Training/teaching

3 Easy Ways to Help Your Au Pair Use Your Home Appliances Correctly

by cv harquail October 10, 2014

American appliances have too many options. Having endless options is great for getting just the right setting for a specific task, but it becomes quite a problem when you’re forever trying to remember which combinations of buttons and levers to press. Between our vacuum cleaner (5 attachments, 3 wands and 5 buttons), our washer (23 […]

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How to Get Your Au Pair Ready To Cook

by cv harquail September 12, 2014

Once your host kids get past the ‘oatmeal and smashed peas’ phase, it’s time for an Au Pair to do some real cooking. Even au pairs who’ve cooked in their home countries find cooking in America to be a bit challenging. Au Pairs need to figure out: How our appliances work What each of the foods […]

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Welcome Your Au Pair With A Custom Google Map

by cv harquail March 19, 2014

HostMom Pippa takes advantage of easy online tools, and comes up with *surely* one of the greatest ideas for helping your au pair visualize her/his new surroundings (aka your world). She recommends creating a Custom Google Map: An easy way to share information with your incoming AP before he or she arrives is to create […]

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Autonomy vs. Food Safety When The Au Pair Cooks

by cv harquail February 21, 2014

How do I give my Au Pair autonomy in the kitchen without worrying that my kids are going to eat something that could make them sick? Dear AuPairMoms — I need to find ways to teach my au pairs about food safety, without offending them. Any ideas? Here’s my story: AP1: Raw Bacon My son was […]

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8 Ways To Teach Your Au Pair About Food Safety

by cv harquail February 19, 2014

Milk left out on the counter. Raw eggs in salad dressing. Undercooked chicken thighs. And of course, the picnic lunch with macaroni salad but no ice pack. All of these are food safety disasters. If your Au Pair hasn’t been taught about food safety, though, he or she might think these are harmless mistakes. That […]

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Can’t seem to fill the Au Pair Educational Requirement. What to do?

by cv harquail October 10, 2013

Help! We are having a serious issue with the educational component for our au pair. Dear AuPairMom– Our au pair came to us in early January of last year, too late to start classes for the semester. We had planned to get her registered in the summer, but my military duty unexpectedly took me away […]

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What do Host Parents think about Nanny Cams?: Au Pair Asks

by cv harquail May 8, 2013

It’s been a long time since we had our last conversation about Nanny Cams. We’ve had a couple of suggestions for a post about them, but I have always resisted. Only about 15% of host parent readers who took our poll back then reported that they even considered using a nanny cam. Personally, I […]

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Sample Family Handbook, with sections on Food from HM P

by cv harquail March 22, 2013

Family Handbooks should all cover a core set of topics including schedule, safety, child care rules, car rules, and family rules. Beyond these topics, we each need to add specifically what’s important to OUR family. At my house, this means a section on “How to Adore Coco (our dog)” and another on “Traveling Safely in NYC”. In […]

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Send an Excerpt from your Family Handbook to Prospective Au Pairs

by cv harquail March 19, 2013

In my house we have a saying: “Fewer, better things.” This advice is to keep me from buying those $2.00 sequined rabbit statues at Target when I already have ceramic bunnies that will make perfectly fine easter decorations thank you very much. This advice also works for the family handbook selections we send to prospective […]

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When Your Au Pair Won’t Do More Than Mind Your Child: Child Care Chores

by cv harquail January 12, 2013

How do you teach an au pair that ‘childcare’ includes more than just caring directly for your child/ren, in real time? We all know that childcare means not only one-to-one interacting with the child and the child’s needs, but also doing child-related work ‘offline’. But many au pairs (especially new ones) struggle with this, because […]

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