Common Challenges

Your Summer Re-Set Conversation: What should you cover?

by cv harquail June 2, 2014

Summertime, and the living is… different. Whether it’s our kids’ schedule, our own work schedule, or even just the return of the Good Humor Man, the start of summer opens up a chance to adjust how things are going with our Au Pairs. As our family’s patterns change, we need to bring our au pairs along with […]

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Grocery Budgets for An Au Pair: What’s a fair amount?

by cv harquail May 12, 2014

Including an Au Pair in your grocery shopping means more than throwing another package of chicken breasts into the cart. For any of us (all of us?) with budgets and cost constraints, including an Au Pair takes more than figuring out ‘how much’ more food we need to nourish an additional adult. It also asks us to gauge […]

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The Fainting Au Pair: Should we rematch?

by cv harquail May 5, 2014

Reliable, predictable, kind, and safe — that’s what we need childcare to be. So what happens when we have an au pair who we like, who’s doing a great job, and then all of a sudden turns out to have a condition that is unpredictable, that makes her unreliable, and that makes you worry that […]

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Choosing An Au Pair: Reading between the lines of an email reply

by cv harquail April 28, 2014

People tease me about the number of emoticons, doge gifs, and exclamation points I use in my email, but I refuse to give up on anything that might help me convey the feelings behind my words — and to avoid being misinterpreted. It’s happened to all of us, when we’ve rushed to reply, or we […]

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Don’t try to make your “two toddlers, small house, no au pair car” life “attractive”

by cv harquail April 22, 2014

“There’s a lid for every pot.” This wisdom was offered by HRHM four years ago, and it’s stuck with me. I love it because it’s just so TRUE when it comes to au pairs and host families. No matter how weird unique your family is or how weird distinctive an au pair candidate is, if […]

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Explaining To Family and Friends Why You’re Getting An Au Pair

by cv harquail April 18, 2014

Can you remember back to the first time you ever heard about the Au Pair program? I can’t remember how I first heard about it (and I think I assumed I knew what an au pair was). But I *do* remember trying to explain the whole concept to my dad. And then to my coworkers, […]

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When Your Au Pair Works a Second Job, As an ‘Escort’

by cv harquail April 16, 2014

There are some ‘random, crazy and true’ au pair stories that seem like urban myths … … The Fox in the Henhouse, the au pair who disappears two days after she arrives, and of course, the au pair who gets a second paid gig in the ‘tourism industry’. When I first heard stories about au […]

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Photographing Host Children: What’s appropriate to shoot, and what’s appropriate to share?

by cv harquail April 7, 2014

All children are beautiful. When we, our au pairs, our families, and our friends see our beautiful child, it’s oh-so-tempting to try to hold that image of beauty still, to want to preserve it as a memory forever. When we adore these children, when we are proud of them, when we love them, we want […]

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