Susan Wildeboer: Childcare Expert

One of the great benefits of bringing an au pair into your home is exposing your family to another language. Since one of your au pair’s goals may be to improve her English while she’s here, it’s important to establish mutually agreeable guidelines so that both your au pair and your family are making the most of the cultural exchange experience.

1. Simply by hosting an au pair, your child will be exposed to words and phrases in other languages and gain an appreciation for other parts of the world.

2. Agree that your au pair will speak her native language during certain hours of the day and can practice her English with you when you’re home.

3. Arrange for her to give your children a language lesson at a certain time each week – maybe your au pair can create pictures or flashcards of words in her language.

4. Make books in other languages available to your au pair, which you can usually get through your local library, so reading time can be enriched with language.

5. Ask your au pair to sing songs in her native language with the children. Music is a great way to learn a language.

For more good advice about welcoming your au pair, watch my Au Pair Answer Mom video.

It’s great to have one cake for your birthday - well how about 3 cakes to help celebrate? That’s what we enjoyed together at our April meeting.Everyone brought a gift and a “homemade” card, we drew names and spent time visiting with one another before we exchanged gifts. My Latin au pairs came on strong to make awesome cakes, I added the candles and we all sang Happy Birthday! For extra entertainment we watched the original videos a few of the au pairs had created for their au pair profile when they were in their home country. It was clear that everyone’s English had improved and we got to see a bit of their home life and families.

We raced through a multi-level maze filled with fog and heart pounding music, desperately trying to tag each other with beams of laser light. For our January meeting, au pairs from Mountain View, Los Altos, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Los Gatos and San Jose had a great time playing this high tech combination of tag and hide and seek! Between games we gobbled up pizza and soda, then back in to go at it again!

We had a cozy evening, starting off with a delicious cookie exchange. We tasted each other’s cookies and then exchanged them with each other. Everyone went home with a variety of cookies to share with their host families. (Well, at least I think they shared them when they got home!)

Here are some things to keep in mind when preparing to interview an au pair candidate:

1. Print out a list of questions you want to ask and topics you want to cover. Cultural Care will provide you with a list of sample interview questions. Be sure to ask all the questions you need to make an informed decision.

2. Remember to keep in mind time differences and find a time when you have a full 30 minutes of peace and quiet so you can focus on the conversation.

3. Speak slowly and articulate. Speaking and understanding English is more difficult over the phone than in person.

4. Ask the au pair candidate open-ended questions to be able to assess her English speaking-ability.

5. Schedule a follow-up interview. There are always other questions you think of once you get off the phone and a second interview allows you to get to know each other better.

For more good advice about interviewing an au pair candidate, watch my Au Pair Answer Mom video.

On a deliciously warm, end of the summer day, host families and au pairs gathered to carve Halloween pumpkins. For many au pairs it was their first, ever, carved all by themselves, pumpkin. You can see they are very pleased with their creations.

This holiday is huge in the US, but most au pairs have never celebrated this event and they LOVE it! We ended the day with a group photo and I snapped family photos too. This was a combined event of two au pair groups from Mountain View, Los Altos, Palo Alto and Gilroy.

For our March au pair meeting we split up into smaller groups and played games. In the photo above you see some “Pictionary pals”. It was fierce and friendly competition and even the losers had fun. (See the photo below!)In the other room they were playing hot potato with the Catch Phrase game.
Of course there had to be some tasty treats too - so everyone brought their favorite toppings for ice cream and we had a delicious make-your-own-Ice Cream Sundae Bar!

Julieth and Lizzie couldn’t make it to our monthly meeting, when we played Laser Tag, so they came to my house the other night to visit. We were chatting about their time here in the US, their host families, their time caring for the children and what they were learning about the US. I was looking forward to the SuperBowl, so I had my two cheeseheads sitting on the couch. I asked them, “Do you know what a cheesehead is?” They did not. In the urban dictionary the first definition is: “Someone from Wisconsin. A proud term, not derogatory.” The second definition is: “A Wisconsinite. A Wisconsinite who supports the Green Bay Packers professional football team. Anyone who supports the Green Bay Packers professional football team. An orange foam headpiece initially manufactured in the shape of block of cheddar cheese (sporting swiss cheese-like holes, go figure) by Foamation, Inc. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to be worn proudly by cheeseheads everywhere.” I asked them if they liked American football and Lizzie said “Oh Yes! I really like it!” I explained these two cheeseheads were very precious to me, because I grew up, not in sunny California, but in the frozen North, in a state named Wisconsin and in a town just south of a small city named Green Bay. And there is a football team in that small city, and once you are a fan of the Green Bay Packers, you are always a fan of the Green Bay Packers. I asked them if they wanted to try on a cheesehead. And they did. Now you can see for yourself, proud German Cheesehead Lizzie, and a “I’m not so sure about this cheesehead stuff”, Colombian Cheesehead Julieth. And of course me, one of those ever faithful cheeseheads. There is no question who I am rooting for in the SuperBowl! And now I have added to Lizzie and Julieth’s cultural exchange experience in the US!

I came across this article and had to add it to the website for all of my host families and au pairs! As I know that au pairs can help their host children learn a new language…

The New York Times posted an article yesterday entitled: Looking for Babysitters: Foreign Language a Must. It reveals a growing trend in the New York City area and beyond: many parents are looking for childcare providers that can help their children learn a second language—one they may not speak themselves.

According to the article, although learning multiple languages simultaneously “doesn’t make kids smarter” multi-lingual children:

•learn additional languages more easily
•do better at complex tasks like isolating information presented in confusing ways
•do well in subjects like science and math due to the flexibility of their thinking

While some parents initially enrolled their children in classes to help them learn a second language, they all felt that that wasn’t enough for their kids to become fluent. Hiring an in-home caregiver who spoke the language of their choice was a natural next step.

The article mentions families who have foreign nannies and babysitters but not-a-one with an au pair. Even so, our program is a great fit for parents looking to expose their children to a different language. (Perhaps even a superior one due to the affordable cost and the fact that au pairs can stay with a host family for up to two years.)

July 1, for our au pair meeting, a portion of our group went to the city to see this amazing play. It was phenomenal! We sat behind a family who knew the female lead and that made it extra special. We decided this is an activity we want to repeat!