So You Want To Be an Au Pair

You’re a college senior, an Anglophile majoring in English literature, and have no interest in teaching. You have no job in the offing, a yearning for adventure, and most importantly, you have no boyfriend. Securing a position as an au pair might be the perfect enterprise for you. An au pair is a young foreign visitor, employed to take care of children, do housework, etc., in exchange for room and board. Whatever you do for goodness sake, don’t mistake an au pair for a nanny, who has received special training to care for children. Lose the Mary Poppins image, but do entertain the idea of moving to an English-speaking country. Remember you want time to have fun; that means no changing nappies or investing in Rosetta Stone language acquisition software.

Why not head for merry old England? Interested? Then set your sights on London. Search the Internet for Help Wanted ads in the greater London area. Once you make the right contact and you’re offered the position, it’s time to get your passport, then away you go. When you arrive at Heathrow, your employer will be waiting for you. Expect to be nervous, which will exacerbate your jet lag and leave you dragging for nearly two weeks. You’ll be over the moon when you find out the rest of the family is on summer vacation in Ireland. Your new residence will be a late Victorian home with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme in the back garden. Your bedroom will be undergoing a Laura Ashley renovation. Two former ballet dancers who succumbed to Cadbury bars and sausages will be living in the separate flat on the third floor. You said you wanted adventure.

August gives way to September. It’s time for the children to return to school, and time for you to adapt to your new routine. Get up at 6:00 a.m., throw in some laundry, and put out breakfast for the children, the four children whose schedules you must commit to memory. While the children are at school, you’ll have to pick up, maybe dust a little. The domestic life might leave you with something to be desired, so you should focus on one area to master. Perhaps it will be cooking, even though the only dish you know how to prepare is something your family calls “super chicken,” chicken breasts baked with cream of mushroom soup and wine served over rice.

Becoming the family cook entails visits to the supermarket, in addition to the individual local shops. The problem is you have to drive there, and in England you have to drive on the left side of the road.

You could introduce the children to spaghetti and chili, which they will enjoy as long as the fire extinguisher (pitcher of water) is nearby. Make sure you’re home before the children to let them into the house, give them afternoon tea and then take them to dance and scouts. P.S. Learn to make proper English tea

Don’t forget that being American makes you vulnerable to ridicule. If you say OJ for orange juice, one of the children might say, “Okay, let’s have a little OJ.” He will say this with a Texas accent even if you’re from New England or a benign Mid-Atlantic state.

After dinner the father might challenge his nine-year-old son. “I’ll give you a halfpenny if you can name the capital of Iceland.”

You’ll never forget the son’s response. “Pity it’s not Rangoon, but that’s the capital of Burma.”

If you’re riding with the family on a day trip to Hampshire, be prepared to play the license plate game. Whenever a car passes by, you have to use the letters on the license plate to come up with a word where the letters appear in their original order. If you come up with the word vichyssoise from say VHY, one daughter will stare at you in disbelief. British children, like their parents, believe they are superior to the colonists who broke away. Pretty soon you’ll believe it, too.

During the course of the year, you’ll go to plays and concerts and art exhibits. Your employers might arrange for you to take graduate classes while the children are in school. You’ll absorb the culture by osmosis and begin to enjoy eating Marmite. You’ll discover that films with the words au pair in them are often X-rated. You’ll start speaking with a British accent. You’ll learn to make bubble and squeak and to bake gooseberry tarts.

You’ll fall in love with British children. You’ll even celebrate Boxing Day.