<p>Anyone ever used one? Can American kids go to other countries and be au pairs? Seriously, I’ve only heard of them on TV, but I have recently found out that they do exist and there are very many that work in my city, New Orleans.</p>
<p>Yes, they exist. I have two friends who used them. It’s a mixed bag. You provide room and board and small stipend. They provide 40 hours or so of childcare (not supposed to be more). It’s a limited position, which is good if it’s not working well, and sad if the kids love her (or him). The issue for a couple of au pairs my friends had is that you are basically parenting an adolescent, and that can be diificult. Au pairs are not professional nannies (true au pairs, anyway) and so expectations and reality can clash. Some of my friends’ au pairs became dear friends of the family, though. </p>
<p>I used many, some lasted the full year and others a few weeks. I’m still in touch with 3 of them. I used an agency that was suppose to screen and provide references. I hired thru Au Pairs of America. I know others who used Utah agencies.</p>
<p>My D was interested in doing this and family of mine in the UK have used and recommended greataupair.com. She has not followed up though so I don’t have any more info. Bookworm I tried googling the one you mention and it doesn’t show up. Is it aupairsinamerica?</p>
<p>I have friends who hosted aupairs for many years, and most of the time it worked really well. The couple were originally from other countries so they had a non-American upbringing and perspective which may have been helpful. Both had traveled extensively when they were younger. There were a few who did not work out at all, and more than one car was totaled by one aupair. It is interesting to note, that the two that really didn’t fit and were very problematic were both from France, and it was so bad that my friend decided never to host a French aupair again (more below) – and she is a very open minded individual. They had several from Norway/Finland/Germany that all worked very well. I was the local babysitter for this family when I was a teen, so got to know several of the aupairs and am still friends with one, 25+ years later. </p>
<p>So, a tidbit about one of the aupairs that didn’t work out. I was asked to cover for her one weekend when the parents were out of town for the entire week. I arrived on Friday afternoon, about 4pm, as arranged. No one was home. Shortly after, the phone rings, and it was the aupair telling me she was running late, and could I go to such and such park to pick up the kids, oh, and could I also pick up the other kids she was “watching”. Completely puzzled and upset, I raced over to this park that was about 30 minutes away, and start searching the playground for the kids. Find the youngest (about 6) hiding in a big concrete tube with his sisters (about 10 & 12) nearby. I took them, and the other kids who lived near the park to the other kids house until their parents got home. While waiting, I questioned the kids about why on earth were they at this park unattended. Turns out she regularly dropped them off at parks or movie theaters for hours (they had been at this park for about 6 hours when I got there) while she went off and did whatever. She even took them to a local hotel late at night, and left them in the lobby while she met up with her boyfriend. (She was a bit older than most aupairs they had – 18 or so). I was appalled. First off, I would never leave any children like this, but I had been babysitting these kids since the eldest was 4 and love them like family. Once home, the aupair shows up, and asks me not to mention anything to the parents before she heads off on her weekend away. Yeah, I don’t think so. I immediately called the parents, they cut their trip short, and when she got back from where ever, her belongings were all packed up and ready for her to leave. Moral to the story is that aupairs can be amazing, but be responsible, talk to your kids regularly, and make sure all is well throughout the time you are hosting. It more often than not is a great experience, but you can’t assume it’s all good. </p>
<p>My DD did the au pair thing in Europe for family of a friend, she was offered a year long position, but only wanted 6 months. She did recommend a another friend who did stay for a year or so.</p>
<p>My DD wanted fluency in the language, it was an okay, but not fantastic situation, small town, not much time off, nothing to do in free time anyway and the wi-fi was not in her room only a hall, which was annoying. For her, the kids were pretty spoiled which was not that difficult to deal with, but dealing with them in a foreign language AND in front of the parents (who did not work) was weird. All in all she is glad she did it, but wished it had been more fun.</p>
<p>I’ve seen a few of them in my area over the years–usually working for families with very young children/babies.</p>
<p>My daughter was an au pair a couple years ago. After a college semester in Italy, she found an au pair job in Spain for the summer (thru greataupairs). She had a wonderful experience with a very nice family. Part of her duties included elder-sitting for a grandma with Alzheimer’s. After she told her friend about it, her friend found a job thru the same site. (The mom D’s friend worked for was a celebrity in Germany.) These jobs don’t pay much, but can make for a very nice cultural/language learning experience.</p>
<p>I agree with the poster that said it is a mixed bag. Indeed, it can work out, but I know of many situations where it did not. I would be reluctant to rely on an au pair to care for an infant or a very young child (the Louise Woodward case was tragic.) The problem seems to be that the goal for a lot of au pairs is experiencing life in the U.S. and having a good time. Of course the primary goal of the host family is professional care for their children. The two do not always mix well.</p>
<p>Au pairs are not professional, reliable childcare. They are supplemental. If you work 8-5 and need rock-solid, consistent, professional childcare, forget about the au pair and hire a nanny. If you are an affluent SAHM or working part-time, and you have the willingness to mentor a young person, it can be very enriching to have an au pair. But au pairs are by definition auxiliary, not primary, childcare.</p>
<p>Most contracts that I am familiar with provide for 40 hours of work per week. Au pair by definition simply means “on par” or “equal to”. While I would not delegate primary childcare to an au pair, many people do.</p>
<p>I didn’t want to sound too negative, but au pairs are a mixed bag. My German gal was really good. She was bright, enthusiastic, from an very educated family. She went on to get a Ph.D., her sister an M.D. Her parents visited and were great. so many negatives that I moved to be near my parents. If your DD decides to be an au pair abroad, make sure she has a contract, specifying her hours, her weekly fee, etc. Some families abused their au pairs. </p>
<p>OP, it was 27 year ago, so that could have been the name.</p>
<p>The situation I just came across involved a family with 10 children who could not find reliable help. Woman interested in hiring two au pairs, and in fact, had two girls coming over from China. She would have to provide housing for the girls, where they each had to have their own bedroom, but could share a bathroom. The 10 children range in age from 3 to 15, equal number male and female. The Chinese girls did not drive, and she either had to find a house big enough for the kids and the au pairs, or provide walking distance apartments for the girls. This mom does not work, and the husband is in the music industry. The family had had live in help in the past, a young girl who was a family friend, but she had since moved on. I can’t imagine she expected an au pair to only work 40 hours a week, unless perhaps she was going to work the two au pairs in shifts.</p>
<p>We used au pairs for six or seven years. As for bookworm, it was a mixed bag. When it was good, it was very, very good, and when it was bad it was horrid. We had three au pairs that we adored, two of whom we are still in touch with (and the third we wish we were). We had two that were alright (in one case, after a rocky start, and the other a near-great until a rocky end that left us explaining to her long-term fiance that she had run away with another guy). One unmitigated disaster. One slow train wreck. One who was OK with us, but who quit after a month.</p>
<p>Great: Epic, vicious Monopoly games. A two-hour discussion about who would win if Smaug and the Balrog fought.</p>
<p>Great: Our last au pair, who had almost nothing to do but to be around when the kids came home from school, did an incredible job training the best-behaved dog we ever had.</p>
<p>Great: Our kids learned a fair amount about a bunch of Northern European countries.</p>
<p>Not great: Telling our kids (then 5 and 7) that they would burn in hell for all eternity if they didn’t accept Jesus Christ as their savior. (In her defense, the au pair was telling them that because she loved them and didn’t want them to burn in hell for all eternity. It was going to be fine with her if we, the parents, burned in hell for all eternity.)</p>
<p>Not great: The gay boy whom everybody in the world, including our kids, could identify as gay, except for he himself. Five minutes after meeting him, my wife’s hairdresser asked, “Is it possible he doesn’t know he’s gay?” That wasn’t the problem, exactly, but we felt it made a big contribution to the progressive depression that ultimately turned him into a near-vegetable.</p>
<p>Not great: Repeatedly coming home at 3 am blind drunk and unable to work the door lock.</p>
<p>No one becomes an au pair because they were on track to be a nuclear physicist. Lots of them are aimless and not so smart, but they can be sweet and good with kids, and you can see some of them start to grow into themselves. (Or not, see above.) Our best ones were smart and had some decent, secret reason to do what they were doing. One was trying to get away from an ex-boyfriend who had impregnated her and then stalked her. One had just discovered that his absent father was Jewish, and he wanted to live with a Jewish family to see what that was like. One just wanted to go somewhere where everyone her age wasn’t drunk 24-7, which meant she had to get out of Iceland.</p>
<p>It helps a lot if you are tolerant of older teenagers, if your wife doesn’t feel threatened by having absolutely stunning 19-year-old Scandinavians living in her house, and if your husband can keep his hands off the Scandinavians. You do have to do some parenting, but it’s a lot easier when they aren’t your kids and you aren’t their parents.</p>
<p>We chose to go with European au pairs, vs. the Mormon au pairs that were also popular at the time. The Mormon girls had better English, but they were basically time bombs who had been shipped East so that they didn’t destroy the moral fabric of their home towns in Utah when they, inevitably, went off.</p>
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<p>We were living abroad when DS was little and planning to spend a few months back in the US. We looked into bringing our nanny as an au pair, since this was about the only way to bring her into the country legally. One thing I noticed was that the literature from the agencies aimed at the American parents sold it as quality child care. The literature aimed at potential au pairs sold it as an educational experience and good time. </p>
<p>One of my good friends is going to be an au pair in Ireland this upcoming fall. She’s a special needs teacher that just needs a break from working in that environment. That’s all I know but it’s certainly possible for an American to be an au pair :)</p>
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<p>Interesting. You can’t have it both ways.</p>
<p>The German aupairs are – handsdown, no argument – the best. They come with the right mix of education, westernization and aimlessness (in Germany, you have this extra year after high school, before university, where you are supposed to go out and do something), so they aren’t too demanding or high strung. If you can find them, the East Germans are the best. The Eastern Europeans have a chip on their shoulders and never want to work too hard. Many applications will showcase that the aupair plays piano and you might think, great free piano lessons – forget that. They hardly play when they get to you. You really can never tell beforehand from the interview or the application whether the fit really works – they just have to live with you for you to tell. Stories of the dads running off with the stunning au pair are true, but rare.</p>
<p>But that is the truth. My only au pair who could drive had a b/f in Boston. She’d come home at 4 a.m. Imagine what she was like at 8 am? My favorite was a German girl who missed the cut off for grad school by a few points. This experience for her was a way to hope her scores would be good the following year. Her English was abysmal at first, but was good by 3 months. That is when I knew how smart she was. She is now a PhD, working in a university setting. My French au pair has visited with me a few times, as recently as a few years ago. We were discussing colleges for her daughter! Then, I had my 60 y.o. babysitter, who took my job because her sister worked nearby and could drive her home. A few years ago, she found us on the internet, and we’ve been corresponding since. I would come home from work at 8 p.m., and the condo was clean, my 3 y.o. bathed and content, and dinner left for me. I actually cried. Had I met this lovely woman before deciding to sell my condo and move south, I probably would have had her for years. She felt the same way about me and my son. Such is life. There really are some great people out there.</p>
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<p>You can have it both ways, actually, but it takes thought and work. If the au pair isn’t getting personal growth and some fun out of the experience, there won’t be a lot of quality child care going on. If the au pair is getting those things, the child care can be just fine (sometimes). If the au pair is getting way too much of those things . . . . </p>
<p>On par with or equal to is important if you are truly interested in having an au pair. They are supposed to be treated as a member of the family. Sometimes Americans don’t quite get the concept. Although, we do know some American girls who have gone overseas for a year and very much enjoyed the experience. But, I’m sure there are horror stories all around. </p>