Can you tell us a little about your lovely family?
We are Audrey and Sébastien, mom and dad of three children Lucas (9), Jade (7) and Ambre (3). We moved to Albi in 2017 after a few years in Burgundy and China.
So we’re in a situation where we’ve changed cities several times. Professionally, we also have intense deadlines, which called this decision to get help.
We decided to host an au pair to make daily life easier and make everyone feel good 🙂.
What led you to decide to host an au pair?
The trigger 💡 came from these moving contexts, plus our professional deadlines. We wanted to anticipate the organization of family life.
It also represents a desire as a mom to offer myself a lighter daily routine and give myself a gift.
See also our article on what hosting an au pair can do for your daily life 👉 “5 gifts your au pair will give you”.
What tasks do you entrust to your au pair?
Overall, Alanis’ daily tasks are :
- Children's logistics: laundry 🧦 (washing, putting away, folding), tidying rooms, changing sheets, putting toys away. It's one less mental burden and time saved for me.
- Get the kids ready in the morning,
- Pick up children from school or activities in the evening,
- Set the table 🍽️,
- Prepare simple meals,
- Homework help 🎒,
- Shopping for the kids,
- Run occasional errands.
Do you have a preference for a particular nationality?
In fact, nationality was not a criterion. Even if English remains a safe bet, we were ultimately open to three languages: English, Italian and Spanish. Above all, we were looking for a profile, someone with whom we could get along. We welcome Alannis from Colombia, a ray of sunshine 🌞.
What's the most important quality you look for in an au pair?
For me, what’s important is: calmness, patience, trust in children (being aware that children mean no harm, but that they may sometimes be going through a difficult time), 😌 tolerance. Don’t judge and accept children as they are, positivism: keep smiling and remain cheerful with children 👍.
Sign up for our next webinar. We’ll take the time to explain the rules of the au pair program in France and answer your questions.
What's the most important quality you look for in an au pair?
At first, she didn’t understand that we went to bed 🛌 at 8:30 p.m., because our au pair, a Colombian, has later hourly habits.
She didn’t realize that we live at times like we do in France, with such an early bedtime, for example.
What's the most important quality you look for in an au pair?
Butrfly took care of recruitment and administrative procedures. The agency also supported my contacts and exchanges, and the team’s support and knowledge of my experience were important.
I felt understood and supported in the preparatory phase and in the transition to the click and integration of the au pair. Finally, Butrfly helped me to analyze and translate what I was feeling. I really appreciated the team’s availability.
Any advice for families still on the fence?
It’s an important decision, because it involves the whole family. For me, the first need met by the au pair program is to give oneself some breathing space and flexibility in one’s daily life.
Secondly, we wanted to create a family and personal experience in which everyone would take the step of opening their home and accepting a stranger, and integrating him or her into their daily lives.
Finally, to give our children 👶 (in addition to the richness of this personal experience) the opportunity to do things at their own pace to learn better. Because when we’re in a rush, we often do things for them, so the child is often passive in the face of “hurry up and get into your pyjamas”, “do your homework” and so on. The rules of the house that we are obliged to formalize for our au pair also become clearer for the children. A real routine settles in, soothing them.
For my part, I’ve taken the time to develop my educational practices 📈 so that my children can play an active role in their daily lives. This was greatly facilitated by our au pair, who is dedicated to this mission. Finally, my children are gaining in autonomy, because they are in a context where they have the time to do things at their own pace.
⚠️ The integration phase is very important, and I would advise families to involve the au pair in all aspects of daily life and to value him/her.
To sum up, what does the au pair experience mean to you?
I’ve become a supermom with 4 legs and 4 arms 🦸♀️. We’ve given ourselves this “gift”, but I think it’s changed my life the most, and it’s clearly benefited our whole ecosystem (when Mom goes, everything goes)! It gives me more time for myself. It also allows me to concentrate fully on what I’m doing at any given moment, without having to solve the equations that often involve combining home and work.
There’s an obvious reduction in the “mental load”, I feel more efficient in my work and serene 😌 when I take time for myself, because that time isn’t at the expense of my children.
Last but not least, I would say that we gain in quality of exchange with our children. Each of us is more available to the other. I can cuddle my youngest when she needs it one morning while knowing that the others are getting ready with our au pair. Playing a board game 🎲 in the evening with the family on the way home becomes possible because they are freed from constraints (pyjamas, bath, homework).
Taking the time to talk in greater depth and in a calmer way with each of them is also a consequence of this easier, lighter daily routine.
