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
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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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What do Au Pair Community Counselors Want to Know?

by cv harquail October 29, 2014
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Community Counselors, LCCs and ARs, are the unsung heroes of the au pairing community.  A fabulously great community counselor is rare, a good community counselor is often taken for granted, and an underperforming community counselor can sink an entire cluster of au pairs. Given the importance of their roles, it’s kind of surprising how rarely any […]

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Celebrate Halloween With Your Au Pair

by cv harquail October 28, 2014
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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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Beware the Homesick Au Pair: Screen it out, or wait it out?

by cv harquail October 28, 2014
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Homesickness is completely predictable Homesickness is something that every au pair should anticipate, and that every au pair should make a commitment to work through. If you’re signing up to spend a year in another country, in another family, then you are committing to working through any homesickness that occurs between month 1 and month […]

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Smartphones That Outlast Your Au Pair, guest post by QuirkyMom

by cv harquail October 26, 2014
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It’s a lot of work to set up your au pair’s smart phone so that it has all the apps, all the contacts, and all the info you think s/he’ll need.   This is great work to do on behalf of keeping everyone organized and connected.  How can you keep this information year to year, […]

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Share Your System? Tips from Host Parents

by cv harquail October 23, 2014
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A new kind of open thread, where you can share the systems that keep you sane.

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Au Pair Asks: How can I tell my Host Family that they’re so noisy they wake me up?

by cv harquail October 22, 2014
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If the shoe were on the other foot, we wouldn’t hesitate to tell our au pairs that their early morning or late night behavior was so rowdy that it interrupted our sleep. But when you’re the au pair, and it’s your host family just doing their thing in the kitchen, what can you do? Au […]

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This Is The Open Thread You’ve Been Looking For

by cv harquail October 18, 2014
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I know it’s been a while– and questions are piling up. Time for an open thread! Keep in mind, it can take some time to clear the comment moderation gauntlet for first-time contributors. … This thread will be open until Monday. Got to it, readers!     Image: Evan Leeson on Flickr

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How to Switch Au Pair Agencies, Gracefully

by cv harquail October 16, 2014
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Host Families choose their particular Au Pair Agency for all sorts of reasons. They might choose the agency their neighbors use, the agency that has the best promotional deal, or even the agency that has a name they can spell correctly when they are googling in the middle of the night having been awakened again by […]

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