Notes about the Blog

Upcoming Celebrations on AuPairMom: Mothers Day & AuPair Appreciation Week

by cv harquail May 7, 2015

Spring has sprung, which means it’s time to celebrate! We celebrate daffodils, columbines, and first bloomers in the garden. Ice cream trucks, camp signup forms, and that new pair of FitFlops that you deserve. The pair with sequins. And, here on AuPairMom, we celebrate Mother’s Day and AuPairAppreciation week! For both events, we’ll have a focused […]

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Energetic Male Au Pair Lacks Judgment. Should we rematch?

by cv harquail May 6, 2015

Dear AuPairMom — Our family has had au pairs since 2008. We had some amazing aupairs some mediocre and some terrible experiences that resulted in rematches. So one would think that we went through so many situations, we now know how to pick the right au pair and we know when it’s time for rematch. […]

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How Should Au Pair Host Parents Respond to Charges Against the Au Pair Program?

by cv harquail March 23, 2015

While I was away last week, a very disturbing post hit the Washington Post Wonkblog, where the title shares its central claim: “Au pairs provide cheap childcare. Maybe illegally cheap.” In the post, the author describes a class action lawsuit being brought against US Au Pair Agencies by a Colorado group called Towards Justice, on behalf of […]

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Everything I know about DISC for Selecting Au Pairs — guest post by Should Be Working

by Shouldbeworking March 4, 2015

The always-helpful ShouldBeWorking has offered us her practical wisdom on so many occasions — and now she’s up to it again. This time, she’s put together ALL her advice about how to use the DISC profile tool for understanding potential au pair candidates. Not every Au Pair Agency uses the DISC profile, but for host […]

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Open Thread: Introducing a New Comments Tool

by cv harquail January 25, 2015

Time for an open thread– and an upgrade in our commenting practices! I’d like to introduce a new tool, a tool that I’ve been using ‘behind the scenes’ — on about 20% of the comments — to help keep our commenting easy to read and easy to respond to. You might know it by sight or […]

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Notes on the Blog: You aren’t crazy

by cv harquail January 8, 2015

You *have* been seeing new posts pop up and then disappear. I’ve been trying to untangle some of the hijacked threads — by creating new posts for some topics, and then assigning comments to these new posts (using a new tool I just found, hooray me). But, since posts have to be ‘published’ in order to […]

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Male Au Pairs: Not just for male host kids, by ReturningHM

by cv harquail December 16, 2014

When ReturningHM offered to write a post about her experiences with male au pairs, I was delighted. Many new readers find AuPairMom by searching the term ‘male au pair’. There simply isn’t that much information out there about the benefits and challenges of male au pairs vs female ones. Folks are curious about what it […]

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AuPairMom is thankful for … TaCL

by cv harquail November 25, 2014

We all know her. We all love her. TaCL : the internet-famous TakingAComputerLunch. She’s #1 of 2,200 Over the course of the 6+ years of AuPairMom, around 2,200 different people have contributed to the blog by offering advice in the comments. It’s TaCL’s 5 Year Anniversary on Au Pair Mom, and I think it’s time we […]

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AuPairMom Blog Notes: When you email for advice…

by cv harquail November 25, 2014

[Note: This post should help to clarify what you can expect when you email AuPairMom with a question. It aims to put into black and white the principles by which we’ve been operating for a while. Please email with any questions! ~cvh] When you email AuPairMom for advice, here are some things you should know: […]

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What do Au Pair Community Counselors Want to Know?

by cv harquail October 29, 2014

Community Counselors, LCCs and ARs, are the unsung heroes of the au pairing community. A fabulously great community counselor is rare, a good community counselor is often taken for granted, and an underperforming community counselor can sink an entire cluster of au pairs. Given the importance of their roles, it’s kind of surprising how rarely any […]

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