Au Pair - what you wish you had known before they joined your family

[lmutton]

Hi all

We are currently looking for an au pair to join our family. I would love any advice from those who have had an au pair join their family.

Is there anything you wish you had known before they joined or wish you had done differently during the matching process? Is there anything you wish you had told your au pair before you asked them to join your family? Basic household rules you maybe forgot to mention but wish you had?

And any tips for when our au pair arrives?

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

lmutton wrote:Hi all

We are currently looking for an au pair to join our family. I would love any advice from those who have had an au pair join their family.

Is there anything you wish you had known before they joined or wish you had done differently during the matching process? Is there anything you wish you had told your au pair before you asked them to join your family? Basic household rules you maybe forgot to mention but wish you had?

And any tips for when our au pair arrives?

Thank you!

Personal chemistry is hugely important, don’t ignore any doubts you have on that front. Be extremely transparent about expectations before matching, and encourage the au pair to do the same.

[Anonymous]

We had four successful au pairs. My advice is to hire more for personality fit than experience unless you are hiring for infant care. For me an upbeat happy personality goes a long way toward making the au pair easy to live with and increases the odds they will be happy here. Also make sure their English is very good. Struggling today communicate just makes everything harder. FWIW we found Costa Rica and Sweden very good for English and younger au pairs. Good drivers too.

[Anonymous]

Ask in the AP section of the nanny forum. You’ll get better/more responses there, and you can look at other (relevant) threads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ask in the AP section of the nanny forum. You’ll get better/more responses there, and you can look at other (relevant) threads.

Agree. And Jeff will probably delete or lock this thread bc he can’t move threads across forums.

[Anonymous]

We had good luck with Germans--good English skills and not a huge culture gap.

Set expectations and rules clearly up front. You can always loosen up, but very hard to tighten up. Be clear on how much you want/expect them to be "family" vs just living with you. That varied from au pair to au pair with us, and varied a bit based on their age. German au pairs were pretty independent pretty young, more so than some other countries in my experience. Especially ones from larger cities, they have quite a bit of autonomy early on. I'm sure the other North European countries are similar.