Being fair

Scheduling Your Au Pair: When does “On Duty” start and stop?

by cv harquail March 28, 2014

When does an au pair actually ‘start’ or ‘stop’ being on duty? When we’re counting up the hours in the week that we need childcare, it’s tempting to imagine that we can start and stop ‘on duty’ time right on the precise minute. How else are we to cover an entire week? I look back […]

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Should You Wake Your Au Pair When You Leave For Work REALLY Early?

by cv harquail February 19, 2012

Hi AuPairMom, We are welcoming our first au pair in about 3 weeks, and we are very excited. Your blog really helped us decide that this was the right type of child care for our family. We need someone with scheduling flexibility, because we have an always-changing, somewhat odd work week. I have to leave […]

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Would you ask your Au Pair to help out at someone else’s party?

by cv harquail January 22, 2012

Do you think it’s appropriate to ask an au pair to got to your kids’ school and help out at a birthday event there, for someone else’s kids? Here’s the email that prompts the question: Dear AuPairMom – I am mostly satisfied with the family I am working for. We’ve had a few problems but […]

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Please Turn Down the TV — Reasonable or Rude?

by cv harquail December 6, 2011

We host parents often find ourselves wishing that our au pairs could just *tell us* when something is bothering them. We can only address things we know about– and if something is wrong and you keep quiet about it, the problem keeps simmering. This is true with bigger issues (too much texting) and smallish issues […]

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Is it fair to schedule an Au Pair for Late Night baby feedings?

by cv harquail August 31, 2011

The help we need is the help we need. Depending on your situation as a host parent, you might need driving, or cooking help, or child-minding on weekends, or flexibility when a child is sick. We each ask our au pairs to help us with different childcare tasks. As long as the tasks are within […]

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Best Practices: Scheduling an Au Pair with a Stay-At-Home Mom

by cv harquail August 21, 2011

We don’t really have a good term to describe moms who work in the home taking care of their home & family 24/7. Personally, I’m not a fan of the label “stay at home” mom, because it sounds like a command (Stay at home, mom!). And while work-at-home mom is descriptive– she’s a mom, working […]

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Enough with the Gift Baskets!

by cv harquail February 21, 2011

A long time ago, I was experimenting with doing a vlog (a video post), but I never posted it because I looked kindof dorky. Also, a few months later, the lovely Susan Robinson of Cultural Care started her AuPairAnswerMom vlogs, and does them so well that I thought I’d just stick to text. But then […]

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Providing Your Au Pair With Safe, Affordable, Convenient Transportation

by cv harquail August 25, 2010

Here on AuPairMom we get a lot of questions about driving skills, driving privileges and managing cars. Behind all of these questions, like “who should pay for gas?” or “Avoiding a sense of entitlement” or “keeping track of car use“, is one simple principle– Host parents must provide our au pairs with affordable, safe, and […]

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When you initiate rematch, can you ask your Au Pair to leave immediately?

by cv harquail July 22, 2010

When you initiate rematch, can you ask your Au Pair to leave immediately? When this question popped up over the weekend, I shuddered. It brought me back instantly to our flame-out au pair, the one who announced on the last day of school that she wanted a rematch because she didn’t want to work weekends […]

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What can an Au Pair expect from a Host Family?

by cv harquail May 3, 2010

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 […]

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