Celebrate Democracy: Take Your Au Pair to a Polling Place

by cv harquail November 6, 2012
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(I realize I’m a little late with this one, but maybe there’s still time.) We Americans often take democracy for granted. Too many of us just never make it to the polls to vote, even in a close presidential race like this one. In my family, voting has always been a big deal. My dad […]

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Should Au Pair Agency Contracts Have a “Flame Out — Opt Out” Clause?

by cv harquail November 5, 2012
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Host Families can easily get screwed when the au pair that they match with is so bad s/he can’t or won’t make it through the initial two weeks. When an au pair/ host family relationship breaks, there is an emotional and financial cost to everyone involved. Au Pair Agency procedures are designed to push au […]

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When Your Au Pair Complains About The Schedule

by cv harquail October 31, 2012
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Even when we host parents follow all the rules about scheduling, we can still run into trouble when au pairs begin to resent that their on-duty schedule cuts into their off-duty social time. Whether it’s a Saturday night that you need her to work, a school holiday he too thinks he should have ‘off’, or […]

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Did You And Your Au Pair Get Your Flu Shots?

by cv harquail October 29, 2012

Some folks seem to love to prepare for emergencies. Here in the New York Metro area folks are darting around getting water, batteries, and in my case lots of chocolate, so that they’ll be ready for whatever Hurricane Sandy as in store for us. You can’t believe the lines at the supermarket. This morning there […]

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Halloween Activities for Au Pairs and Kids

by cv harquail October 27, 2012
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Every holiday gives your kids and your au pair a chance to work together, have fun and build memories with holiday-related crafts and activities. Cultural sharing and just plain ‘ole relationship-buidling happens in the doing of things. Given that Halloween is one of the trio of secular, nation wide cultural holidays (the other two being […]

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Every Parent’s Nightmare (Trigger Alert)

by cv harquail October 26, 2012

This is the kind of post I never wanted to write, but I expect some of us will need a place to express our horror and our very deep sadness about the murder of two NYC children by their nanny.   Please do not read any further if you would prefer to avoid this issue.

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What Can This Host Mom Learn From Her Experience?

by cv harquail October 19, 2012
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It can be so hard to do better with each au pair relationship. I know that I liked to kid myself sometimes that I was actually improving– a better handbook, a clearer understanding of our family’s needs, a nicer au pair room, a sense of the arc of the year, and so on. I actually […]

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Should Your Prospective Au Pair Talk with Your Current Au Pair?

by cv harquail October 12, 2012
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When you are trying to make sure that your potential new au pair has a realistic understanding of what to expect of your family, it seems like it might be a great idea to have the potental au pair talk with the current au pair. Of all people, your current au pair knows your family, your routine, […]

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What’s your Host Parent Mindset?

by cv harquail October 2, 2012
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If the world can be divided into two kinds of people, there are two types of Host Parents: Those who think they were born being perfectly good host parents, thankyouverymuch, and Those who are trying to learn how to be better host parents By virtue of being a reader of AuPairMom, you are obviously one […]

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3 Tips for Cross-Cultural Conversation

by cv harquail September 30, 2012
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When you and your au pair struggle to communicate — even when you both speak English resonably well– it can be hard to know whether the problem is “attitude” or “comprehension”. We see issue a lot in comments about au pairs who are given lists of tasks but don’t do them, or host parents who […]

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