• Home
  • Our Shop
  • About Us
    • About MKB
    • Our Shop
    • MKB Board
    • Editorial Board and MKB Administrators
    • Our Contributors
    • For Bloggers: Join MKB
    • Books and Products from Our Members
    • Cultural Resources
    • Contact Us
  • Product Promotion Services
  • Blog Hops & Series
    • Holidays Around the World
      • Martin Luther King Day
      • Chinese New Year
      • Purim
      • Passover
      • Easter Around the World
      • Ramadan
      • Hajj (Eid al Adha)
      • Rosh Hashanah
      • Day of the Dead
      • Diwali
      • Hanukkah
      • Christmas in Different Lands
    • Heritage Months
      • Black History Month
      • Women’s History Month
      • Asian-Pacific Islander Heritage Month
      • Middle Eastern and North African Heritage Month
      • Hispanic Heritage Month
      • Native American Heritage Month
    • Blogging Carnivals
    • Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop
    • Global Learning for Kids
  • Resources for Raising Global Citizens
  • Privacy Policy

Multicultural Kid Blogs

For families and educators raising world citizens, through arts, activities, crafts, food, language, and love.

Five Reasons to Hire an Au pair

September 4, 2018 by Laure

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

5 reasons to hire an au pair | Multicultural Kid Blogs

An Au pair? What’s that? Why would you hire an Au Pair? Generally speaking, an Au pair is a boy or girl from another country that comes to live with your family for a specific period of time. You will offer him/her free room and board, pocket money, and language lessons, in exchange for them taking care of your children and helping around the house.

To me, an Au pair is more than just someone you hire to look after your kids.

I live in France, in a French family and French environment.  Some days it is really hard to teach my children English all by myself. The main reason we hired an Au Pair was to help me with the English teaching but it provided me more: our lives changed for the better! Here are five reasons why you should definitely hire one too:

1. The Au pair can speak a second language with your kids

If you are like me and the language you are teaching to your children is not your first language, you know it can be hard to communicate effectively. You are unsure of word pronunciation and your grammar isn’t perfect at all. Every day, you are wondering if it’s a good idea to do that…

When you choose an Au pair, you can choose someone from a country speaking the target language. In my case, that’s English. So I searched for people from the USA, Canada, Ireland, UK, South Africa, Australia. We were lucky to welcome two different girls in our house and family. The first one, Caitlin, came from Canada and the second one, Ela came from Slovakia but lived in the UK when she was younger.

When I contact an Au pair, I am clear from the beginning: they will have to speak only English with the kids, not French. But when we are all together, we speak French or a mixture of English & French. That’s the deal!

2. Learn a new country, a new culture

Before Caitlin, we did not know anything about Canada. But after a whole summer talking about her country; the system of education, sports, music, food, politicians, healthcare, we fell in love with her country! Also, the kids got very interested in another culture! They drew lots of Canadian flags, tasted maple syrup, learned about native animals in that country like beavers or bears and heard a lot about hockey. If you ask my boys, they can now show you on a map where Canada is!

With our Au pair from Slovakia, we also learned about landscapes, skiing, the education system. She also brought some cookies and candies from her country. Because she arrived at the end of June, a few days before the end of school, she did a presentation of Slovakia to my son’s class! And of course, now my kids are able to locate Slovakia on a map and how to draw the flag!

So, as you can understand, it was very interesting for the kids but also for us, the parents.

3. The Au pair takes care of your children while you are not home

Afternoon snack every day in the park

There is another reason I decided to hire an Au pair. Summer holidays last two months (July and August). Most of the time, we, parents can take only take three weeks of holiday during the summer. So for the last five weeks, we must pay for private childcare or take the kids to grandma’s house.

Every year, it is the same nightmare. “Where are we gonna put the kids during the summer? Do we ask the grandmas again? Do we send them to childcare? How many weeks? How much is a week? That’s the price for only 1 kid, wow! When is the registration? Oh, it’s already done and now it’s too late! Oh gosh !”

It is simply more cost-efficient to hire an Au pair.

One tip for you, when I write the contract, I always include the fact that during the summer, I will ask the Au pair,  to look after the kids during 1 or 2 evenings only, to go to the movies or restaurant with my husband. And that is a great moment for us!

4. The Au pair organizes lots of activities with the kids

Aupair girl
Caitlin playing with Liam

More than you would probably do! When I am home with my kids, I have to be honest with you, I don’t always take the time to play with them.  Sometimes they spend the day watching TV or playing football and I always feel guilty about it.

But that’s different for the Au pair. Because that’s her job! She comes to your house with many ideas. She can plan at least 1 activity per day. My kids love to be busy and this summer with our Au pair they were so happy to have a different activity every day.

To give you some examples, Ela brought big colored chalks and she let the children draw what they wanted on the road a few times. She organized treasure hunts, built a village with papers or masks in paper mache. They also raised a colony of ants!

5. The Au pair can help parents learn too

That’s true! Even she is here to teach a language to your kids, you will also benefit from her. Ela had quite a good level of French but because she was not fluent, we mixed French and English during all summer. I learned new expressions and new vocabulary.

It also felt good to be able to speak a little bit of English with a native speaker every day.  The rest of the year, I am wedded to speaking French.

Time to say goodbye to Ela in Paris Montparnasse

As you can see, taking an Au Pair was one of the best ideas for my family. I have been lucky to have 2 wonderful experiences with 2 different Au pairs. We are still in contact with both of them and they are now like family. They know they are welcome home anytime and we will always be in touch with them.

I hope you and your family have similar great experiences!

 

Related posts

Language Learning for Parents: 8 Tips to Learn Like a Bilingual Kid
Tips on Foreign Language Learning With Young Children
6 Tips to Motivate and Support Your School-Age Bilingual Child

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts

Laure

High Five Family is a story about a French mom of 3 kids, living in France who has always wanted to raise bilingual kids (French/English). But married to a French husband, her dream couldn't come true... She only had 2 solutions: #1 find a new dad who speak English #2 teaching herself English to the kids, with fun and creativity !! Let's find out what solutions has been chosen !! To find out more www.highfive-family.com

Latest posts by Laure (see all)

  • Five Reasons to Hire an Au pair - September 4, 2018
  • 2 French Recipes for a Light Lunch - May 21, 2018
  • 5 Reasons to Geocache with Your Family - April 20, 2018

Filed Under: Teaching Languages Tagged With: Au Pair, aupair, childcare, children, culture, language, learning a second language, summer, teaching language

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Comments

  1. mariyajohn says

    September 7, 2018 at 5:17 am

    This is really interesting..I haven’t heard about this before!
    I think this is one of the best ideas that we must do once in a lifetime to experience a different culture, a new country and so on..
    Thank you so much for all the good content you share.

    • Laure says

      September 7, 2018 at 5:36 am

      Thanks ! I think I’m gonna do it every summer, not any longer because I don’t have any spare room in my house so my 2 boys have to share the same tiny bedroom for 2 months to give 1 bedroom to the aupair.

Follow Us!

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on Google+Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on PinterestFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on Instagram

Anti-Bullying Resource FREE Download

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Grab Our Button!

grab button for Multicultural Kid Blogs
<div class="multicultural-kid-blogs-button" style="width: 200px; margin: 0 auto;"> <a href="https://multiculturalkidblogs.com/" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://multiculturalkidblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/button-take-3.jpg" alt="Multicultural Kid Blogs" width="200" height="200" /> </a> </div>
Multicultural Children's Book Day Co-Host

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Lifestyle Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT