Reply to Ugh...really down on the au pair program. Anyone having a good experience out there?

Forum Index » Au Pair Discussion

Reply to "Ugh...really down on the au pair program. Anyone having a good experience out there?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Actually, the big plans usually have included traveling and learning English/studying.  But they haven't been generalities with these APs: They have been very specific and included high-set goals.  Two of the three had already picked out the courses they wanted to take prior to coming here and used the opportunity to take classes here to study new areas that they thought they might be interested in but hadn't studied before, and each went back to Germany with different plans for her university studies than she had come here with, as a result of the coursework she took here.  All three had big ambitions for travel including specific cities, specific museums, and even specific art collections.  For the two 19 year old Germans, they had clear and extensive lists about where they wanted to travel to and some idea of when they wanted to go.  With clear, intentional, thought-out plans like these, on top of the very clear intention to use the year to gain independence and come into their own as young women, they weren't going to let a little homesickness at Christmas get in their way.

So far we are three for three using high academic achievement, ambition, and well-formulated goals among our criteria for matching.  This is a much better ratio than we had in our first four years of hosting, when we used age (23+) and other very childcare-specific criteria for our selection and ended up with APs that maybe had better "experience with children" but maybe didn't see aupairing as just a year's job so maybe didn't have the quick-study/going-to-make-the-most-of-this-one-great-year-of-my-life attitude that we have found works for our family (but certainly not all) so well.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics