Random Advice

What is your family’s Au Pair Selection Process?: Interviews (polls)

by cv harquail May 15, 2011

Busy Mom has been very busy, thinking about how to make the Au Pair Selection Process better. She wrote a long guest post, complete with several suggested polls. Because her effort was so comprehensive, it was a bit much for one post and one conversation theme. So, I’ve broken it down (and added some things […]

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Getting Past Stereotypes– of Brasilian Au Pairs, for example

by cv harquail April 29, 2011

When in doubt, use a decision rule. It can be clumsy, or crude, or sometimes nearly irrelevant, but a decision rule usually helps when we have so many choices. With choosing au pairs, we often employ decision rules that are good proxies for the information we really want but can’t quite get. For example, we use years […]

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Au Pair Asks: Will Host Family think I’m lazy if I can’t pay for my flight to the USA?

by cv harquail April 27, 2011

Here’s an issue we haven’t seen before. This soon-to-be au pair has matched with a family who needs her right away. But– the au pair doesn’t have enough money saved to pay for her flight to the USA. How should she discuss this with the host family? What kinds of options might she suggest? And, […]

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When you’re away, you still have to pay: Stipends when your Au Pair isn’t working

by cv harquail April 8, 2011

Dear AuPairMom- Do I have to pay a stipend to my au pair is s/he isn’t needed for childcare? I will be out of the country with my son for three weeks and am not taking the au pair with me since i am visiting my parents. Our au pair already took one week off […]

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Hand-Crafted Gifts for the Host Family: Ideas?

by cv harquail April 7, 2011

Dear AuPairMoms- I’d love some advice about a handmade gift to bring to my new host family. I’ve learned from my agency that, once we have been matched with a HF, we have to begin to complete a pre-departure project. The staff at orientation will look over this and then we are supposed to present […]

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Second Jobs are not a Social Life

by cv harquail April 4, 2011

Hi! My au pair came to me with a question that I’m a little torn about. Our au pair came to us in rematch after we had our first au pair for 9 weeks. (It was a horrible personality mismatch.) Our new au pair’s driving skills weren’t what her host family needed– but since we […]

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American Traditions: April Fools Day

by cv harquail March 31, 2011

Au Pairs are both easy and hard to tease. Sometimes humor just doesn’t travel well across cultures, and what’s funny to one group elicits a “Duh?” from another. (Example? Black socks & sandals on German tourists). Then again, there are some pranks, jokes, and tweeks that seem universal (e.g., plastic spiders in the cereal bowl). […]

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Infidelity more of a concern than you’d think

by cv harquail March 25, 2011

Hi readers- A quick note here before I dash off to work today– I took down the previous post about the au pair who saw a host parent’s infidelity. Why? Because not one, or two, but three different and unrelated people emailed me to say that the post ‘hit too close to home’ for them. […]

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Plan Ahead for Disasters: Tips from CalifMom

by cv harquail March 14, 2011

We know what we ‘should’ do, but we often just don’t get to it. Who wants to think about how she or he can respond to horrific tragedies, like terrorism, earthquakes, and floods? That’s the kind of thing for action movie heros, not ah pair host parents, right? We’ve brought this issue up before and […]

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Our Au Pair is from Tokoyo and her world has fallen apart. How can we help?

by cv harquail March 13, 2011

Dear Au Pair Mom- I’m sure that we are not alone with this concern, and we’d love some ideas how to help: Our au pair is from a town about 25 miles southeast of Tokyo (further aware form the center of the earthquake). She is terribly worried about her family and friends after the earthquake, […]

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