Saying Goodbye to a Host Toddler: Ideas?

by cv harquail June 20, 2014
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“You have to stay forever, ” the little girl tells me. “We love you more than your real family.” Our first au pair adored our first child. She sang to her, read to her, dressed her up in crazy outfits, taught her how to blow dandelion puffs, and rocked her to sleep in her arms. I think […]

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How To Establish Family Norms Around Texting

by cv harquail June 17, 2014
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One of the most annoying things about adopting new technology is the way that we quickly and unconsciously sink to the lowest common denominator of interpersonal norms.   Said another way, new technologies seem to bring out self-centeredness, thoughtlessness and rudeness in people (cell phone conversations in toilet stalls, anyone?), often without anyone really noticing, and almost always without […]

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Open Thread: June 15

by cv harquail June 14, 2014
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    It’s an open thread, for the rest of the weekend, with one little catch: Share a micro-affirmation, for anything about the Au Pair hosting experience, before you launch into a concern or question. I appreciate all the photographers who share their images in the Creative Commons section of Flickr. So much pretty.  Happy […]

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Get Your Au Pair an American Flag, says TexasHM

by cv harquail June 13, 2014
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Happy Flag Day! Flag Day is a special day for our neighborhood — it’s my next-door neighbor and friend Michael’s birthday. Every year his wife decorates their front porch with flags and has the neighborhood over for cake to mark the dual celebration.   But even without the cake, it’s still another fun reminder for […]

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Micro-Affirmations: Tiny, Powerful Ways to Motivate & Thank Your Au Pair

by cv harquail June 10, 2014
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For work completely unrelated to AuPairMom, I’ve been researching the concept of “micro-affirmations”, which are the opposite of “micro-aggressions”.  These are small, almost imperceptible behaviors towards one another than can either affirm or threaten another person.  In organizations, they are the behavioral building blocks of an inclusive welcoming culture, or a dominating, oppressive one. Often […]

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Open Thread: June 7

by cv harquail June 7, 2014
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 Off to the races! It’s not like my girls didn’t know we were going to Belmont, and didn’t have plenty of time to match their dress to any one of our collection of fascinators and hats, but no…. no one’s ready, and we’re dashing out the door. In the meantime, we’ve got an open thread, […]

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Host Mom Dumped at Funeral by Extension Au Pair-turned-Bridezilla

by cv harquail June 4, 2014
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Readers, I couldn’t think of another headline that would capture the gawd-awful truth of this host mom’s story. Let’s call her “UnluckyHostMom”.  Dear AuPairMom– I know that you typically post questions, and that you occasionally run guest posts written by readers.  I recently had such a terrible au pair experience, that I thought it would be […]

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Bilingualism Benefits Young Brains … and older ones, too.

by cv harquail June 3, 2014
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From WarmStateMomma: For parents raising bilingual kids (or trying to) – I saw this article about a study on bilingualism: “Our study is the first to examine whether learning a second language impacts cognitive performance later in life while controlling for childhood intelligence,” said lead author Dr. Thomas Bak, of the University of Edinburgh, in […]

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Your Summer Re-Set Conversation: What should you cover?

by cv harquail June 2, 2014
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Summertime, and the living is… different.  Whether it’s our kids’ schedule, our own work schedule, or even just the return of the Good Humor Man, the start of summer opens up a chance to adjust how things are going with our Au Pairs. As our family’s patterns change, we need to bring our au pairs along with […]

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Open Thread: May 31

by cv harquail May 31, 2014
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Welcome to our weekend open thread. If you’ve got any au pair issues at loose sends, you can tie them up here with the help of the AuPairMom community.   This thread will be open for comments, ideas and questions (subject to moderation, for first time commenters) until Monday morning or 100 comments, whichever comes […]

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