scheduling your au pair

Digital Tools for Scheduling Au Pairs: Share your faves

by cv harquail September 12, 2017
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It’s rather pitiful, but I’m still (and perhaps always) a fan of the paper calendar.   While I *do* use the Tiny Calendar app on my iPhone, I always was printing out — and adding up by hand — on duty hours. Surely, someone else has a better way? Because Calendaring Host Mom has asked for […]

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How Soon To Schedule Au Pair’s First Day Off?

by cv harquail April 24, 2016
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Venturing into the grey areas of Au Pair regulations and scheduling, a First Time Host Mom asks– how many days might a brand new au pair work before she must be given a day off?   (I phrased it differently in the headline of this post, but essentially it’s the same question).  She’s thinking about […]

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Eating On Duty: Managing Au Pair Meals

by cv harquail February 3, 2015
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Au Pairs often need to make meals for themselves (as well as for host children) while they are on duty.   We can’t (and shouldn’t) expect any caregiver to go for hours and hours without a proper meal. But when an au pair is ‘on duty’ with a primary responsibility for children, an au pair […]

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Au Pair Scheduling: How to count time around Drop-Offs and Pick-ups

by cv harquail June 10, 2013
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When does an au pair actually ‘stop’ being on the clock?   Is it when the kids are off with someone else, or when the au pair is back at ‘home base’? Before we even address this substance of the question, I need to point out  => If you have to count minutes down to […]

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Overnight hours: Should we be able to schedule Au Pairs to work overnight?

by cv harquail May 25, 2013
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StudentHostMom writes with a question about overnight childcare. Our contract strictly forbids leaving the kids alone with the au pair overnight. Our main reason for getting an au pair was to support me as I returned to classes, part time, to finish my college degree. Since my husband travels all week, every week, our Au Pair […]

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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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Should You Wake Your Au Pair When You Leave For Work REALLY Early?

by cv harquail February 19, 2012
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Hi AuPairMom, We are welcoming our first au pair in about 3 weeks, and we are very excited. Your blog really helped us decide that this was the right type of child care for our family. We need someone with scheduling flexibility, because we have an always-changing, somewhat odd work week. I have to leave […]

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Will your au pair be on duty this Christmas?

by cv harquail December 9, 2011
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What will your au pair be doing this Christmas day?     If you have asked your au pair to be on duty and work during part of Christmas Eve & Christmas day, how did you present this plan to him or her? Did you discuss it during matching, or months ago, or just this […]

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Is it fair to schedule an Au Pair for Late Night baby feedings?

by cv harquail August 31, 2011
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The help we need is the help we need. Depending on your situation as a host parent, you might need driving, or cooking help, or child-minding on weekends, or flexibility when a child is sick. We each ask our au pairs to help us with different childcare tasks. As long as the tasks are within […]

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Best Practices: Scheduling an Au Pair with a Stay-At-Home Mom

by cv harquail August 21, 2011
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We don’t really have a good term to describe moms who work in the home taking care of their home & family 24/7. Personally, I’m not a fan of the label “stay at home” mom, because it sounds like a command (Stay at home, mom!). And while work-at-home mom is descriptive– she’s a mom, working […]

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