Will your Au Pair be On Duty this Thanksgiving? (Poll)

by cv harquail November 22, 2009
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Every holiday my DH and I have the same holiday conversation: Should we ask our Au Pair to be on duty? Scheduling your au pair to work on and around holidays, family vacations, and birthdays (yours and hers) can be challenging, because you’re once again right on top of the question– What does it mean […]

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Thanksgiving Day Tip: Involve your Au Pair in Story Corps’ National Day of Listening

by cv harquail November 21, 2009
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Here’s a Thanksgiving activity that you can involve your au pair in, that can keep her engaged, keep family members engaged, and create something special for all of you. Have your au pair lead the family in the Story Corps’ National Day of Listening. The actual National Day of Listening is the day after Thanksgiving […]

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On celebrating each other’s religious holidays

by cv harquail November 9, 2009
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Only 4.5 weeks till Hanukkah, 8 weeks until Christmas, 9 until New Years… Time to think about weaving your Au Pair into your family’s celebrations. You should think ahead, and talk with your au pair, because holidays can be important times to feel in or out of a family, acknowledged or overlooked, celebrated or taken […]

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Random, Crazy, and True Au Pair Stories

by cv harquail November 6, 2009
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My Random, Crazy & True AP Story We here at AuPairMom invite you to tell us some of your random, crazy and true stories about your experience with an au pair. We know you have stories, and we invite you to let ’em loose. Just two constraints: 1. The story has to be TRUE. 2. […]

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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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Choosing an Au Pair for Teens

by cv harquail November 3, 2009
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If you’re choosing an au pair for teens, what are the qualities you’d look for? I’m assuming that teens have different childcare needs, and we’ve thought about these in our earlier post… so how do we find au pair candidates who can do all this? I have no idea. My guess is that you’d want […]

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Beyond the Chauffeur: Benefits of Au Pairs when your kids are teens

by cv harquail November 3, 2009
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Au Pairs can be great companions and caregivers to older children…. and by older, I’m thinking teens. Yeah, yeah, teens think they are old enough to do without childcare — they can be at home by themselves, cook their own meals, get their homework done, and walk around with earbuds blocking out the rest of […]

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Choosing an Au Pair: Language as a Selection Criterion (Poll)

by cv harquail November 2, 2009
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What do you think of the idea of choosing an au pair based on her native language? Note: Choosing on language is not the same as choosing an au pair based on culture. Just think of the range of cultures where French is spoken!  Cameroon, Haiti, Montreal and Tuscany are  very different  cultures. Is there […]

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Her Language or Yours? Balancing different goals

by cv harquail November 1, 2009
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One of the oft-cited opportunities of au pair childcare is the idea that your children can learn another language from your au pair. Sometimes people choose au pairs to help them reinforce a second language that is already spoken in the household (perhaps, by one of the parents or by a child adopted from another […]

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Matching: What should a potential au pair tell you about herself?

by cv harquail October 23, 2009
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Coordinating with the previous posts about questions an Au Pair should ask a potential host family, what would you like an au pair to tell you about herself? There are perhaps 4,387 categories of things that an au pair could tell you about, so challenge yourself to offer maybe the top 2 or 3… This […]

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