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Duties and Responsibilities
As an Au Pair in the US, your duties and responsibilities depend greatly on your host family’s needs and their daily routine. Your main task will be to take care of your host children.
This includes playing with them, going to the nearest park, doing crafts with them, help them with their homework and take them to extracurricular activities or play dates. You might also need to help them to get ready in the morning or take them to bed at night. Another tasks might be to prepare light meals or snacks for your host children.
As an Au Pair in the USA, you are also asked to carry out minor household duties such as doing the children’s laundry, cleaning up the children’s bedroom(s), emptying the dishwasher and helping with some minor shopping for the children.You will work up to 45 hours per week. However, you should not be working more than 10 hours per day. Please contact your local consultant if your host family asks you to work more than 10 hours per day.
They can also ask you to watch the kids in the evening up to three nights a week if your working hours do not exceed a total of 10 hours per day.But there are also some things an Au Pair shouldn’t do. It is important to mention this because sometimes host families forget about these things. Au Pairs shouldn’t watch any other children than those of the host family. Also, they don’t need to cook for the whole family, take care of pets or clean shared rooms!
Example:
Imagine you live with a host family in the US. They have two kids, Amber (10) and Stephan (4). Your host parents are leaving early every morning. That is why your working day starts at 8 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. when they return from work. Here you can find a sample of a daily schedule:
08:00 a.m. – Prepare breakfast for the children
08:20 a.m. – Get Amber ready for school
08:45 a.m. – Take Amber to the bus stop
10:00 a.m. – Play date with Stephan at neighbour’s home
12:00 p.m. – Eat lunch with Stephan
02:00 p.m. – Put Stephan down for a nap
03:30 p.m. – Pick Amber up from bus stop
04:00 p.m. – Prepare a snack for Amber, help her with her homework
05:00 p.m. – Host parents arrive home
06:00 p.m. – Dinner with the family
07:30 p.m. – Meet with friends at a coffee shop
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