3rd AP car with very few restrictions). I know this is inconveniencing her and she is not thrilled. And, to top it off, my brand new SUV was recently stolen, so we are currently using our AP car and a rental car as our means of transport. We have her on the agreement so she can drive the rental, but again, I just don’t want to take the risks of any more car headaches right now.  

I really want to be reasonable but I am a little confused at the whole situation.

Image: Not Driving Today…. Some rights reserved by subsetsum

Special Halloween Edition

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays to share with Au Pairs. Unlike some holidays, Halloween doesn’t seem to trigger a whole lot of nostalgia and homesickness. For au pairs who ‘do’ Halloween in their home countries, it’s a chance for her to share traditions from her culture. And, if your au pair is new to Halloween, you get to introduce her to all the fun.

Over the years, we’ve done a lot of different things as a family to celebrate the holiday and the season, adjusting as the girls have gotten older. Halloween is one holiday where including our au pair in whatever we’re doing has increased the fun every time. Here are some Halloween activities you might consider:

1. Get your Au Pair a costume. At our house, I’ve always encouraged our au pairs to “get in the spirit” by putting together a costume. We’ve done the purchased costume from Target, the costume assembled from the kids’ dress up chest, and the completely original cardboard box “creature.”    

2. Bring your au pair to a Halloween Party. My daughters’ school has an annual Fall Festival, with a haunted hallway and square dancing, and we’ve always dragged our au pairs along. In part this gets me another set of eyes to watch the girls run around the auditorium, but also it gets our au pairs out into the community to see the Halloween fun that goes beyond just the candy.

3. Have your au pair greet the trick-or-treaters. One of our greatest Halloweens was when our 6 foot tall au pair dressed up as a witch and stood on our front porch, surrounded by jack ‘o lanterns and big fake spiders. She kept absolutely still– looking like a Halloween decoration– and at the moment the trick-or-treaters’ feet hit our steps, she let out a wild cackle.

Kids in our neighborhood still talk about it. One of the best scares ever.

4. Enlist your au pair to help with the candy distribution and collection. Having our au pair be on duty for Halloween evening means that we can take turns being at home to hand out candy and walking around with the kids to collect treats. Being the person who answers the door lets your au pair see the whole variety of costumes and kids, while going around the neighborhood (sometimes) lets her see what other people’s homes are like (another cultural exchange).

5. Find some Halloween crafts for her to do with your kids — like making scary food for the preK party.

6. Bring your au pair to a pumpkin patch.

7. Teach your au pair how to carve a pumpkin. Teach her how to salt & toast the seeds. Please also teach her to keep her face away from the pumpkin while she carves. Safety first.

8. Ask your au pair to play math games with the kids as they count, divide and trade their candy.

9. Invite your au pair to watch “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” Explain to her why this show is/was such a tradition, and why it’s so sad. (This will also prepare her for traditions related to Charlie Brown’s Christmas, Rudolph, and The Grinch.)

What have you and your au pairs done to celebrate Halloween??

The 1st annual International Au Pair Appreciation Week was such a success that we’re doing it again this year, from May 17 to May 21st.

Au Pair Appreciation Week is our chance as host moms and dads to celebrate what we enjoy the most about having au pairs in our family lives.

Although moms and dads who ask for advice here on AuPairMom are occasionally accused of being grumpy, demanding, and/or hard to live with, we all know that we wouldn’t even BE host moms and dads if we didn’t believe that having an au pair could be a great experience. After talking with and hearing from so many host families, I firmly believe that behind every bad au pair story there are dozens of happy au pair stories just waiting to be told.

Au Pair Appreciation Week is your chance to share those stories– to tell your own and to hear those of other host families.

3 Options for Sharing “Appreciations”

We have some great participants on this site who love to write, and from whom we can expect some lovely stories. But also, there are lots of host parents who might prefer a shorter, more concise mode of sharing. And, there are host parents probably prefer pictures to words. For APAW we’ll have three different options for sharing what you appreciate about your au pair.

1. Tell us a story about something that your au pair did for you, your kids, your family, or anyone else. Enjoy the opportunity to tell us as much as you want, however you want to, anywhere between 50 and 500 words. Depending on how many stories we receive, I’ll either set them up as one big post, or unfold a series of happy stories over the course of APAW.

2. Share just one characteristic, action or vignette, but this time in the short form. You can have more that the 140 characters of twitter, but you can make it as short as a paragraph.

3. Send in a photo, with a brief caption.

Rules of APAW:

1. Anyone can participate– Host Parents, host kids, grandparents, neighbors and au pairs too.

2. You may submit as many appreciations as you like– but please make each appreciation about only one au pair at a time. Let each au pair have her or his own appreciation (unless it’s some kind of special case).

3. Your appreciation can be for your current au pair, a former au pair, or another au pair you know.

4. If you use your au pair’s name or likeness, you must have her or his explicit permission to share it. Probably best to use a pseudonym, especially if you want to surprise her or him with a little public praise.

5. Your real name and email address must be part of the submission. However, I will only publish your name if you ASK ME to. Otherwise, you will be anonymous. You’ve gotta opt in to become an AuPairMom celebrity host parent, okay?

6. By virtue of sending it to me in an email, you’re allowing me (CV Harquail) to publish your story, paragraph and/or photo here on AuPairMom.

7. Remember that computer glitches and stuff might get in the way of this being super-efficient. Let’s see how it goes.

How to submit your appreciations:

– Submit your appreciation via email to mom at AuPairMom dot com

– Please put APAW in the subject so that I can sort submissions easily from my other email.

– Put your story in the BODY of the email text, not as an attachment.

– Put the caption of your photo in the body of the email text, and make your photo an attachment.

– Submissions may be sent anytime between now (May 3rd) and May 20th. Send some soon so that I can queue them up and be ready to let loose the love on May 19th.

Questions? Anything I forgot? Anyone want to make us a pretty APAW button or banner? Let me know.

We are all looking forward to hearing your great stories of Au Pair Appreciation!

The following post may look like an April Fool’s Joke article, but it isn’t.

A reader sent an article to me about problems that might be caused by boys having a nanny/au pair care for them instead of their mom.  Our reader wondered whether this article might prompt an interesting discussion. (She thought the article was bunk).

We concluded that parents might want be to be aware of this article because it is exactly the kind of stupid story about au pairs/nannies, working “moms” (not dads) and creating problems for your kids, that someone will bring up at a PTA event causing you to choke on the guacamole.

We’ve saved the article for today, 4.01.10. Maybe in an April Fools state of mind it won’t tick you off as much.

Here’s the headline:

Do Nannies Really Turn Boys into Future Adulterers?

(Riled up yet? Continue on…)

A Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the doctor argues that men become womanizers because their mothers left them with nannies.

[Quick check: Did Tiger Wood's parents leave him with a nanny? How about Jesse James' parents?]

According to Friedman, having two women care for a baby boy may cause his little brain to internalize the idea that there are multiple females to meet his needs. “It introduces him to the concept of the other woman,” he said in London’s Daily Telegraph. He explicates the relationship in his book The Unsolicited Gift: Why We Do The Things We Do, which explores how a mother’s love for her offspring can determine how those children behave as adults. ….

But it is the thesis concerning boys that has been more controversial. Having two maternal objects, says Friedman, “creates a division in [the boy's] mind between the woman he knows to be his natural mother and the woman with whom he has a real hands-on relationship: the woman who bathes him and takes him to the park, and with whom he feels completely at one.” This dual-woman life, one for family and one for catering to his every need, might become a set pattern in his mind, so that when he grows up and feels like his needs are not being met, he strays beyond the home.

I’m all for the argument that a mother’s love (and a father’s love) influences a child’s ability to love and be loved, but this guy is a nutcake. He’s anti-working mom, anti-nanny, and implicitly anti-same sex parents.

What’s horrible is not so much the blatant wrong-ness of this argument, but how close it is to other arguments for why women (always the women) shouldn’t go back to work once children arrive. As if.

Read the rest of the article here at TIme Magazine.com.

So let’s jump on in to another awkward topic — If your au pair is having fun, safe overnights, and she just wants to make sure you’re not worried, how should she tell you? Should she even tell you?

I don’t actually want to know if my au pair is having fun. I do want to know that she is being medically safe, that she is being socially safe, and that we can find her if there is an emergency.

Me being me, I have been pretty straightforward in talking to our au pairs about their personal safety. I have said in so many words “I don’t want to know who you’re dating, I just want to know that you are safe, and when to worry.” And I have always brought this up myself with each of our au pairs, rather early in their time with us, so we had a a system established for making sure that we had the ‘just in case’ information,even before it was needed.

A System: (1) Contact phone number, (2) Home tonight yes or no?

Back before cell phones, our au pair would write down the name, address and phone number of her boyfriend, and also the contact information for her best au pair girlfriends. She sealed this in an envelope, and we put it in the cabinet to be opened “just in case”. If she had more than one boyfriend, I never knew. I just knew that there was an envelope with information just in case.

I also asked our au pairs just to let me know with with a quick phone call if they had changed plans and were not coming home that night. I didn’t want to worry if she had planned to stay out somewhere, but I did want to be able to call the police if we expected her home and she never wandered back in.

Later, once our au pairs had cell phones, a quick text message and another contact phone number were all I asked for. I really didn’t need to know “who”, just “whether” and “when” they were coming home. This managed to get me the information I needed if there were an emergency, but gave our au pair a smidgen of privacy.

[[In the background, I was also concerned about whether the guys they were dating were decent young men, but I never had real worries because all of our au pairs were sensible young women who were pretty picky when it came to American guys. (The Irish and Scottish soccer coaches were a whole different matter.)  ]]

Now, consider this thoughtful email from a au pair.

First of all, I really love your blog, and have been reading it ever since I began my application last year. Host parents on the blog seem to share really useful advice.

I realize that what I’m asking may be a difficult subject to discuss (especially since I’ve gotten the impression that this is even more taboo here than in my home country), but I really need some advice, and I don’t know where else to get it.

I am happily placed with a host family I love, and I feel like I can talk to them about everything – except this.

I have kinda started seeing an American guy in the town where I live, and I’ve told my host parents that I went on a date with him. The problem is, I haven’t told them that we’re also sleeping together, ’cause I’m afraid of how they might react.

I am being careful, and I don’t just mean using protection. I always tell one or more of my friends where I’m going, how long I’ll be there, and message them when I get home. Going without sex for my whole year in the US was never really an option for me, and this guy is perfect, as none of us actually wants a relationship. I just don’t feel right lying to my host parents about where I go when I go to see him.

So what I really need some advice on is this:

Should I tell my host parents about this (in a gentle way) so that they can know where I am at all times? Or is there such a thing as too much information?

How would you react if you knew your au pair was having casual sex?

How can I handle this thing without having them lose their trust in me?

I’m not very open to comments about ending my relationship with this guy, because is a a great person and we’re clear on what our relationship is. AP22

Now, this is my kind of au pair– safe, sensible and thoughtful. What advice do you have for her?

You can buy this print from TheWheatfield on Etsy for only $22! The guy you can probably find in Williamsburg (Brooklyn).

My husband laughs at me — in a kind way, he insists — every time he sees me do something like this. I try to explain that there is indeed a method to my madness, and that behind every quirky tactic in our household is an accident that’s now easier to avoid. But he still thinks stuff like this annotated bottle is funny.

It was a whole lot less funny when one of our au pairs used the Lysol Disinfectant Mildew Remover wth BLEACH to clean her bathroom, and ruined the (fabric) shower curtain and several towels.

I am often telling the kids, our au pairs, and myself that if something is damaged by being used the way it is supposed to be used, there is no reason to get mad. When playclothes get muddy when the kids are outside, bowls get chipped when the table is being cleared, or the handle on the snow shovel breaks when our au pair is helping to clear the front steps, I can take that all in stride. Those sorts of things come with the territory.

But sometimes au pairs (and others) aren’t really clear how things are supposed to be used, or what they should watch out for when using them. That’s were I come in. Some things can be managed by teaching, but other things are best managed in some other way.

Yes, I do keep the cleaner with bleach in a special cabinet, away from other cleaning products and tools. And yes, this particular system does depend on someone actually reading the ‘extra alert’. I haven’t figured out a way to insure that– but I’m trying.

I’m intrigued by the comments in the previous post about a Christmas/ Holiday tip for your au pair… it seems that some readers are taken aback by the idea that one would tip ones au pair. As a trained social scientist, I see these reactions as "data" — but what is the data telling me? Let’s think about it….

Here’s a data sample:

from ‘Bill Gates": Wow. I had no idea people “tipped” their au pairs. To me, tips are for doormen and housecleaners, and our au pair is in a different category. I guess it’s just another way to label the gifting that goes on this time of year, though, so I won’t get stuck on the nomenclature.

Other terms used were "distasteful" and "a little befuddled".

Clearly, the idea of "tipping" an Au Pair doesn’t sit well with everyone.

Why is that?

Au pairs, as a form of childcare giver, are differentiated from nannies and babysitters by the fact that they live with our families. When you learn about au pairs, you’re told that they should be treated as ‘part of the family’ — this is part of the story/myth/romanticising/truth about having an au pair.

But what is also true is that an au pair is an employee of your family who is paid by you to do work for you.

While we don’t "tip" family members, we do "tip" people whom we pay for providing us with a service.

The idea of ‘tipping’ an au pair may feel distasteful or just not right because it makes salient to us the truth that an au pair is someone we pay. She may be special in our lives, a key part of what makes our house a home, a young woman whose life experience we can contribute to — but your au pair is also a young woman working hard for you to earn some money.

It’s tempting to treat an au pair as either/ or — she is either a family member or she is a paid employee.

But keep in mind: What makes the role of an au pair unique is that an au pair is BOTH like a family member AND a paid employee.

Hypothesis 1: If you as a host parent

(a) have a close personal relationship with your Au Pair, and/ or
(b) like your au pair very much as a person, and/or
(c) think of an au pair more as part of the family than as an employee who lives with you,

– then the word "tip" is less comfortable than the word "gift" for describing any ‘extra’ you might give her at this time of year.

I bet that many of us prefer to emphasize the ‘family’ part, and that’s why for many of us our ‘gifting’ at this time of year includes what I describe as both "cash and prizes’.
That’s not to say that giving your au pair just money means you don’t care about her as a person, or that giving her sweaters, bathrobes and software means you don’t appreciate all the hard work she does. Every family/host parent finds the right balance for each particular au pair and each particular au pair relationship.

The rest of the story

Not anticipating the discomfort that the word might trigger, I used the word ‘tip’ in the post for very instrumental (i.e., non-philosophical) reasons, including:

• Every one of the 2,783 Holiday Tipping Guides that I’ve looked at has included "au pair" as a category of person whom one should tip at the holidays. Even if you aren’t thinking of an au pair as someone you tip, every regional newspapers’ Emily Post is. (Of course, she probably didn’t have an au pair…).

• I chose the term "tip" because I anticipated that it would be a good keyword for directing traffic to the blog. Usually I’m not very SEO attentive, but…. since that post went up 4 days ago, 38 people came to Au Pair Mom after searching the terms "tip", "au pair" "cash" and "holiday".

So, what do you think? Is this a plausible explaination of the phenomenon, or is there more to think about?

Does your au pair come from a tropical or always warm country? Do you live in a place with four seasons? If so, your family might get to share a real delight — you might get to see your au pair enjoy her very first snowfall!

Check out this photo of two of our au pairs (when overlapping ), both from South Africa, enjoying a blizzard!

If you come from a place where there never is snow (and, even if you don’t) the first snowfall of the year can be magical. It turns adults into children, cynics into romantics, and good drivers into bad ones. (More on that later. Back to the romance…).

Another of our South African au pairs, CP, celebrated her first snowfall by putting on her bathing suit , standing in the 10 inches of snow in front of our house, and taking pictures of herself to send back home.

In contrast to the thrills of the South Africans, both our Estonian and Lithuanian au pairs had teasingly dismissive reactions: "What, this is a blizzard? You close school for only 5 inches of snow?"

It took you/me a lifetime so far to learn all these ways to enjoy snow, but your au pair only has this winter right now, so let’s get going! Here are some fun things to do to help your au pair celebrate her first snowfall.

• Take some pictures of her in the snow.
• Show your au pair how to make a snowperson.
• Stick a fluffy handful down the back of her collar (only if you have a good relationship).
• Do NOT let your au pair drive until the roads are absolutely clear.
• Explain the concept of "black ice" and show her some.
• Ask your kids to explain to your au pair where snow comes from, and why it melts on your tongue.
• Show au pair how to shovel the front stairs and clear the windshield.
• Demonstrate the different techniques for a saucer, a sled, and a snurfer.
• Teach your au pair how to put her feet into plastic bags before she puts on her/your snowboots.
• Demonstrate how to "walk like a penguin" on icy sidewalks.
• Ask your au pair to stand outside, totally still, to hear the snow falling.
• Take her out to the backyard, and turn off all the outside lights, and just look.

Just a quick, little story:

I heard through the grapevine that the au pair we had briefly, who rematched with another family over “personality issues” is in rematch– again. This made me wonder, just as I wondered when this au pair was in rematch the first time:

Why didn’t you call me?

Yes, you, host-parent-in-rematch. Why didn’t you call me?

Sure, it might have been a little awkward for you — especially if I really was that psycho host mom the au pair described to you. Even so, didn’t you want to know whether there was something that I could have shared with you, host mom to host mom?

If I’d said “We’re heartbroken that she wants to go to California to be near her friend from home” you’d have felt even more excited to welcome her into your home.

If I’d said, “She wasn’t confident driving in our town” or “She really preferred working with younger kids” or “She refused to work any Saturday nights” then you’d have had a little fuller picture of her skills and interests.

Or, If I’d said “She was unwilling to use the discipline system (timeouts) we prefer” or “She called my daughter a brat”, then you might have been forewarned about her attitude and flexibility.

But you didn’t call me.

And now, just 4 weeks later, you’re in rematch again.

I could have told you.

But you didn’t call me.

Being an Au Pair’s host mom occasionally calls for you to help your au pair take care of herself, both physically and emotionally. You will find yourself needing to offer her ideas about how to distinguish between a cold and an allergy, how to find new friends, and almost certainly how to deal with homesickness.

If your au pair seems depressed or is spending a lot of time in her room, sleeping, and/or on the phone & computer, it’s possible that she’s missing her family, friends and familiar environs. I get homesick sometimes when I’m away for two nights for work– so I can empathize with an au pair who realizes that 12 months is a long time and home is a long way away.

Can you keep your au pair from becoming homesick?

Probably not. Your au pair is in charge of her emotions, so there’s not much you can really "do" to prevent homesickness or to fix it for her. But, you can help your au pair deal with homesickness by offering her some advice and strategies. Talya , a former Au Pair who writes at Best Au Pair Guide , recently wrote about how to manage homesickness . You could print out Talya’s post for your au pair, or email it to her. You might also encourage your au pair to look at her au pair program materials for their advice and encourage her to talk to her Local Community Counselor. And, as a host mom you can do a few things that might help:

1. Invite your au pair to talk about her family and her friends at home. Ask her to describe personalities, tell stories, and talk politics. While some of this can look like ‘cultural exchange’, it can also help your au pair feel connected to her home.  For your au pair, sometimes being able to make far-away people part of her everyday conversations with you can help her create a connection between where she is now and where she was & will be. Instead of being isolated from home, she might think of herself as being what connects home and here.

A side benefit for you and your children is that you learn more about your au pair’s world– you may understand her more deeply, and/or get a fuller sense of who she is. This, in turn, can help build your relationships and reduce the loneliness that triggers homesickness.

2. Ask your au pair about the new world that she’s creating here for herself. Ask about the other au pairs she’s met, about what she’s learning about the US, about what she’s discovered about your kids, and about the other au pairs that she’s met.

3. Find ways that your au pair can be especially productive. There may be an art project, an organizing project, a trip to the library, or something that needs to be *done*, that your au pair can do to feel like she’s making a difference in your home. (See Amanda’s idea at SimpleMom.com for creating an Art Box for kids ) .

Projects work against homesickness in two ways. First, feeling homesick tends to make people be more passive than usual, and being passive gives people a chance to be the ‘victim’ of sad thoughts. You want your au pair to be the active agent of positive thoughts, because positive thoughts hold homesickness at bay. Second, when we are able to ruminate on something sad, we make ourselves sadder. When we are busy, we aren’t really able to hold all the homesick thoughts in the front of our minds, and we avoid digging ourselves an emotional trough.

4. Find some ways that she and the kids (and maybe even you) can play together — especially outside. Can she take the kids bike-riding?  Bake cookies with your 4 year old? Take the dog & kids to the park to toss the Frisbee (this one always works to pick me up)? It’s hard to be sad when you’re running around with happy little people who look up to you.

5. Avoid playing moody music. (I’m not kidding!) Once dreary Fall day, I was playing a CD of some melancholy Celtic music in the kitchen, just trying to relax a bit, when my au pair burst into tears. The combination of the music and the greyness outside was more than she could handle. So I put on High School Musical , and made myself sing along until my au pair finished her sandwich and went off to the mall.

6. Talk with your au pair about her goals for the year. What does she want to learn? Where does she want to travel? Who does she want to meet? Help her think about the positive reasons that she’s here in the US. Encourage her to make a list, get out a calendar, set some goals.

7. Recommend ways that your au pair can "get creative". It’s hard to be sad when you’re creating something. How about making a video of the neighborhood? Making a flower arrangement from branches off the trees in your back yard? Dressing up the dog and doing a canine photo shoot? Creating a video on Howcast.com about something she knows how to do?

8. Encourage your au pair to combine goal-setting and getting creative by making a Vision Board. ( Christine Kane has a great post on how and why to make a vision board .) She can hang her vision board in her room, to keep herself focused on the positive.

A little bit of homesickness is inevitable, for any au pair, no matter how happy she is to be here and be with your family. Remember, when your au pair does get homesick, don’t take it personally . Of course, if you’re a host mom who is cold, unfriendly, and hard to please, your au pair is more likely to miss home. But even if you and your family are warm, accommodating and encouraging, your au pair is still likely to be a little homesick every now and then.  So, don’t take it personally. Instead, while recognizing that your au pair is an adult who can (and needs to) take care of herself, think of some ways to extend some support and some kindness.

Other ideas? Let us know in the comments, below.