Who’s got an au pair who texts a lot? 

Sometimes at inappropriate times, and often without any understanding of how this behavior distracts them? Raise your hands.

Okay, you can all put down your hands.

It annoys me hugely that people have bad manners when it comes to texting. In our family, we have rules about when you can text if you are physically with other people. (The rules have to do with identifying whether the situation is supposed to be “social time” (e.g., at the dinner table) or whether it is “personal time” (e.g., long car ride, or when Mom needs to check blog comments and has giving tween the go-ahead).

The part that really drives me crazy, though? When people text when they are supposed to be doing other things. Like driving. Like cooking supper. Like watching the kids.

We’ve got the principles in our host family handbooks, and they usually include things like:

• “When you are on duty and the children are awake, limit your texting to simple responses, like “I’ll text you back after work hours are over.”

• “Do not carry on extensive text conversations when you are in charge of the children, especially when you are waiting with them before ballet class.”

But many people in the “digitally entitled” generations just can’t grok that their texting should be limited. After all, they’re awake. Why can’t they communicate?

So our guidelines are ignored.

As Host Mom Sarah told me, “I’m not interested in becoming the texting police. I don’t want to have to look at the phone bill and wonder “Were the kids taking a nap while she was texting?” etc.”

Let’s hear your great ideas!

• How do you keep texing to an appropriate minimum during your au pair’s work hours?
• What guidelines do you have for texting when your au pair — or anyone else– is with family or friends and having “social time”?
• Has anyone used blocking features to limit texting? How has that worked?
• What are you doing that’s working well?

Image: Kara, ??? Some rights reserved by john curley on FLickr

Dear AuPairMom,

I’m a mom, employed part-time, who is thinking about getting an au pair. I’m thinking of having an au pair to (1) care for my kids while I’m working, (2) work with me as a mother’s helper as I care for the children, and (3) make it possible to get other things done (like, have date night, etc.).

This would be a less structured situation than most au pairs have. I’d certainly add structure by having a weekly schedule.

I’d also probably start the “year” by working about 15-20 hours a week when the au pair first arrives and increase throughout the year to 30 or 35.

Any tips on how to do this? Thanks! JHM

Dear JHM–

For most of us, that kind of distribution of au pair time would be terrific. Many of us use all our on-duty hours for childcare while we are working full time, but those of us who work less than 45 hours a week love to have an au pair cover date night or even a trip to the grocery story. It is less common for au pairs and host parents to double team active childcare, but many do it and it works out just fine. So, I don’t see too many challenges with the distribution  of your au pair’s on-duty schedule. And I’m sure that host parent readers will have some suggestions on how to make this work.

The bigger concern is with the idea of starting light and then ramping up the schedule over time.

In general, our advice is to ‘start firm, then relax’. This way, changes feel like they lighten up the burden and/or add privileges. In the other direction, starting light and ramping up, every change increases the burden.

I’d advise against giving your au pair a very light schedule, with the intent to ramp up as you go.

It is very hard to prepare an au pair to easily accept these increases. Regardless of what we say, it’s what we do that makes the impression. And when you schedule your au pair for only 15-20 hours the first several weeks, that’s the schedule s/he comes to expect. Later, when you want to ramp up to a fuller schedule, your au pair may understand this intellectually but still resent it emotionally.

S/he has set her / his psychological contract to be 15-20 hours of work for $190, so when you ask for 30-35 hours for the same $190, s/he feels cheated or asked to do too much. While a very mature au pair can handle this, and while you can be very explicit in advance about how her/his schedule will change over time, you can’t rely on au pair maturity or advance warning to prevent the feeling of being asked to do “more”.

Many host families have a similar kind of challenge when their au pair joins them during a ‘light work’ season (for some families, this is summertime – day camp season, for others it’s the school year) and then the whole family’s schedule changes with the new season. In these situations, au pairs often succumb to Seasonal Schedule Shift Syndrome. Even with explicit preparation up front (like, showing an au pair during match how the summer schedule compares to the winter schedule), families and au pairs find this shift to be challenging.

One way to try to avoid this problem would be to get an EduCare au pair.. Their work expectation is 30 hours a week with pocket money of $147. Asking an EduCare au pair to work 15-20 hours per weeks is still asking him/her to work just more than half a week, but is more in line in terms of hours to pocket money.

Another alternative might be to ask yourself if there are ways that you (alone or with your host parent partner) could use some additional hours of childcare for projects, initiatives, and activities you haven’t considered. This might be your chance to volunteer for something important to you, to start an exercise program, to spend some focused one-on-one time with each child, or even do all those endless chores that otherwise just get transferred from one to-do list to another.

What else should JHM consider if she wants to ramp up au pair hours?

See Also:
EduCare or Regular Au Pair?
4 Ways to Reduce “Seasonal Schedule Shift Syndrome”

image: So many scenic hills to climb … from Mark Stosberg

In the mirror post to this one, we’re generating a list of ways that families interpret and execute the rules, but with the effect of having the au pair feel mistreated.

Here on this page is our chance to list what an au pair can expect from a family when both the family and the au pair are fulfilling the basic program requirements.

Let’s assume that host families are already doing the basics, like giving the au pair her or his day & a half off each week. Let’s take the next step, and consider how families can do this in a way that helps the au pair feel as though he or she is being treated appropriately or well.

In terms of how the family interprets and executes the program requirements:

What can an au pair expect from a host family?

Image: Victorian maid in Miss Havershams…from Gauis Caecilius

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