Reply to Would you use an AP for young infant care?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes - we're on our second au pair (second year in the AP program) and the first started when our younger child was 4.5 months old.  It was an amazing experience. We had a nanny when my first child was an infant and the au pair was better because we could be more flexible with her schedule as the baby's needs changed day-by-day.

We did several things that ensured we had an amazing au pair for our infant: Gave ourselves tons of time to select so that we didn't feel rushed, and interviewed a ton of candidates (over 20). Also we only focused on: (1) older au pairs who had graduated from college, (2) with infant experience, (3) and excellent English (so nothing was lost in translation, scary for safety when it comes to an infant). Our au pair was from Colombia.  She was incredibly mature and loving. I had no hesitations about her being with the baby at all.

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Could you let me know what Au Pair agency you used? And if you have any tips on your process of selection, I would be extremely thankful. We are considering an au pair for our second child who will be 3 months old when he is alone with her for most of the week. We unfortunately can't afford a full-time nanny salary on our own and have considered nanny share, but it has been hard to find families matching time and distance. Thank you for your post![/quote]

Np.  We are with Cultural Care.  We screened very carefully - for example, we really made sure that the girls we were interviewing had actual experience alone with an infant for an extended period of time. Some of them say they are willing to work with an infant but when you explore their profiles they've never been on their own. And then when we did the interviews, we dedicated a lot of time to them.  We did the three step interview that Cultural Care suggests (with each interview getting more and more in depth). I believe we used their suggested questions and added some of our own. For example, we also asked a lot of situational questions like, "tell me about a specific time when you had a hard time taking care of the baby. What happened? What did you do?"  Their answers told us if their English was strong enough to really understand nuance and if they really had what it took to take care of an infant.

We're on our second au pair now and it's another good match.  We're amazed at the stories she shares from her au pair friends though.  In one family, where she was friends with the former au pair, she was just telling us how quickly the family chose the new au pair - and they're going into rematch already.  I think you have to put a lot of time and effort into finding the right person. You get out of it what you put in.[/quote]

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