When Au Pairs Overlap, who gets the room? (Poll)

by cv harquail May 11, 2011
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Sometimes, the right thing to do as your family transitions from one au pair to another is to have your au pairs overlap in your home. As we know, overlapping au pairs can create some emotional difficulty for the incoming au pair, the outgoing au pair, your kids and you. And, it can also create […]

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Travel Outside the USA … Paperwork-related cautionary tale

by cv harquail May 10, 2011
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Sometimes no matter how many different sources we check, we don’t get enough information to make international travel with our au pairs go without a hitch. JamaicaMom sent this story, and wonders if there was some stone she left unturned, some box she failed to check, some egg that failed to hatch, some colloqualisim that […]

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Can you help your Au Pair use her free time more wisely?

by cv harquail May 4, 2011
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Have you ever been slightly envious of your au pair’s year of adventure? There have been many times that I’ve wondered what I mgiht have been like had I been an au pair (or an exchange student) and had the chance to live somewhere so different, make different friends, try new things, and experiment with […]

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Au Pair Agency Breaks Promise, and Revokes Completion Payment. Why?

by cv harquail May 2, 2011
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Dear Au Pair Mom, Today we received our monthly newsletter from our local area counselor. On the last page, it normally indicates year-end bonuses for the au pairs; however, now we see this: “Bonuses: There has been a change to bonuses. Au pairs who arrived before December 31, 2010 will still be eligible to receive […]

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Getting Past Stereotypes– of Brasilian Au Pairs, for example

by cv harquail April 29, 2011

When in doubt, use a decision rule. It can be clumsy, or crude, or sometimes nearly irrelevant, but a decision rule usually helps when we have so many choices. With choosing au pairs, we often employ decision rules that are good proxies for the information we really want but can’t quite get. For example, we use years […]

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Au Pair Asks: Will Host Family think I’m lazy if I can’t pay for my flight to the USA?

by cv harquail April 27, 2011
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Here’s an issue we haven’t seen before. This soon-to-be au pair has matched with a family who needs her right away. But– the au pair doesn’t have enough money saved to pay for her flight to the USA. How should she discuss this with the host family? What kinds of options might she suggest? And, […]

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When Au Pairs Prioritize Location

by cv harquail April 23, 2011
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“Location, location, location” — that’s all that matter in real estate. And for some au pairs, that’s all that matters in their match. I understand that au pairs have ideas about where in the USA they’d like to live (e.g., California, Florida, and New York), and that they want to maximize the adventure of the […]

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What if Au Pairs came with their own “Handbook”?

by cv harquail April 16, 2011
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For every new host family, our #1 recommendation is to write a family handbook. Most of us here at Au Pair Mom firmly believe that getting our household rules and family-related expectations down on paper helps us be clearer about what is important to us as host parents, family members, and heads of household. Plus, […]

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What can Host Parents Do about Deceptive Agency Practices?

by cv harquail April 14, 2011
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Readers, I must admit that these stories of being screwed by both agency & au pair get me upset. Thank goodness these stories are more rare than the terrific au pair and the perfectly fine au pairs we have little reason to need advice about. We all know that most au pairs, and most agency […]

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Getting a Refund from an Unsupportive Agency

by cv harquail April 11, 2011

Readers, there is sadly more to the story of Deflated HostMom. She and her DH are having trouble getting the finances between the family and the au pair, and the family and the Agency, settiled to their saristaction. As Deflated HostMom describes: We have already paid our current au pair her full education allowance, and […]

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