Cars, Phones & Computers

You’re on YouTube! Is that okay?

by cv harquail May 13, 2009

In the post Help: My Au Pair is Blogging about My Family!, we’ve addressed the question of how folks feel about their au pairs blogging about the family and/or posting information about the family on Facebook or MySpace. Lots of host parents weighed in with their opinions. We agreed that your family should have a […]

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The 3rd Car: Avoiding a sense of entitlement

by cv harquail March 31, 2009

We all want to be generous, and we all want to be appreciated. There’s nothing like having a third car for your au pair to use to make you aware of the tension that can exist when you want to be generous and want to be appreciated. When we bought our first Volvo wagon to […]

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Advice Wanted: How to manage too much “personal” use of family car

by cv harquail March 25, 2009

I need advice about car usage for our au pair. Our au pair has been with us for a little over 7 weeks now. She is doing a great job and has really blended well with our family. Part of her duties (driving) are to drop-off/pick-up our children from school 3 days a week & […]

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Using Your Car is a Privilege, not an Entitlement: Best practices

by cv harquail March 24, 2009

Second only to food as a ‘terrain of struggle’ is the shared family car. While the luckiest of us host families has an extra clunker or not-so-clunker available for the au pair to use as her own, many more host families have their au pair share the family car. And, some host families do not […]

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Advice Wanted: Au Pair changed her vacation… now what?

by cv harquail March 10, 2009

Moms- Big conversation going on today about Mary’s au pair…. Here’s the conversation so far…. Join in! Our au pair has been with us for 8 months. She transitioned from another family and has not been the greatest. She does the bare minimum and has left the children unsupervised. She doesn’t make good decisions and […]

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Sample Handbook from a Reader

by cv harquail March 3, 2009

Hi Moms- Recall that last month I invited you all to share pages from your Family Handbook … I’ve just posted the first of those sample handbooks as a page: Sample Handbook 2, from CC Family. The Sample Handbook is based on the format provided by the Cultural Care Agency, so you may have seen […]

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Advice wanted: How to Keep Track of Au Pair’s personal car use?

by cv harquail December 17, 2008

How do you and your au pair keep track of her personal use of your shared car, so that she pays for her own gas while you pay for the gas used when she’s on duty? I must admit, I’ve had the luxury of (most times) having a third car that was pretty much only […]

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Advice wanted: How to navigate the Au Pair rematch process?

by cv harquail December 12, 2008

Hey moms- We are in rematch and are having our Exit Interview this Saturday. Can anyone please share their experience and tell me what to expect? Our au pair has been with us for almost 4 months and we have struggled with this decision, but it is necessary to make it and move on. She […]

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When your Au Pair has a Fender-Bender — Who pays, and what, and how?

by cv harquail September 24, 2008

I have dreaded writing about au pairs and car accidents, because fear of accidents is one of the scariest things about having children, and even scarier when you are entrusting your children to someone else’s driving. Even the best of au pairs can have car accidents. (Heck, even the best of drivers can have accidents!) […]

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After the Car Accident: Advice on what to talk about with your Au Pair

by cv harquail September 19, 2008

As I was working through the possible advice we could offer to MT, the mom whose Au Pair just backed into a BMW, I realized that we need to focus on the really big picture– that is, how to manage the damage that an Au Pair’s car accident can do to your relationship with each […]

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