This is a post about how to make your au pair life easier.
Being an au pair is an extraordinary experience but it comes with its own set of challenges. For starters, you move abroad on your own at a very young age. You may speak the language, maybe not. You live where you work and probably have to start working the day after you arrive with not much time to acclimatise.*
*I have a podcast (in Portuguese!) where I interview au pairs around the world and once I interviewed one who moved right in the middle of Brazilian summer to the Swedish winter. He said he literally stepped inside the house and the family asked him to go do the dishes 🥲. He hadn’t even put his bags down!
But fear not! Here’s how to make the most of your au pair life and have the best year:
Set Boundaries Early
I can’t stress this enough: have a thorough chat before matching with your host family! Ask everything! The same way the family is choosing their au pair, you’re choosing the family. You don’t need to settle for the first one who picks you. make sure you establish clear expectations with your host family about working hours, responsibilities and personal time.
Build Your Own Life Outside Work
Wherever you are in the world, USA, Europe, Australia, it’s so important to enjoy your au pair life outside of work! Especially in the US where au pairs work full-time. It’s easy to spend the little free time you’ve got holed up in your bedroom trying to listen to the silence or catching up with folks at home. But make sure you’re not just working. You moved all the way to a different country for a reason. Take advantage! You don’t know when you’ll be back. Join a club, meet other au pairs, go for walks, take a class. See what your new country has to offer and immerse yourself in that culture!
Find Your Tribe
Living abroad gives you the chance to meet all kinds of people you probably wouldn’t meet back home. You can look for au pair groups on Facebook, join a sports/hobby/language club on MeetUp, take a class. The possibilities are endless but Facebook and MeetUp will definitely offer a lot of options.
Make sure to befriend au pairs too.
1) they’ll likely have similar free time and budget to yours in order to go explore and
2) no one else will understand the rollercoaster that is the au pair exchange programme like, well, another au pair!
Besides, having a support network is SO important! Unfortunately sometimes things don’t go as planned and you might have the bad luck of ending up with a not very nice family. There ARE lots of great families! I was an au pair 3 times and all my host families were different but wonderful in their own ways. However, a**holes exist and there are difficult families who don’t understand that you’re alone in their country. Having a support network for times of trouble will make a huge difference! Don’t forget to show up for them too =)
Don’t Spend All Your Money in One Go
Au Pairs already don’t make much. If you can, have an emergency fund before you set out on your au pair adventure and, while you’re at it, make sure you always have some money for a rainy day. I used to spend literally like there was no tomorrow. Things could’ve gone a lot worse for me… besides, I had so much crap I didn’t need that I ended up having to throw out or lug around. I still don’t know how I managed to board my flight back from the US after my year there… I’ll try to dig out a photo of the mountain of stuff I had back there to share here!
You might need a new gadget because yours broke, you might need a last minute flight home… or, if something goes wrong with your family, you might need to pay for a place to stay before you move to another. That shouldn’t happen. In rematch situations, you usually stay with your current family and/or area coordinator if in the US. BUT you just never know.
Trust me, having an emergency fund will save you a lot of headache!
Take Advantage of Playdates
Playdates are life!! You can get together with other au pairs, nannies or even moms and have some grown up chat while the kids play together instead of you having to provide all the entertainment. It gives you a little break and the keeps the kids happy.
Prioritise Communication with Your Host Family
It’s hard. Au pairs are in the very vulnerable position of living with their employers and kind of depending on them in a way… and your host family is only human too! First of all, make sure you discuss communication during interviews.
If you’re not happy about something, you can communicate it in a friendly way which should show the family they can do the same. People have different views and ways of doing things and a lot of times it’s not a matter of right or wrong, it’s just that: different. And your host family is not a mind reader! They might have no clue you’re unhappy so make sure you don’t just expect them to guess; talk!
But communication is not just about solving problems. Spend time with them, get to know them. That’ll help you coexisting as well – it’s not just about the language we speak but how we speak and different cultures will have different ways. For instance, Germans and Dutch are more direct which can come across as rude or aggressive if you’re not used to it. But, to be honest, as a Latina who lived in Germany, I LOVED their straightforward way! Leaves no room for misunderstandings or resentment 😅
Plan Solo Adventures
It can feel a bit intimidating to go on solo adventures, especially in a new country. But hey, you’ve already moved to a whole new place on your own to live with strangers, why stop now?! We can get caught up in waiting for company to go do things and, when we realise, the year’s gone by, especially when all you’ve got are weekends divided into 4 seasons. Every year there’s a million things I want to do in autumn but, with a full-time job and various weather-dependent activities, it’s been two years since I actually did all I wanted during that beautiful, orange season!
If you’re really anxious, try to take baby steps. You can start with a quick trip to your local coffee shop, for example, or your local supermarket. You can tell yourself that you’ll go back home if you don’t feel good about it. Sometimes all you need is to take the first step. Besides, no one there knows you and that’s kind of freeing! You can be whoever you want to be!
Reflect and Journal
I SO wish I had written more during my au pair years… I had a few blogs that are sadly no longer online but I can fortunately find them on the Wayback Machine! It’s so interesting to read back on my experience. I recently found a journal I bought in the US where I wrote for my first two months there and I couldn’t believe the things I was reading. I couldn’t remember half of it and couldn’t even recognise that person!
In life, to be honest, journalling is incredible tool. It helps unload your brain, unscramble your thoughts. Best of all, it’s amazing to read back and see how far you’ve come. The au pair experience is so unique! It’ll be wonderful to save your memories for posterity. And who knows, maybe you’ll write a book? I’m always searching for au pair books! It fills me with joy to read/listen to au pairs’ experiences.
