Foundations & Basics

Create a Holiday Tradition– Just for your Au Pair

by cv harquail December 10, 2014

You were wondering when I’d start the holiday posts … and here’s the first one! When new people enter our families, a great way to welcome them is to include them explicitly in our family holiday celebrations. Efforts like: Creating a Christmas stocking for your au pair to hang along with the kids’, Getting an additional […]

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Help Your Au Pair Learn When to “Pick Her Battles” with Kids

by cv harquail December 6, 2014

How do you teach the art of knowing when to let things slide? So much of good parenting and good caregiving is about being consistent. Kids thrive on routine. They need consistent explanations, consistent expectations, and consistent consequences so that they learn how to make good choices with their own behavior. Yet, so much of […]

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Saying No, and Staying Confident, When Your Au Pair Wants Your Car For A Roadtrip

by cv harquail December 4, 2014

Why do we find it so hard to stick to our guns when an au pair asks us to bend our rules? None of us wants to seem petty, or stingy, or selfish. On the contrary– we want to be generous where we can, we want to reward au pairs who do a great job […]

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Share The Fun and the Not-So-Fun with Your Au Pair

by cv harquail November 11, 2014

Prompted by our conversation over the weekend about the au pair who was unhappy with the ratio of chores-to-child interaction in his work week, I’m reposting something from 2009: One super-helpful piece of advice my friend Adelaide gave me when we got our first au pair was “Be Sure to Share the Cream.” Share both […]

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Childcare vs. Child Chores: What’s a fair balance for an Au Pair?

by cv harquail November 7, 2014

An Au Pair’s primary role is child care– as in, caring for the actual child. Virtually no young adult comes to the US for a year to do a kid’s laundry, make the kid’s bed, or clean splashed applesauce off the kitchen floor. While the child-related housework chores are certainly part of the tasks […]

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3 Reasons To Get A Flu Shot- with your Au Pair

by cv harquail November 3, 2014

Cold’n sneezy season. I have just returned from CVS, where I bought zinc lozenges, throat spray, tissues, Ricola, and sudafed. And, I got a flu shot. There’s nothing you can do about a cold– just deal with it, wash your hands, and move on. But the flu? The real, honest-to-goodness slay-you-with-sickness-phlem-and-fever flu? That can be […]

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Your Au Pair Handbook: Can it help you screen for the right candidate?

by cv harquail November 1, 2014

Your Host Family Handbook can be a good tool for screening prospective Au Pair Candidates. Handbooks generally outline the concrete expectations of a host family as well as the particular rules and parameters that an au pair is expected to work with. Sure, a long handbook might seem daunting to an au pair candidate, but […]

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Celebrate Halloween With Your Au Pair

by cv harquail October 28, 2014

au pair halloween advice holidays celebration costume

Special Halloween Edition Halloween is one of my favorite holidays to share with Au Pairs. Unlike some holidays, Halloween doesn’t seem to trigger a whole lot of nostalgia and homesickness. For au pairs who ‘do’ Halloween in their home countries, it’s a chance for her to share traditions from her culture. And, if your au […]

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