Are you prepared?

Marc and I found that one of the key reasons why we had a bad experience with our au-pair was that we were not prepared.  But was does being prepared mean. 

1-      The basics:  The au-pair is not an overnight houseguest.  They are staying at your home for a year.  They are taking care of your children.  They will need their own space.  Also, if they are happy where they live and are comfortable, they will be happier and in theory take better care of your kids.

a.       Do you have a nice room for the au-pair with a comfortable bed, possibly a TV with cable or a DVD player.  Space to store their clothes.

b.      How about a private bathroom?  Is the entire family sharing one bathroom?

c.       Reasonable transportation – if you live in an area where it isn’t possible to walk from place to place or take public transportation, are you prepared to let the au-pair use your car on a regular basis?

d.      Reasonable access to education?  Where can the au-pair take classes?

2-      Realistic expectations…

a.       The au-pair is not a maid or housekeeper.  They’re duties are limited to the children.

b.      Their hours are capped at 45 hours per week.

c.       They are not responsible for running your household.

3-      Realistic house rules: Au-pairs are young adults.  They are not your children and they will want a level of freedom and flexibility.  If you expect everyone to be at home in bed by 9:00 every night or expect your house to be kept impeccably neat at all times, you might find it tough to have another person in the house. On the flip side, a house without any rules can pose challenges as well.  We found that we were too laid back about rules in the beginning of our relationship with our au-pair.  We started to feel that au-pair was taking things fro granted such as access to our cars and not taking care of our house in reasonable manner.  When this happened, since we hadn’t established rules in the beginning, we found it difficult to make changes.   Some of the things we felt we needed to think about were:

a.       Disciplining of the children

b.      Use of the car

c.       Use of the phone and internet

d.      Housekeeping

e.       House guests

f.       Curfews

g.      Confidentiality

4-      Some sense of order and routine: as a host family, you will need to articulate (most likely in writing) how your household functions.  Marc and I found that since we had a very established routine with the kids in regards to their weekdays (getting them ready for school, playtime, TV time and bedtime) that it was easy enough for us to get the au-pair to follow along. 

The au-pair program is positioned in the following way… the au-pair is a young adult between the ages of 18 and 27.  They join the program to have the opportunity to travel to live abroad for a year.  In exchange for a place to live, some money towards education and a weekly stipend of $139 a week, the au-pair is expected to take on child care duties in the home for up to 45 hours per week. (I’ll talk more about this later).

The au-pair program is regulated by the US government.  The terms of the program such as the type of visa, education requirement, duration of stay, compensation, limits on work hours, are mandated.  The various au-pair programs such as Au-Pair in America and Cultural Care implement the program based on the guidelines. 

The au-pair’s are usually students or recent graduates of their country’s equivalent of high school, trade school or university.  Possibly they are taking a year off from their studies to travel and improve their English.

The various agencies such as Au-Pair in America, Cultural Care, etc. broker the relationships between the au-pairs and the host families.  They generally do the following:

• Prior to arrival: interview au-pair candidates through offices in the home countries, interview perspective host families, confirm references for both the families and the au-pairs, process visa paperwork, arrange travel.

• Once an au-pair has arrived in the US, they have local coordinators who meet with the families and the au-pairs on a regular basis, coordinate local activities, help the family and the au-pair settle in and broker issues between the family and the au-pair if they arise.

Marc and I decided to hire an au-pair last year when we moved to Philadelphia from the UK.  We had shared an au-pair with our neighbor in the UK and found that the flexibility of having an extra pair of hands around the house was really helpful.

Marc is from the Netherlands.  Dutch is his first language.  His parents speak primarily Dutch so we thought that it would be really great to get an au-pair form the Netherlands who could speak Dutch to the kids and perhaps they would learn a bit of the language.

Marc started looking around on Dutch websites and Bulletin boards and we found a girl from the north of Holland who was planning on signing up with Au-Pair in America and wanted to come to US.  All seemed good and she eventually joined us in the US. 

To make a long story short, things did not work out well for us.  We learned a lot about the pitfalls of the au-pair program.  We also discovered that our own naivety and lack of preparedness really came back to bite us. 

We found that issues were basically related to 3 things:

1-      Our preparedness as a family to add in essence another family to our household.

2-      The au-pair’s expectations, maturity and understanding of the au-pair program.

3-      The involvement of the au-pair agency.

For those of you considering an au-pair, I thought I would share our learnings.  We will be applying what we have learned over the next year as we add a new au-pair to our household.  I’ll keep you posted…