au pair car

Does Your Au Pair Car Have A Curfew? (poll)

by cv harquail May 14, 2015
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 Back in 2010, we had poll to see what percent of au pair blog readers had a curfew on the car that the au pair uses.    60% of host families  who responded to that poll had a curfew on their au pair car [ Check out that post: Au Pair Guidelines: Does your car have a curfew? (Poll) ] […]

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Why Have a Curfew on Your Car and not Your Au Pair?

by cv harquail May 13, 2015
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Some readers have wondered why a family might put a curfew on the au pair car, but not have a curfew on the au pair him/herself. They point out that if au pairs are dependent on the au pair car for transportation during their time off, then having a curfew on the car is effectively the […]

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Who Pays for Your Au Pair’s Gas?

by cv harquail January 10, 2015
au pair car, au pair driving, gas money

Au Pairs should pay for their own gas when they use the family’s car(s) on their own personal time.  Host Families should pay for gas used when the Au Pair drives for family and child-related activities. Managing who pays for gas is pretty simple, right? If only cars came with two gas tanks, or funky meters […]

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Saying No, and Staying Confident, When Your Au Pair Wants Your Car For A Roadtrip

by cv harquail December 4, 2014
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Why do we find it so hard to stick to our guns when an au pair asks us to bend our rules? None of us wants to seem petty, or stingy, or selfish.  On the contrary– we want to be generous where we can, we want to reward au pairs who do a great job […]

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6 Ways to Limit the Au Pair Car to Protect Your Au Pair

by cv harquail August 14, 2012
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Next to having safety rules for our children, the au pair’s personal driving is usually the activity that is most “regulated” by host parents. Whether this car is for the sole use of the au pair or whether it is shared with the host parents, most host parents put some kind of limitations on the […]

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Do you let your Au Pair drive in the snow?

by cv harquail January 23, 2012
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Snowstorms in weird places (like Oregon) and snowstorms in predictable places (like Chicago) have raised the question for many aupair host parents — Do you allow your au pair to drive in the snow? Of course, there are a million variables that affect this decision. Here are the ones I came up with off the […]

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5 Ways to Assess an Au Pair’s Driving Skill when Choosing an Au Pair

by cv harquail November 4, 2010
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The original title I had for this post was “In which we address, once again, the issue of driving skills”.  However, since that’s neither SEO-friendly, nor really helpful, let’s see if we can actually come up with ways to assess driving skill. Everyone who has ever driving a car can call say that s/he’s an […]

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Don’t Abuse A Cluster Taxi

by cv harquail August 26, 2010
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Within an au pair cluster, there are always some host families with relaxed car guidelines and even some families that don’t care at all what gets done with their au pair’s car. And, there are always some au pairs with significant constraints– their driving is bad, their host parents have only one car — and […]

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