We’ve got a lit of different terms floating around to describe the written information that we give our au pairs. We call them handbooks, manuals, guidelines, and rules. (And who knows what our au pairs call them!)

For the purposes of our conversations here on AuPairMom, let’s try to lock down the terminology.

A Host Family Handbook is that big binder, stack, or drawer-full of information that we give our au pairs. It is intended for our au pair, so it should be called an Au Pair Handbook. But we call them “host family” handbooks because what makes each handbook unique is that they reflect the concerns of a particular Host Family.

Handbook:
The entire set of written, textual information that you have for your au pair about your family, your house, your community, and her general well being.

Household Manual:
All the descriptive information about how things in and around our hose work. Including, but not limited to, how to use the microwave, where to get a bus schedule, the password for the garage door, and a list of emergency phone numbers. Much of this is the sort of information you’d find in a well-organized vacation rental house.

Also, in the ‘manual’ section, you’ll have information about calling 911 and the Poison Control Center.

Guidelines:
Your description of what you’d like your au pair to do with your kids, with your family, in your home, during her or his year. This includes “advice” like “Take the second to last train”.

Childcare information:
All the important information about your children, including their daily schedules and routines, the names of their favorite stuffed animals, and procedures for making bottles, making play dates and picking kids up from school. Some people might put this in the guidelines section, others in a section of its own.

Rules:

“The directions that must be obeyed.”

“Those ‘guidelines’ that must not be broken.”

Rules  include statements that begin with the words “never”, “no”, “always”, and “We require”. Statements like:

• No texting while driving.
• No smoking.
• Always wear a seatbelt.
• Always put the children’s safety first.
• We require you to get a state driver’s license before you can use the car for personal transportation.

Rules vs. Guidelines

We host parents make a subtle distinction between rules and guidelines. Rules are concrete, specific, measurable. Breaking rules will send an au pair into rematch, breaking rules will put our kids, au pairs and homes at risk.

Guidelines are more like advice, explanation, directions regarding “how” we do things. Guidelines are what you want your au pair to follow. Not following a guideline will irk you or disappoint you, but won’t always send you and your au pair into rematch.

We have rules but hate calling them rules.

Personally, I dislike having to say to a 21 year old that we have rules she needs to follow. But guess what? It turns our that we have rules she needs to follow.

I think that I have been embarrassed at times to call these things rules, so that I have lumped them underneath the word “Guidelines” to make them seem less draconian and to make me seem less like a control freak. But truth is, there are guidelines and there are rules, even if I use the same more gentle term for both.

I probably should stop kidding myself into thinking that if I call everything a Guidelines that we seem less rigid, more flexible and more fun. But while we’re flexible and fun in some areas, there are areas where we are very very firm about what’s okay and what is not.   I think that in my next Handbook revision, I’ll make more of a distinction between rules and guidelines — in part to force myself to be clear about what our standards are, and in part ot make it easier for a n au pair to distinguish the “must do” from the ” really, really want you to do.”

What’s in your Host Family Handbook?

See also:
R.T.F.M. Making sure your Au Pair Reads the Family Manual
Sample Handbook from a Reader

Images:

Binders organized by Lana Stewart
Ninja Survival Kit by Veronica Belmont

I laughed at the comment by Taking a Computer Lunch, on rules in her family handbook:

As I look through our family handbook, there are some real doozies. My personal favorite is “In the evening, please do not play the stereo in your room at a volume over #12.”

[WTF, you say?]

Under that seemingly crazy guideline is some real experience– our au pair’s room is right above mine. Au Pairs stay up later than me, playing their radios.

After who-knows-how-many times asking if she could please turn it down, I experimented to figure out exactly how loud was loud enough to hear through the floor/ceiling. At #12, you hear the “puh puh puh puh puh puh puh puh” rhythm, but not all the actual words to Pokerface. I can deal with that.

I’m not crazy, I’m experienced. I have created a guideline to avoid future disappointments.

Rules have roots in Real Experience

Every “crazy” guideline has its roots in some real experience. You know that TaCl and I both have guidelines about candles because someone left a candle burning. So when you hear rules and guidelines like:

- “Never eat PB&J in the car.”

- “Car Mileage budget is 500 miles per week.”

- “Please do not move the bed in your room without checking with us first.”

- “Please wear a modest bathing suit to the town pool. Thong bikinis are not permitted there.”

Know that each of these rules came from some crazy situation, where an au pair did something that turned out to be a bad idea.

Review and Revise Your Handbook to Make Sure Your Rules Aren’t Too Crazy

Host parents should review and revise their handbooks with each new au pair… not only to update them for new schedules, new needs, and growing kids but also to remove guidelines that may now be out of date.

It’s especially important to remove guidelines that make you seem like “Evil Controlling Host Mom” to a new au pair, but are probably unique to the personality of a former au pair whose behavior you no longer have to worry about.

Remember that often the specific reminders that seemed necessary to keep one au pair safe and out of trouble might not be necessary for other au pairs. Each au pair will have his or her own unique challenges… and you can just make up new rules as you need them. < grin >

Your Host Parent Approach

We host parents also understand that we can’t legislate our way to a smooth, snag-free relationship with an au pair.

A rule-based, “here’s what you can’t do” approach is constraining. It may help to protect & prevent, but it also focuses us on the negative. Who wants to live in a world of “don’t do”s? A world of “no”? Not me, and not your au pair either.

Therefore, we need to identify, recognize and pay attention to the positive reasons behind any guideline and the overall principles underneath our rules. I’ll write a bit more about this in a future post.

in the meantime, I’d love to know:

• What are some of the “crazy” guidelines in your Au Pair Handbook?

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?

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

Close behind the myth that every Au Pair is a "Hottie" is the myth that au pairs are out to steal your Host Dad.

I guess this is one of those where the exceptions are so salient that you end up believing that it happens a lot. I haven’t ever met a host mom or heard of a host mom in my cluster where this actually happened…but there are always stories. And if the stories aren’t about the au pair running off with the host dad, they’re about the au pair and the host dad getting somehow ‘involved’.

I can understand the fantasy and the fear, but –nothing against most host dads — they aren’t as a group the most compelling possibility for a girl who wants to snag an American husband. Were I out to snag an American husband, I’d pick one (1) without kids and (2) without a wife. But that’s me.

So it this something host moms really worry about, or is it just another salacious myth?

I blame Jude Law. And Robin Williams.

Even if it is a myth, there is no reason why you should choose to match with an obvious Ameri-golddigger. I think it’s okay to take a pass on applications from potential au pairs who send photos of themselves in bikinis. But screening out problems is harder than we’d think, since girls who might cause problems probably don’t advertise that on their applications.

It’s also okay to take a pass on the application of a potential au pair who is just too pretty or too hot. You don’t need to make yourself or your husband uncomfortable by choosing an au pair who will draw attention to her face, her figure or her availability.

As one mom commented on an earlier post:
Honestly, before we consider interviewing an au pair, I make sure she is not my husband’s “type”. My husband asked me for that, to avoid being uncomfortable in his own house. Truth is, males are attracted to young pretty women. Civilized married males will do nothing about it, but we have to make sure that we will be comfortable with a potential au pair in all aspects.

Why is this myth so potent?

I believe that one of the reasons this myth is potent is because it’s very awkward to recognize for yourself or to discuss with your spouse or partner the way that having a young adult woman living with your family can make everyone more aware of sex as a concept.

Some families may feel uncomfortable knowing that their au pair is out socializing with men who may take advantage of them, or (okay let me just say it) out having sex with a guy or guys. This is one reason why families (like ours) have rules about no overnight male guests. Who wants to explain that to an 8 year old? Bad enough she wants to read the Twilight series!

For other families, having a young adult woman who knows /thinks about sex may make it a little uncomfortable to continue with your pre-au pair romantic rituals without some conscious or unconscious adjustment. What kids don’t see/hear, young adults wonder about.

[[Note: How Host Dads behave is a topic for another time. Yes, we've heard those stories too....]]

What are your thoughts, host moms? And host dads?

Tawny Owl babies by Keith Marshall.