Au Pair in France - Anyone with experience?

AislingBo

I'm 19, just about to finish my Leaving Cert and looking into becoming an au pair from September/October in France. I have lots of experience working with kids and would love the job. I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience working as an au pair in France/any other part of Europe? What were the conditions like? What type of work did you do? How much were you paid? Did you go through an agency or use one of those free au pair search websites? Any advice/tips much appreciated!

buttercups88

Hi when i was 19/20 i went to germany as an au pair. It seemed like a great idea at the time, I was out of school, wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do and the recession was just starting so jobs were scarce. I used gre@t @upair.com to find a family...

I didnt have a great experience but it was solely because I needed a job & the family needed an au pair... we weren't suited to each other but because we rushed our arrangement in didn't work out... I just about lasted 9months out of the 12 we'd agreed on.

So just if you do go ahead try have as much contact with the family as you can, ask them anything & everything you can think of, if possible talk to previous au pairs they've had to see how they found it. Look into the area they live: is there anything for you to do there?

How much french do you have? My arrangement was that I spoke english to the children & they spoke back in german as parents wanted them to learn english. ( i was aupair 8 so they were very good at understanding english)

I was paid €80 per week with some added perks such as language course, phone bill and bus fares.

AislingBo

Thanks this is brilliant! I did French for my leaving cert and have a relatively good command of it, with the hope to become fluent. I'll definitely be sure to make sure I know the family as well as possible before going after what you were saying...thanks a million!

buttercups88

AislingBo wrote: »

Thanks this is brilliant! I did French for my leaving cert and have a relatively good command of it, with the hope to become fluent. I'll definitely be sure to make sure I know the family as well as possible before going after what you were saying...thanks a million!

no problem, feel free to pm with any other qs

anaspain

Hi, we are spanish family with 3 kids living in Ireland but we are going back to Spain this summer, and I am looking for an english native speaker au pair to live with us in Spain form sept/ oct 2013. if you know someone interested contact me. Thanks.

wmpdd3

Op,I think it would be help full for you to have a look at the parenting forum here and see what issues Irish families have had with their foreign au pairs .

Getting a full job description and understanding of hours to be worked seem to be the issue.