Tag Archives: au pair

Yoga Teacher Training

Posted on August 17, 2011 | 3 Comments

It’s funny, back when I had an au pair, I thought that I couldn’t possibly have enough time to balance everything in my life without one. Now, it seems not only possible, but we are doing it…. Maybe it is simply a product of the kids being older. Maybe we have settled both feet more firmly into the ground as parents. Maybe all that time with au pairs let us sort other things out so that we can get where we are.

I am taking a break from blogging – here and on my other blogs – while I pursue a yoga teacher training certification (20 weeks of preparation and a 20 week course of study, including eight intensive weekends). Yes, in addition to my other job! How will we manage it without an au pair? Sweat, love and help from the grandparents and a few lovely babysitters! :)

Thanks for reading!

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Posted in True-to-Life

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The First Week with an Au Pair (It Doesn’t Have to Suck)

Posted on March 1, 2011 | 3 Comments

OK, let’s cut to the bottom line. The first week with your au pair may suck. Especially if you are a new host parent. She doesn’t know how to do anything, from making lunches to driving to fill in the blank. She’s full of questions, and you aren’t even sure how to answer all of them, let alone find the patience for it. Your schedule is completely thrown off balance. Your kids are having a hard time adjusting. Your spouse is having a hard time adjusting. Life can only get better, right….?

Well, it doesn’t have to suck, and here’s why: it’s all about attitude. Not just hers. Yours.

Q: What are you doing this for?

A: The well-being of your family.

Remember that every time you help your au pair, you are also helping yourself. If you take a bit of time at the beginning to set things right, you will have the next 11+ months to reap the benefits. If you stress out about it, that stress gets passed on to your au pair and, ultimately, your entire family.

How do you stop yourself from stressing? Take a long-term view. The first week passes quickly. Almost as quickly, in fact, as the first few months of your child’s life. (Remember how much of that sucked too, even as some of the best moments of your life were being made?)

It is a good deed to treat your au pair with care and compassion. It is also – as simple as it may sound – good business. If you had a new employee at any other job, you wouldn’t expect him or her to know how to use the copy machine or log onto the computer system without being taught. Why expect that your au pair knows how to turn on your stove or dishwasher?

Invest some time, and you will thank yourself later. Or, as I said above, if you have the right attitude, the first won’t actually suck. It will simply be the first stage in an important process of giving your family and au pair an amazing year.

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Posted in New to Au Pairs, The Basics, Family Relations, Taking a Step Back, Transitions

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Are You Going to Cry?

Posted on January 26, 2011 | 3 Comments

A friend recently asked me if I am going to cry when our au pair of two years leaves in a few weeks. I realized that I hadn’t thought about it, but the first thing that popped into my head was, “Well, yes, of course I am going to cry. Why wouldn’t I cry?” Maybe it won’t be in front of her, but I will cry for sure. I may already be crying when I get to the end of this post.

She shoveled our driveway this morning with all the snow, you know? She did it because she said that’s what we should do for each other. I try to make it up to her one way or another, but she does it because she’s a mensch (a person of integrity), not to curry favor or out of any sense of obligation. I was at work already when the snow started, my husband was out of town, and she wanted to help out. She wanted to contribute to the family. She knows she is part of our family. With us, this isn’t just au pair program brochure bullshit. She knows that our house is her house, and our lives will never be the same for having been touched by her. Pretty soon, she will not be our au pair, she will be an honorary Aunt, who happens to live far away but loves you just the same.

I use the Yiddish word “mensch” on purpose because, you see, our au pair is a Bosnian Muslim. We first were a bit nervous that she may not want to match with a Jewish family. Her application actually said she had “no religion”, but knowing something about geography we knew enough to ask. She said, “Well, I am Muslim.” And then paused to hear what I would say. I said, “Good, well, I want my children to grow up in a world where Jews and Muslims can get along, so where better to start than at home?”

I meant it. And I continue to mean it. One day my children will meet someone who says all Muslims are the same, and they will say, “No way. You have no idea what you are talking about. How many have you ever known like they are your own?”

My children cling to her. They come running and screaming when they see her. They can hardly imagine a day without her, yet they know the end is approaching. The goodbyes do not begin on the last day. They take at least a month. Rather than awkward, distanced moments as some adults use to deal with impending separation, children hang on. They give it their all, soaking up every last moment of beauty and comfort and joy and tickling and love and … Emina.

OK, now I am really crying. It will not be the last time.

Emina, we love you. Without end.

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Posted in Family Relations, Transitions, True-to-Life

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Her First Time

Posted on January 20, 2011 | 3 Comments

Do you remember what your first time was like? Your first time hiring a nanny, babysitter or au pair, I mean. You were probably nervous as hell about leaving your child home alone with someone else. How was it all going to work? Would you be able to handle it? What if you forgot something? You may have left laborious notes about where you were going to be, what to do in an emergency, etc. and then called home every half hour just to see if things were going right.

Months or even years later, you are now in the position to welcome another au pair to your home. She may be your second, third or fifth au pair. You may have had good experiences or rotten ones. But remember – she probably hasn’t had any encounters with American families and has never been in an au pair program. She has childcare experience, but in a very different context. She also may have never used a microwave, dishwasher or garbage disposal before. In all these aspects and more, it’s her first time.

Some au pairs are visibly nervous about coming to the U.S. or starting their au pair jobs. Others think or say they are fine, but the nerves come out in other ways. (Like our au pair who kept having “accidents” when she first arrived. She’s been great ever since.) The best thing you can do as a host parent is to simply be aware of the situation. There’s really nothing you can do to make the nerves go away, and you don’t want to cater to them either, as you just may make it worse.

I have spoken elsewhere on this blog – and most au pair agencies will tell you – that having an au pair handbook helps smooth the process. Having something special in the au pair’s room, even a small welcome basket of toiletries, will also make her feel at home. Some families also make welcome cards or signs for the new au pair.

I like to tell our new au pairs that they can call their family as soon as they arrive (or after relaxing for a while) and then have some quiet time, unless they want to be with us right away. I know that they have been waiting for months for their first day to arrive, then anxiously awaiting the training to finish so they could move from their hotel accommodations into the room they will occupy for the next year. Au pairs also generally have a lot of anxiety about the family with whom they have matched – will the family be as welcoming in person as on the phone? Did they get into a good situation?

Once these fears have calmed – which may even be on the first day – and the culture shock has worn off a bit, your au pair should be ready for what the year brings.

Upcoming Posts on Your Old Au Pair vs. Your New Au Pair and When Your Kids Say They Don’t Want a New Au Pair

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Posted in Family Relations, Taking a Step Back, Transitions

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New Year; Old (Au Pair) Traditions

Posted on January 3, 2011 | 3 Comments

As the first business day of the New Year, you may finally have gotten started on your resolutions… or not. The change of the calendar is an arbitrary deadline. Some people feel that they have a clean slate. Others feel that nothing has really changed.

Contrast this with the very real change from one au pair to the next. A person who has been living in your house as part of your family for a year (or two) will be leaving, and a new person – who may be very different in every way – is coming to fill the same role. Depending on the nature of your relationship with the old au pair, this change may be welcome or unwanted. In some cases, if you have grown particularly attached, it may even be dreaded or feared.

I would like to talk more about transitions in later posts, including about how your children may feel, and I welcome input from other moms and counselors on the subject. For now, I simply offer this advice:  for the new year, keep old traditions.

One example may be that you buy the same type of welcoming gift from one au pair to the next. One gift I love to give our new au pairs is a calendar – it is infinitely useful. For many years, I thought that I should try to be “unique” each time with each new au pair, but I kept concluding that the most appealing calendar was one of New York City (since we live a commutable distance from Manhattan).  So each year I bought another variation on the same theme.

This year I realized that, instead of trying to be different, it is quite a comfort to make the same preparations as I have in years past. It puts me in the right mindset to welcome someone new, tying this moment of this day – as we bought the calendar at the local bookstore – to that same moment each previous year. At the same time, I remember the joy and excitement of welcoming a new person into our homes and lives.

Happy New Year!!

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Posted in Family Relations

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Culture Shock: Our Daily Bread

Posted on December 8, 2010 | 3 Comments

Heard from an au pair –

Did you realize how many different kinds of bread you have on your shelves in the U.S. and how almost every single one has corn syrup in it? How can you eat bread with corn syrup? I have to go to another store to buy it, a specialty store. I just can’t stand the taste of what you have in the grocery stores here. It’s all watered down and made sweet by the added flavors. Who had the idea that this tastes good? We may have less choices back home, but at least they are good choices.

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Posted in Cultural Exchange

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What’s Your Favorite Au Pair with Flair Post?

Posted on December 5, 2010 | 2 Comments

Hey Au Pair with Flair readers,

A small request –

Please email or post a comment letting me know your favorite post(s) since I started this blog in April. Just taking stock….

Thanks!

 

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Posted in Writing About Au Pairs

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Writing About Au Pairs: Lots of Good Stuff There

Posted on November 30, 2010 | 2 Comments

It’s a funny thing to write about au pairs. The other day I was talking to someone I met at my yoga studio. One of the yoga teachers introduced us. She said, “Hey, you are both writers!”

The person told me a few of the topics he covers and then said, “What about you? What do you write about?”

I told him that I am writing a book about au pairs. “Well, I was heavy into the book, but it has gotten very busy at work lately, so now I am mostly blogging.”

He had an incredulous look on his face. “You write about what? You mean, like, uh, nannies?” The conversation kind of grinded to a halt, until I changed the subject.

*****

I never expected when I started blogging that I would be recognized as “that au pair mom blogger.” I have actually met a few people in my hometown who tell me that they knew of me before they knew me, because they had read my blog. Unlike the person I mention above, fortunately most of the people who say that to me consider it a compliment. Nonetheless, it is a little funny to be known for this topic. People sometimes have the idea that I write about au pairs because I don’t have anything else to say.

So the question remains – why write about au pairs?

Well, here’s the amazing thing. There are a lot of very interesting topics related to au pairs, from family relations to international relations. I have many more ideas cued up in my brain than I will (hopefully) ever have time to write. I say “hopefully” because as much as I enjoy blogging, I am glad to have a busy life that keeps me away from it most of the time. Blogging is too addictive otherwise….

*****

Regarding au-pair related topics, just today I was talking with my own au pair, who will be going back home in a few months. We were discussing what kind of adjustment she will have when she gets there. It got me thinking about my book again – which has admittedly and sadly sat on my desk untouched for a few weeks – and the chapter I wrote about the “life cycle of au pairs.”

It was a difficult chapter to write, and it’s giving me some trouble stylistically. I haven’t decided if I will improve or delete it. I was trying to convey how the person you pick up the first day at the airport, bus station or other drop-off point is not the same one that will be with your family three, six or nine months down the line.

There is a traditional progression during the year, as au pairs gain more confidence, familiarity with the family and language fluency. On the other hand, there is great variety among au pairs. Some are homesick from the first day, and then it gets better. Some are fine all year but break down at the end. A few never miss their families at all, and they wonder if that is “normal.”

It is a hard thing to judge – what is normal about au pair life – because the very idea that a young woman in her late teens or early twenties would spend an entire year in a foreign culture, away from her family and friends, is already something unique. It is almost like asking what would be normal to feel if you were locked in an elevator for 24 hours or climbing Mount Everest. Au pairing is an intense experience, and everyone deals with it differently.

*****

So, yes, I write about au pairs.

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Posted in Family Relations, Writing About Au Pairs

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The Flip Side of Guilt: Gratitude

Posted on November 23, 2010 | 4 Comments

I had an entirely different post planned in my head than the one I am about to write. The post I envisioned referred to Caitlin Knight’s comment to my “I Feel Guilty for Having an Au Pair” post. I had already thought about discussing how the flip side of guilt is gratitude, and I wanted to work in some of her contributions. Yet I don’t have time for the post I had planned, and if I don’t write something now, I may not get time to post anything, and I will not be able to look back on this day and remember how I felt.

Each moment of my life is earmarked for something over the next few days – some of it simply earmarked as “spend time with my family” – but reserved nonetheless, so I may not post again until next week.

On this post, the gratitude I want to discuss is gratitude about how our au pair – and the au pair program generally – fills in the gap. You know the gap I mean. When mom can’t get to everything, and dad can’t either. So, with that long introduction, here goes my post:

I am entirely too busy to write this post. I felt as though I barely had time to breathe this morning (not literally, of course). From the moment I arrived at the office – about four hours ago – until I took a break to grab some lunch, I have been busy. Sending emails, answering calls, checking voicemails, revising contracts, sitting in meetings, doing other lawyer-type stuff. Because Thanksgiving is approaching and year end is around the corner, everyone wants everything done now.

It’s funny, the other job at which I was as busy as I am sometimes now was back when I used to sell shoes during summers and school breaks in college. I needed to hustle up and down the stairs, remembering numerous different sizes, styles and colors – that one is code 5627 on the second floor and that is code 4912 in the back of the first floor, and that one we sold out of all the size 8s already, etc. – then run out to the shoppers and line them all up in the correct order, smiling all the while. At least back then, the worst I could do was bring the wrong shoes!

So, my sense of gratitude is ….

I am grateful that this morning when the school nurse called to say that my son needed to go home because he was complaining of a sore throat that – in the midst of all of this chaos and my own complaints of coughing, a headache and the accompanying lack of sleep - I did not need to run over to his school and pick him up. That means that I didn’t need to drop everything I was doing, risk annoying my colleagues, blow deadlines and try to finish whatever I could later … later when? There is no convenient “later” when it’s two days before Thanksgiving.

Being a good host mom (or at least I try), I called my husband first to see if he could get my son from school rather than spring more hours on our au pair last minute. He was on a conference call that was scheduled to last another hour.

Being a great au pair, when I did call her, my au pair picked up her cell phone right away and said that “of course she could go pick up my son from school, and what else did I need?”

You know those Mastercard commercials where they talk about all the money you spend on different things and then the last bit about how the satisfaction you get after the investment is priceless….? That’s what my au pair’s words meant to me this morning. “What else do you need? How else can I help?” It makes all of the minor complaints I have about the simple realities of hosting an au pair – number one being the lack of privacy of having someone live in your home – pale in comparison. What nanny would be available on a moment’s notice? (Not one I could afford.) What grandma, even? (Not ours, who are great and helpful but certainly don’t wait by the phone for me to call – not that I would want that either!)

I dare say that without an au pair - given my life circumstances – I wouldn’t be sitting in the office chair I am in today. There are too many of these unforeseen events, even if “too many” means only three or four a year. Murphy’s Law being intact, they always fall exactly when we are least available to deal with them.

Finally, if I wasn’t in this chair, it would mean one less mommy lawyer to be there for all the young women professional hopefuls in the world, looking at us old hats to try to figure out how to do it all. (Not that I have completely figured it out, but I do OK.) I consider this an important part of my contribution to the world – acting as a mentor and guide where I can. It’s a big part of why I write this blog.

So thanks to my au pair and thanks to the au pair program. I am truly grateful.

Time for a quick break – and then back to my busy day!

End to the post that was not what I expected but is what it is.

Happy Thanksgiving, all. Thanks for reading.

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Posted in Childcare, Taking a Step Back, True-to-Life

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Should You Host an Au Pair with a Newborn?

Posted on November 19, 2010 | 2 Comments

This post is for my friend Andie, and anyone else who has ever wondered if she should host an au pair who would care for her newborn baby. If you are new to this blog, I am NOT an au pair expert, and I don’t work for any agency. I’m simply a mom – one who has hosted au pairs for the last six years.

Here are my thoughts:

1) If you are a new parent – in other words, if this is your first child – and you don’t have extensive experience with newborns, I would definitely not match with an au pair during this time. Let’s face it, babies are very complicated. They keep you up at all hours of the night. Once you figure out how they work, they grow and change. In your ensuing loss of sleep and trying to get ahead of the 8-ball, you are not in the right frame of mind to break someone in who may not even know which tap in your faucet is hot and which is cold. This is less about whether an au pair is capable of taking care of your child, and more about whether you are in the frame of mind to train and teach someone at this stage of your life, while you are still figuring things out this parenting thing yourself.

2) If you ignore my advice in #1 – which is your prerogative, of course! – or if you are hiring for an au pair to care for a newborn who is your second or third child or are already really familiar with newborns, then an au pair may make sense. In that case, I would make absolutely sure that the au pair has extensive experience not only with children but also with children of the exact same age as your child will be when she arrives. Knowing how to care for a six-month-old is not the same as caring for a newborn. Also, make sure that her experience is not only in a daycare center, where she may have been one among many teachers, but also as a primary caregiver for a child. Ask her all the important questions about feeding, bathing, etc.

3) If you know that you plan to have an au pair once your newborn arrives, I would plan for her to arrive a little early (maybe a month, if you can afford it) and start caring for your older child(ren). This way, she will already be familiar with everything in your house and town, and you will be used to having an au pair in the house, when the big event happens. She will also be able to help your older child(ren) with the transition.

4) Finally, we had an au pair when my daughter was born. She was with us while I was pregnant, and she developed a hugely protective attitude toward me. Thankfully, she had gained a lot of experience with a newborn by caring for her sister’s child. She made the process much easier, and a lot of the time I would have her work during the day just so I could catch up on my sleep! She also had the energy to play with my son – the big brother – at the times when I was just too worn out to be running around with him. Although there are some limits on how au pairs can work with newborns (i.e., you cannot leave them alone with a baby under three months of age), the benefits of having live-in help may more than make up for any inconvenience.

I was initially very nervous about the idea of having an au pair with a newborn. I was so afraid about the idea of having such a tiny little baby in the arms of someone I had never met. Fortunately, the au pair I mention above was extremely calm and capable, and from the moment I met her I knew she would do a great job. Again, the key is to interview well, and remember that if your instincts are telling you – after someone’s arrival – that she is not the right person, you can always look for another match.

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Posted in Childcare, Health and Safety, Interviewing/Matching, The Basics

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