Which Au Pair (exchange babysitter) would you choose for sabbatical?

Hello, Friends.

Things are really moving (literally) for the sabbatical. I had very serious anxiety about this sabbatical, primarily because of money. We took out a home equity line of credit (excellent credit, btw), and now the problem is mostly solved. No one should have to take out a loan to go on sabbatical. But we make a lot of choices we don't like. Goes with the territory.

For day care, we have decided to go with an Au Pair, and are in the matching process now. Have any of you had Au Pairs, and if so, how did it go? Do you have advice?

I have never met anyone with a Nanny or Au Pair. I figured the terms were synonymous for expensive child care that only rich people could afford. In fact, I looked down a little on the parents who weren't "toughing it out" like I am. In the region we are moving to, Au Pairs are cheaper than regular institutional day care or even home day care. This is a budget friendly move. My eyes have been opened.

I've been explaining to friends that Au Pairs are basically an exchange student, but a babysitter instead. An exchange babysitter, if you will. That means the Au Pair lives with you as a part of your family and takes care of your kids full time. The whole thing is tightly regulated by the state department. For example, you can ask her or him to work whenever you want, but there are regs about how many hours they can work, how much time off they get in a row,  and what tasks they can do. You pay an agency (there are about 12) that takes care of things like screening potential Au Pairs in their home country, screening potential host parents (including inspecting the Au Pair's room), taking care of visas, insurance, training, travel arrangements, support for solving conflicts, etc.  

And then there's matching. As you can imagine, this is a pretty serious deal. Not only are you trusting them with your beloved children, but they are going to live in your house, too. There are lots of good stories online, but some scary ones, too. Read here for more. You don't get to meet them in flesh before they show up. It's a lot like online dating, but all by Skype. I'm having some fun with it, and learning that Hub an I are extremely tolerant.

"I liked her. I could live with her quirks"
"She seemed great. That lack of experience probably won't be too important"
"How sweet. Nevermind the anger issues"

I'm exaggerating, of course.  It seems like we keep coming down to whether we want a conscientious, steady, excellent communicator, who may be less patient with the children's chaos or whether we want a warm, loving, creative, patient somewhat forgetful type. For your info, all else is equivalent... driving experience, age, country of origin. And we are the warm chaotic types, so we are looking for either a complementary person or a person who would understand and perhaps tolerate us better.

Which would you choose?

Decision not finished about day care, but I am at peace.

Thanks readers and responders to my last post. I have taken your comments seriously. Though the decision still rests on my husband, I have voiced my opinion and suddenly feel settled about the whole thing. I want to get an Au Pair.

We will have to take out a loan (the dreaded-but-somewhat-justifiable-of-course-there's-strings-attached In-Law Loan). If Hub disagrees strongly enough and wants to put the kids in a Kid Farm (large institutional daycare), then I will agree with him. See, Hub has very good instincts (took me YEARS to learn that lesson) and is very gentle. So If he guns strongly for something, that's it. That's what needs to be done. There's a strange peace in knowing that the coin only has two sides.

I'll keep you posted to any new developments. Keep commenting though!!!

Help! Au Pair or Day Care?

Getting ready for sabbatical. I worked my entire social network to try to find a live-in Nanny. We got two candidates, both of which withdrew their applications shortly after their graduation. One said she got a job in her field. The other didn't specify. I fell apart a little, but that's for another post.

A live-in Nanny or Au pair (foreign student worker) is really the only way we can afford childcare during my sabbatical in Very Expensive City, because we can deduct the "rent" from our basement apartment from their salary. Or else we can put the kids in an institutional day care like one of those big day care chains for half time (then who takes care of them for the rest of the time?).

A friend suggested an Au Pair because we have a room for one. They have a steep upfront cost for which we would have to take out a loan, but the monthly costs (at least the published ones) are within our budget. Au Pairs are also extremely flexible in scheduling.  I fantasize about this person speaking in their native language to our kids part time, and being a part of the family. I also fantasize about not having the fight to get them dressed and stuffed into a car seat every morning. In this same fantasy, the kids learn at breakneck speed with all the individual attention. And more realistically, if the kids weren't happy, we could "rematch" with a lot of support from the agency. Hub is worried that the kids won't be socialized well. I fantasize that we will make a social network of other kids relatively easily through churches or intentional organizations or Mommy groups.

In the institutional day care, there will be a curriculum, lots of supervision of the kids' caregivers and lots of socialization. However in this particular day care, they have been cited recently for a very stupid abusive treatment of a child. However, that caregiver is long gone, I'm sure. This is the only one that has openings in the area we will live and work.

I realize that on Sabbatical one is to rest but still get scholarship accomplished. The kids don't have to be in day care for 40 hours, but I can't imagine getting a great project accomplished in a year working half time. Besides, part of the ideas was to relieve the heavy burden of being the kids sole caregiver for major portions of the week.

Please? Suggestions? Experiences? Thoughts?

Update on Crap:

From this post: http://thetwobodyproblem.blogspot.com/2012/12/crap-i-may-have-real-problem.html

in which I struggle with the idea that I may have a true (but mild) case of ADD, a diagnosis I had blown off earlier.

I added this comment...
Update. Spring 2013: I have been taking a very low dose of methylphenidate during the work week for about a month. There is a clear improvement in my life.

1. I CAN concentrate better. It is not a panacea, it still takes effort of will. That balance of drug/effort eases my discomfort with the idea of a "crutch". I feel calmer and more "with it".

2. I don't just crash after work into a short-tempered, unmotivated mess. And I can still sleep.

3. I'm losing weight. I don't think it's the drug per se, since I was losing weight before I started taking it. I think it allows me to have a bit more energy to exercise, and a bit more cognitive power to resist comfort foods and fast foods.

4. It actually puts me at social ease, since I don't rely on coffee anymore to help me work. Coffee makes me really irritable, and there are times after drinking coffee that I just hate everybody.

Sabbatical Falling into Place 2: A Place to live there

Hub has a basement apartment in big Suburb where he spends three nights a a week. His lovely, lovely landlady has decided that she would like to go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip far away; buying a one way ticket.
She would like to rent the whole house out to us. We agreed. It's expensive, but a fair market price, AND importantly, it has a basement apartment... which can lessen our expenses by allowing us to host a live-in nanny. More on that soon.

Sabbatical Falling into Place 1: Our house

Our house: we have a 15 year mortgage, which means our monthly mortgage payment is higher than the market rental price for this size o' house. We were counting on taking a monthly loss on the house. Solution: enter a group of 6 (yes, 6) rising seniors who want to live together in an intentional community. Nice kids, I know most of them. They are like, WOAH, this house is BIG and CHEAP compared to the dorms! We are like, WOAH, we're going to have to charge more for such a big crowd! (mortgage covered!)

Hidden Losing

I offered to teach a summer course required for graduating seniors. After the enrollment period ended there was only one person enrolled. I assumed that running the course wouldn't even be considered by the university. The dean's office replied that I had the choice of taking on this student or not for an independent study. I don't know this person, so I said no, tentatively.

I would reconsider if the student showed initiative and was a strong student. If Stu would have shown up at my door earlier and asked about it or shown any sort of interest in the course that was obvious to me I would have told the Dean's office right away that I would take Stu. But I'm not going to reach out to Stu, asking this person to take a course from me over summer. 

I wonder if students realize that they *do* have some power over what seems like strict institutional guidelines? They do, at least in an institution like ours.