Safety

Birth Control and Your Au Pair

by cv harquail November 5, 2009
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I wasn’t really ready to blog about this particular topic, even though it’s on the list of 378 topics I brainstormed 18 months ago… We got an anonymous comment on a different post that raised the issue… so here we are. It can’t be any harder to blog about than it is to do! You […]

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My Au Pair Won’t Get a Flu Shot … and we have an Infant. Now what?

by cv harquail October 15, 2009
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There are several situations where getting a flu vaccine is a MUST— and one of those is if you care for a child under 6 months old. These littlest ones are uniquely vulnerable to both the regular flu and the H1N1 virus– because they are too young to be vaccinated themselves. Adults who care for […]

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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
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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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R.T.F.M. Making sure your Au Pair Reads the Family Manual

by cv harquail September 17, 2009
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Long before there was OMG, ROTFLMAO and WTF, there was RTFM. R ead T he F (your favorite F word here. We use “family”) M anual We put a lot of work into those family manuals and handbooks, and we expect them to be useful to our Au Pairs. However, before the Au Pairs find […]

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Swim Safely, by following my sister’s rules

by cv harquail June 10, 2009
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My sister Julia and her family spend the bulk of their summer at the New Jersey shore, biking between the pool at my dad’s house, the pool at the beach club, the river and the ocean. Only one of these locations has professional lifeguards– the rest of the time we all depend on sensible swimmers […]

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Follow Up: Rude Comments about Au Pairs– How to respond

by cv harquail May 19, 2009
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I was thinking again about our conversation around "Myths about au pairs: Au Pair = "Hottie" , and ideas about how to respond when people make rude comments to us host parents about au pairs. One au pair commented that she was concerned that If people make these sorts of comments in your au pair’s […]

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Au Pair Appreciation: Hooray for all of you!

by cv harquail May 8, 2009
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Well, we’ve come to the end of the very first annual International Au Pair Appreciation Week! Thank you to  the host moms and dads who sent in the stories for the Au Pair Appreciation posts this week. Thank you to all of you who commented on the stories, offered snippets of your own stories, and […]

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Au Pair Appreciation: Popsicle sticks and masking tape

by cv harquail May 8, 2009
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International Au Pair Appreciation Week As shared by a Host Mom for her family Why do we appreciate our au pair so much?   Our AP is beloved by both my kids. They are five years apart and so have very different world views and needs, yet she is able to have a great time on […]

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Advice Wanted: Should I intervene in another Au Pair-Host Family situation?

by cv harquail May 7, 2009
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What, if anything, do you do if you become aware of a situation where another host family is taking advantage of their Au Pair? Here are the specifics, as shared by our Host Mom: … A friend that my Au Pair met at the Au Pair "school" in NY just recently moved to our state […]

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