Choosing an Au Pair

F.A.Q.: Must we use an Au Pair Agency to engage an Au Pair?

by cv harquail January 14, 2012

Must we use an Au Pair Agency to engage an Au Pair? Yes. Sure, you can go it alone, but then you would not be operating within US Law. We emphatically recommend that you use an approved agency to find and retain your au pair. Following the laws and regulations protects both your family and […]

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How To Find a Short-Term Au Pair

by cv harquail October 15, 2011

Sometimes, you just don’t need an au pair for a whole year. You may need just 8 months, until your child has a full school day, or until you drop down to part-time work. You may just need an au pair to cover a gap between a departing au pair and some other childcare arrangement. […]

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Too Much Generosity or the Wrong Kind? Trust your heart

by cv harquail October 8, 2011

Dear AuPairMom- The posting from the host mom offering the fancy host family situation make me think of the choices that I made when I was matching with my host family. I talked to many different families. All of them had some different things to offer, cars yes or no, no Saturday nights, babies and […]

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Too Good to be True?

by cv harquail October 7, 2011

A while ago I got a request for advice — a host mom was mystified that her desired au pair candidates seemed uninterested in the opportunity she had to offer. After all, what au pair wouldn’t want a situation that required only 20 hours per week, paid vacations with the family, her own apartment underneath […]

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Interpreting the Lanugage of Lag Time: Emailing Prospective Au Pairs

by cv harquail September 27, 2011

It’s kind of ironic for me to post a query about the topic of how to interpret the lag time between sending an email and an au pair candidate responding. As several of you with whom I correspond with on email already know– I can be “not very prompt” in my replies. What does this […]

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What the best way to Pre-Match with an Au Pair, before connecting to an Agency?

by cv harquail September 1, 2011

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could meet a really terrific young person from anther country, discover that you had complementary world views, and THEN go through an official agency to engage him or her as an au pair? From time to time, we get questions from either parents or potential au pairs about how […]

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When Facebook Information Raises Concerns: Should she match, or pass?

by cv harquail July 7, 2011

Oh, the complexities of Facebook. And the generation gap. And the generation gap regarding Facebook. If it’s “true” that “young people” use Facebook differently from us (slightly older) parent people: How much should we infer from an au pair applicant’s Facebook page? Now that many of us ask to ‘friend’ our au pairs and prospective […]

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When your Au Pair meets the Kids’ Needs but not the Parent’s Expectations: Ideas wanted

by cv harquail June 14, 2011

Kids and parents want different things. Kids want to stay up, parents want to go to sleep. Kids want to make a mess, parents want that mess cleaned up (eventually). Kids get engaged in fun and learning, while parents must take care of safety, nutrition, and other not-quite-as-fun stuff. We have different sets of priorities. […]

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Matching Again with a Former Au Pair

by cv harquail June 3, 2011

Can we ever ‘step in the same river twice’? Can we pick up where we left off in a great host family – au pair relationship? Or, is every au pair match, no matter with whom, a new adventure? Is it possible to answer ‘yes’ to all of those questions, at the same time? HostMominVA […]

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Choosing an Au Pair: Application Videos as Tools to Help Matching

by cv harquail May 26, 2011

If a picture paints a thousand words, then what does an Au Pair’s application video do? Au Pair videos seem like a great way to get a sense of an au pair’s personality and command of English. Even though someone could script and then rehearse perfect grammar and expression, you’d still get o hear his […]

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