Common Challenges

Flu Shots for Your Au Pair: Polls

by cv harquail October 15, 2009

Let’s “take the temperature” of the AuPairMom community… and see what’s happening in your home about the flu vaccine and the H1N1 vaccine… 3 Reasons to Take Your Au Pair for a Flu Shot (AuPairMom.com)

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3 Reasons to Take Your Au Pair for a Flu Shot

by cv harquail October 14, 2009

We’re talking regular flu here, the annual kind, the kind that killed over 24,000 people in the US last winter. [ H1N1 coming up in the next post.] Sure, lots of the people who died were already weak from other illnesses. But many who died were healthy until they got influenza. You don’t have to […]

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Good Bye, Good Luck from exAuPairMom

by cv harquail October 13, 2009

I always wonder about “the rest of the story” when I get a notice that someone has unsubscribed from the email newsletter .. for the reason that “the content is no longer valid”. I usually take that to mean “we don’t have an au pair anymore”. Over the weekend we got this letter from a […]

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Matching with an Au Pair: When Racism interferes

by cv harquail October 2, 2009

Take a deep breath everyone– time to talk about something many people find uncomfortable: Racism. But talk about it we must, because racism gets in the way of our relationships with each other. 3 Sources of “Racism Interference” Racism interference can come from three directions, any of which can influence your match with an Au […]

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Choosing an Au Pair: How to Avoid a Princess

by cv harquail September 26, 2009

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If only it were as easy as sticking a green vegetable underneath her mattress and waiting to see if she gets a good night’s sleep… We all want to avoid “the princess” – the au pair candidate who thinks the job is all about visiting the States, living in an American home, and having an […]

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When your personal, private challenges affect your Au Pair relationship

by cv harquail September 23, 2009

Often on this blog we talk about what’s happening between you and your au pair as the source of difficulties– but sometimes the difficulty is all of our own making. Things happen to us host parents — grandparents die, host parents divorce, someone loses a job, a parent gets hospitalized, a child is challenged, and […]

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Who pays for what?

by cv harquail September 7, 2009

Sometimes the concept of treating an au pair like a ‘member of the family’ doesn’t give you enough guidance. This seems especially true when it comes to figuring out ‘who pays for what, when’. We got a request (using the Skribit feature) for a post that would heolp to establish some guidelines for this. I’ve […]

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Our Au Pair Wants to Extend and We’d Rather Not

by cv harquail August 27, 2009

Uh Oh. A clash of expectations on the horizon. And, once you discuss it, you might get some pushback from your au pair…. Our au pair has been with us about 5 months. She is ok. Not great by any means. We are not planning to extend with her. Our biggest issue with her is […]

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“No Room at the Inn” because AP changed her plans. Now what? (Poll)

by cv harquail August 22, 2009

My au pair’s vacation is coming up. To cover for her, we’re having both sets of grandparents come stay over. They’ll be here for a month, but will overlap for a little over a week. The overlap will occur while the AP is on vacation. We have a smallish house – 3 bedrooms. Our “guest […]

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Mad Money: Every girl should have some

by cv harquail August 20, 2009

Family lore has it that my grandfather, a WASP of few words, gave my mom three pieces of advice when she went off to college: Hotels always have clean ladies’ rooms. A Brandy Alexander is an appropriate cocktail for a young lady. Every young lady should have some mad money. Notwithstanding how odd these three […]

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