In October, 2022, we welcomed our au pair, M* into our family. M, a 24-year-old from Istanbul, Turkey, lived with us and provided childcare for Nico and Max (when he wasn't in daycare). Steve and I loved having another adult in the house and we enjoyed getting to know M. She taught us a lot about Turkish culture, made us some delicious Turkish meals and of course, Turkish coffee. And she was great with the kids!
There’s a lot that can be shared about our au pair experience, so I’ll split this post into two parts. Part one will be about the process and general experience of having an au pair. Part two will dig into some of the challenges and why we ended up with a broken match after 4 months.
I won't be sharing photos of M here, because that feels too personal and like exposing her to something. Anyone who knows me personally will have either met her or seen photos on my social media. I emphatically want to say how much I appreciate M and care about her happiness. Our au pair match didn't last, but I still love and respect her as a friend.
Deciding To Get An Au Pair
While pregnant with Nico, Steve and I had drinks with the parents of a kid who goes to daycare with Max. They invited us to their house for a round of boardgames. During the evening they mentioned they were about to welcome a new au pair from Peru. Steve and I listened intently as they talked about the benefits of having live-in childcare for their little one (a few months older than Nico) while they both work.
They talked about it being easy to get the coverage you needed, about the flexibility an au pair offers that a local nanny doesn’t - especially because they traveled so much for work, and how much they enjoyed getting to know people from different countries (this would be their second au pair).
After Nico was born, Steve did a bunch of research into cost and the agencies that provide the connection to au pairs. He felt strongly that it was a great childcare option for us. With program/visa sponsorship costs, room & board, and weekly stipend all considered, hiring an au pair would be a similar cost as hiring a local nanny. But, with a local nanny we’d probably end up with much fewer childcare hours.
Additionally, au pairs can often be more flexible about their schedule - working nights and weekends. The flexibility suited us because I wasn’t working full time and what we really craved was more time to be out of the house without our kids in the evening and on weekends.
The au pair program would also be great because we really enjoy socializing and have always believed it’s good for the kids to build relationships with adults other than us. The Fishbowl group house that we owned was disbanding and we would be moving to our own apartment, so it would be great to have another adult there with us. We loved the idea of building a life-long friendship with someone from a different part of the world. Maybe one day we would take a family vacation to their hometown, we thought.
The Match
When you decide to get an au pair, you can go to a few different agencies. We picked two to start our search with: Au Pair in America, and Au Pair Care. The agency has you complete a questionnaire about yourself and family and what you’re looking for. Someone calls to tell you what to expect about the matching process: you’ll be sent recommended au pairs based on your preferences, you can view profiles in the online portal. When you want to interview them you can email the au pair directly. We recommend talking to a lot of au pairs to really get to know them. When both of you agree to a match, click on the “match” button on their profile and we’ll get the ball rolling.
Both agencies had a fine selection of profiles to review and we interviewed from both pools of candidates. I liked Au Pair Care a little better because they used a DISC assessment tool in the profile. I am a certified facilitator for DiSC in the workplace and have used it with companies to talk about how we all communicate differently and have different priorities but we can use that information to work more effectively together. So I liked having a tool I was familiar with to make some basic judgment about a person’s behavior.
During the initial search, we were concerned about timing. I was expecting a lot of work to come my way in May (2022) and wanted someone who could arrive quickly. We were told it can take 2-8 weeks, depending on the country and visa process. They also advised us which countries to avoid because of long visa process delays, such as South Africa. Turkey was not on that list.
M was the first au pair we interviewed. We liked her instantly. Her English was good enough that we could hold a decent conversation. She was mature, sweet, and seemed very smart. She wanted to be an au pair to experience a different culture, and to improve her English so she could be a flight attendant for Turkish airlines on her return. She was happy to have a flexible schedule that might change weekly, and to sometimes work weekends.
One of the things we really liked about M compared to other au pairs we spoke to was that she lived independently in Istanbul. Most of the others we spoke to still lived at home and talked about how their family and church community was a big part of their life. We aren’t church goers and were concerned that those au pairs might not fit in well with us and our community - especially if they were any bit homophobic. We talked openly to M about it and were pleased to find that she had many gay friends.
We spoke a few times on the phone and we emailed back and forth. Soon enough, both sides agreed to the match and we clicked the button! We started to get ready for her arrival, expected to be within 2-3 weeks (June 2022).
The Delay
But that didn’t happen. Suddenly the American embassy in Turkey froze J1 visa applications (that’s the special visa for au pairs). M was sent an appointment confirmation for August 2023. Steve and I panicked. We needed childcare sooner than that!
Since we liked M so much, we decided not to break the match and find another person. We agreed to wait. We gave ourselves a deadline. If she doesn’t get a visa appointment by the end of June, we’ll find someone else. Meanwhile, we hired a local nanny for Nico.
June came and went, but we were in the middle of planning our move out of the Fishbowl, and I was working a lot. In July we also got covid right as we moved house. We pushed out our deadline… again and again.
Finally, we settled into our new apartment in early August. We started to consider breaking the match and starting the process again. It’s a lot of work reading profiles and setting up interviews across different time zones. We weren’t excited for it! One night we discussed it and decided to break the match and maybe forget the au pair program, since I didn’t have as much work coming up anyway. The next morning we woke to a text from M that she had a Visa appointment date! OK, we’re back on. Let’s do this!
A Special Connection Max and I picked M up from the airport in October. She arrived on a Thursday and took the weekend to settle in. Steve and I planned a day for her to sightsee around San Francisco and she enjoyed herself.
Once she started working, it didn’t take long for Nico to warm up to M. He got used to them being together without me and he absolutely adored her. They had a lot of fun together. She spoke in both English and Turkish to him, took him out for walks, and sang songs with him. It was clear she cared deeply for him. On her time off, if he saw her walk by he would crawl away from me to get her attention!
Max took a little longer to warm up to M. In the early months he would lash out and hit or scratch her during a tantrum. It seemed that the language barrier was impacting their ability to bond. So much of toddler care is communication. Just by living with us, M's English got stronger and stronger. We also started scheduling more shifts where M and Max could be together 1:1 to help that bonding, and it seemed to work. He was always talking about M whenever he made up stories about our family going places.
M was great with the kids and great with most of the kid-related tasks we asked her to do: like their laundry, toy tidying, meal prep for Nico, and washing his milk bottles. She was also very proactive, once she got the routine we didn’t have to check up on her, she got stuff done.
For me, it was just nice not having to worry about the quality of care. I was quick to trust M because she took directions really well and respected the way we wanted things done. And whenever there was a problem with Nico or Max, she was quick to communicate about it and ask for help.
Another great thing was that M didn't really mind when she worked. She was happy to do some hours on the weekend, as long as she got two consecutive days off per week. Federal requirements are also to give at least one full weekend off per month. Because we didn't need full time care during the work week, we were able to have M help out in the evenings during dinner and bedtime, and on weekends.
It was great having regular opportunities for both Steve and I to go out to a friend's house, or to dinner, or to just rest at the house and have M take the kids to a playground on the weekend. It was so wonderful. Any parent can tell you that getting reliable childcare is really really difficult. So for a lot of reasons we enjoyed having an au pair.
Au pair = Equal to
Au Pair means equal to. Essentially the au pair isn’t just your in-home childcare, they’re someone who you welcome into the family and support them in their adventure of living in a new country.
M mentioned a few times to me that she was not a nanny, it’s not her profession in Turkey. But from my perspective that’s what the au pair job was - a nanny. And I think that’s a lot to do with how the agencies promote the program. From her end they make it seem like a great travel and cultural exchange opportunity, and on our end it’s about reliable live-in childcare.
We wanted to give as much power to M as possible. However, as the host and “employer” there is a power dynamic built in. As hosts, we drive the schedule (although we always welcomed feedback and input) and we’re allowed to set “house rules” (like no smoking, curfews etc). Steve and I are pretty chill people, so we didn’t have many house rules that weren’t about the safety of the kids.
Some hosts have rules like curfews, or not allowing friends over on their time off, etc. We didn’t feel like that was necessary. As far as I was concerned, M is an adult and could make her own decisions. I just liked to know if/when she was going to be home so I didn’t worry about her!
The J1 visa requires au pairs to take 6 college credits during their year. Part of our role as the host family is to help M find and register for a class and support her with a ride or public transportation costs to the class if it’s in person. M wanted to learn English, so we found a class at Laney College, a 15 minute walk from our apartment. The registration process was SO HARD, even for me as an English speaker! We almost missed the deadline to apply because the information on their website was outdated. It was very stressful and took a lot of time.
My second blog will get more into it, but I think that was a challenging thing about being an au pair host: I hadn’t realized how much more of my time it would demand. Figuring out ESL class schedules and registration processes; giving M driving lessons so she could use our car safely; taking her to a Turkish grocery store almost an hour away so she could have familiar foods. It was a lot!
And that’s not even mentioning the emotional aspect of it, which you can read about in part two.
*Not using our au pair's name at her request.
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