au pair advice

Au Pair Asks: How can I gently decline my Host Mom’s advice?

by cv harquail April 26, 2010
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One of my guilty pleasures as a host mom has been to think that I’ve been able to give my au pairs some good advice. After all, I’ve had a lot of life experience, I’m opening-minded, I have relevant professional experience, and — let’s face it– I usually know what I’m talking about (grin). Therefore, […]

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When Your Au Pair Breaks Your Psychological Contract

by cv harquail April 24, 2010
July 19: Balancing act (58/61) by theDQT

[ Note: I think this might be the longest AuPairMom post I’ve ever written. It was a long train ride and I think I got carried away.] Host families and au pairs call it mutual expectations, and management scholars call it the “psychological contract”. The idea behind a psychological contract is that we agree to […]

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Abandoned by au pair, left with plane ticket

by cv harquail March 18, 2010
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This just in from a Host Mom in London. I think she’s asking for two kinds of advice: how to manage the vacation childcare, and how to manage her feelings of being, um, irked: Hi, we have a 19 yr old au pair from Sweden who has been with us for 5 months after committing […]

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Au Pair Advice: She’s using *my* coffee mug!

by cv harquail March 17, 2010
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We host parents can be a weird bunch. The kinds of things that drive us crazy… no wonder it can be hard for au pairs to get adjusted! Over the weekend I heard a crazy lament that I want to share with you. My friend has a new au pair, who’s been with them about […]

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6 Reasons why your Au Pair should NOT work a second job

by cv harquail March 6, 2010
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We’ve talked recently about the issues related to having an au pair work extra hours for the host family, and we’ve also talked about whether you should let your au pair babysit for your friends. But we haven”t talked about whether you should permit your au pair to work at another job. “Why haven’t we […]

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Our Au Pair is not the cheerful girl we expected. Now what?

by cv harquail February 15, 2010
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We’re 1 month into our first au pair and not sure if it’s going to be ok or not. Just to clarify we’re based outside the US so our au pair has not come to us through an agency, in fact she is American. We have 3 kids, all under 6 and there is no […]

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Extra Hours: What’s fair pay when you break this taboo?

by cv harquail February 13, 2010
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Many parents find that 45 hours a week is not enough childcare. Either you have an emergency late night at work, a kid home sick, a snow day, or a bookclub meeting. Some parents have work + commute combos that mean they’re away from home 10 hours a day, m-f, even if they stagger their […]

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Is Snooping in your Au Pair’s room ever okay?

by cv harquail February 6, 2010
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I got an email from “Undercover Host Mom” — she is struggling with this dilemma: Although we have a strict and absolute non-smoking policy, and discussed this before we matched with our au pair, I have come to wonder whether she is smoking in our car and maybe even in the house. (It’s hard to […]

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Moms & Au Pairs: Can I hold us to different tv rules?

by cv harquail February 4, 2010
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I’m a believer that different members of a family have different privileges and responsibilities, depending on their roles and their ages. Parents have more privileges than do children, and employers have more privileges than do employees. The rules that we follow can be different, as long as they are fair. Nobody, and I mean nobody, […]

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Au Pair Abruptly Quits, then wants to come back to see kids. Really? (poll)

by cv harquail January 28, 2010
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Here’s a painful situation, about which this host mom could use some good advice. I’m sure that this kind of situation has happened to other families who’ve gone into rematch [Something similar happened to us with our flame-out au pair, and so reading this mom’s email got me all mad all over again. What went […]

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