Cultural Care office staff raise $148 for Kids First at SWEA Holiday Fair

Face painting at the Cultural Care Au Pair booth at the SWEA Fair and Holiday Celebration

Nine staff members from the Cultural Care office in Cambridge, MA made their way to the Cyclorama building in the South End of Boston this past Saturday to attend the SWEA Yuletide Fair and to face paint and make balloon animals in order to raise money for Kids First. The Cultural Care booth was a huge hit with children lining up to have Swedish dala horses, tomtes and flags on their cheeks and to request a balloon.

Altogether, $148 was raised for Kid First (yay!) and at least a handful of parents were interested in learning more about hosting an au pair. Thanks to all of our staff who volunteered!

Top 10 holiday gifts for au pairs

Are you looking for just the right thing to put under the tree for your au pair? We asked some host parents to share their ideas for au pair gift-giving this holiday season and this is what they came up with…

1. Personalized gifts with kids photos
Chicago Mom on aupairmom.com says: “Urban Outfitters had blank snow globes last year where you could slip in two pictures—one on each side—so for a Christmas gift, I slipped in a picture of our house decorated for the holidays (of the outside, complete with the fallen snow and bows and lights), and a picture of the kids on the other side. [Our au pair] loved this (snow globes seemed the rage with her and the other au pairs – they don’t have many of these in Bolivia I guess).” You can also choose to create a photo book or frame her favorite photo.

2. Tickets to a local game or show
Lots of au pairs would love to experience a local game or show but won’t spend the money themselves to get there. Two tickets from you (so she can take a friend) is usually much appreciated. Says one host mom online: “We live in the NYC area, so we always splurge and give our au pairs two tickets to a Broadway show. Everybody loves this. I got the idea from a very experienced host mother with whom I work.”

3. Gift cards
While not very personal, gift cards are certainly practical and appreciated by au pairs who would love to do more shopping. “I either give a spa gift certificate or an iTunes gift card,” writes Annette McGloin, veteran host mom and Cultural Care staff member, when asked about her gift-giving traditions. Starbucks, Gap and iTunes are also safe bets.

4. Popular book series
A host parent who doesn’t want to be named (in case her au pair is reading!) will introduce her au pair to the Twilight Saga Collection this year. She says her former au pairs have appreciated young adult books because it helps them improve their English comprehension skills at the same time. Two other good ones to consider: the Hunger Games and the Lorien Legacies Series.

5. Warm winter gear
Au pairs who live with host families that get cold weather are rarely outfitted with the proper gear to keep them warm. Jenny Berryman Horne, a host mom from MA says, “We gave our au pair gloves and a scarf last year since she was from a warm country and needed them. We may do this again, too, as a stocking stuffer.” Ines Cortes, another host mom in MA shares, “Our gift to her will be something she has wanted but found too expensive: a down winter coat. She suffered a bit last winter, and knowing our son
Julian, she will be outside quite a bit and needs to be warm.” For hats, boot cuffs and cowls, I like what Kitty Dune on Etsy has to offer. I also love this hat from Prana (so cozy!) and the new gloves from Agloves that work with touchscreen cell phones. Lastly, this 100% down coat by DKNY is on sale.

6. Slippers/pajamas
Since sizing and taste is more forgiving in the case of sleepwear, it’s often a safer gift for au pairs. Susan Robinson, our Au Pair Answer Mom agrees: “Anyone can use another pair of pjs!” These slippers from Urban Outfitters are very cool and inexpensive, and pajamas from Aerie are notoriously soft and in-style.

7. An extra suitcase
If you’re after a gift that you know your au pair will use, it doesn’t get any more practical than an extra suitcase or duffle. She’s going to need it to get all of her stuff back home at the end of the year! This rolling duffle by LLBean is a great option.

8. Jewelry
It might normally be risky to give au pair jewelry, but Alex and Ani bracelets are a sure thing. They are inexpensive, made out of recycled materials and all the rage right now with young women. The best part is that each bracelet has a different symbol or expression like: Statue of Liberty, “Thank you”, “Pursue happiness”, lucky clover.

9. Travel guides
Is your au pair planning a trip somewhere fun? A travel guide book is a great gift option. Says Samantha Janney—a host mom and Cultural Care staff member—”We have typically given our au pairs a guide book for a trip they’re planning and they love it.” Lonely Planet and Frommer’s books are good choices.

10. Stocking and/or ornament
If everyone in your household has a stocking, your au pair should absolutely have one, too! (Just listen to what AuPairMom has to say about this.) Ornaments are also a popular gift according to Cultural Care Au Pair’s online community. Personalized stockings from Pottery Barn seem to be popular, and this personalized ornament is adorable.

Hopefully this post will give all of you host parents out there some things to consider for au pair gifts this holiday season!

Au pairs celebrate “big” American holidays

Cultural Care au pairs in Stamford gather together to decorate a tree for the Junior League of Greenwich’s Enchanted Forest holiday fundraiser.

Many au pairs travel to the U.S. with the notion that Americans are big on celebrating the holidays. And according to the ones we’ve heard from, thais stereotype rings very true.

Lee Anna Whitely, Local Program Director for Cultural Care Au Pair recently invited her group of au pairs to help decorate a holiday tree to support the local Junior League. During the event, she asked au pairs to give their take on what they think so far about the 2011 holiday season. Rikard Kreuger, an au pair from Sweden, said, “I didn’t expect that much at Halloween, but it was a big deal. There were so many decorations at my house — decorations inside, decorations outside, decorations everywhere.” Another male au pair, Daniel Prozmann from Germany, shared. “We know the holidays mostly from the movies, you think it must be really exaggerated on TV, but it really is kind of like that.” 

The American tradition of holiday-mania can actually be very helpful to au pairs prone to homesickness as it keeps the focus off of what is going on back home. Host families can also ease au pairs’ homesickness by including them in their traditions and encouraging them to share their own. Says Rachel Friedman, host mom to Colombian au pair Veronica Aristizábal, “It’s always hard to be away from your family this time of year, we’re doing what we can to make it special, we consider Veronica part of our family. It’s important for our kids to experience a different language, a different culture — but we get to share our culture too, it’s a different twist. It’s just a smorgasbord of events and holidays this time of year.”

Au pairs: what holiday traditions will you share with your host families this year? Host families: what American traditions are you most excited to share with your au pair during the upcoming holiday?

Au pairs celebrate American Thanksgiving

International au pairs celebrating Thanksgiving!

Amy Brian, a Cultural Care Au Pair LCC in Delaware, invited her group of au pairs over to her house to participate in an early Thanksgiving celebration this past weekend. She says: “The au pairs all chose a recipe that reminded them of home—it could be a traditional ethnic dish, but it could just be anything that they would typically eat back home with their families and friends.

They all shared some delicious starters, main dishes and desserts including Brazilian Ground Beef Pie and Chicken Fricassee and German Schupfnudeln (potato noodles).

The recipes are included below. We suggest bringing a little international flair to your Thanksgiving table this season! 

Ground Beef Pie from Brazil

INGREDIENTS:

Dough

• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup olive oil
• 4 eggs
• 1 ½ glass of milk
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• Salt
• 50 gr grated cheese

Put everything in the blender, first the liquids, flour bit by bit, and at last baking powder. Add more milk if necessary. The dough has to be almost liquid.

Stuffing

• ground beef
• 2 tomatoes cut into dices
• onion cut into very small pieces
• oregano
• peas
• corn
• salt
• pepper

 Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. In a pot, cook the ground beef, put salt, pepper, oregano, let it cool. Mix the onions, tomatoes, peas and corn. In a greased baking pan, pour half of the dough, place all the stuffing over the dough carefully and cover it with the rest of the half dogh left. Put in the oven for about 45-60 min.

Schupfnudeln from Germany

This dish is typical of the southwest region of Germany and this particular version comes from an old family recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

• 400g flour
• 400g potatoes
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:
You have to cook the potatoes and let them cool. When they’re cool you can grate/shape them.Mix everything together. You have to do it with your hands till it’s a good dough. Put flour in your hands and form these noodles.

After you formed them you can put them in boiling water with salt. They will sink and later they will come to the top of the water. Let them stay there for 5 more minutes and then you can take them out of the water. Put it into cold water. After you can roast it gently in a pan.

And you need white cabbage. You cut it very small up. Put it in a bowl and put salt on it. You have to knead it till it’s softer. Then you put it in a pot and let it cook. You have to keep an eye on it, so that it won’t get black. And after you cooked it, you can put the noodles together with the cabbage.

Chicken Fricassee from Brazil

Although this is not traditionally Brazilian, it is a common dish that is prepared there.

INGREDIENTS:

• 12 chicken thighs
• 2 (12 ounce) packages andouille sausage, sliced
• 5 green onions, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 8 cups water
• 5 stalks celery, chopped
• 2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic

DIRECTIONS:
Saute chicken and sausage in a large skillet for 4 to 5 minutes. Remove meat from skillet, add green onions and onion and saute until soft. Set aside.

To make roux: In a small saucepan stir together oil and flour over low heat; cook until color is caramel and mixture is reduced to 1 cup of roux. Set aside.

Put water in a large pot. Add the chicken, sausage, onion mixture, celery, seasoning, cayenne pepper, salt, ground black pepper and garlic. Bring all to a boil and cook for 20 minutes. Add 1/2 cup roux and stir together; the mixture should have the consistency of chowder. If necessary, add the remaining 1/2 cup roux.

Reduce heat to medium low and simmer uncovered for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Serve hot over rice, if desired.

Thanksgiving 101 for au pairs and host families

Contributed by Danielle Wood, Cultural Care host mom and editor at education.com

Who exactly were the pilgrims? When was the first Thanksgiving, and why? What with prepping the turkey and dreaming of pumpkin pie, you may have forgotten that at least one member of your family is probably a little hazy on the details as to what Thanksgiving is about, and why we celebrate it.

For a quick Thanksgiving cheat sheet, that will answer many of the questions kids and au pairs throw at you, click here . But in the meantime, here’s a quick recap of a few facts you may want to have at the ready:

• The pilgrims were a group of about 100 people who set off from Europe in 1620, many of which to seek more religious freedom.
• They settled in Massachusetts, in an area they dubbed Plymouth.
• The first Thanksgiving was a celebration they threw in honor of their first harvest. It had been a tough winter and many settlers had died. The survivors held a big feast with a group of Native Americans who’d helped them learn the skills to make it through the winter.

Now that you’ve got the facts in hand, don’t forget to share a few. But most of all, be sure to share your own family’s traditions this holiday season. Getting a taste of our holidays and customs is part of what makes an au pair year more than just a year of babysitting. Maybe this year, you can have a dish on your table that comes from your au pair’s country, alongside the stuffing and sweet potatoes.

Cultural Care Au Pair’s Kids First Utensil Drive is on!

Ashley Matusiak, Director of Marketing, contributing to our Kids First utensil drive.

This week, Cultural Care Au Pair’s Boston office started a utensil drive in support of Share our Strength, a Kids First partner organization. Share our Strength runs a program called Cooking Matters through which families learn how to select nutritious and low-cost ingredients and prepare them in ways that provide the best nourishment to their families. (What an awesome idea!) They use donated utensils during the classes as prizes for children and adults.

We have 8 sets of utensils and measuring cups collected so far and we look forward to seeing our box fill up with many more!

Au pairs act as cultural role models for families who adopt internationally

Gray and Josh Stewart with their au pair Marcela Peralta of Argentina

Since November was officially hailed as National Adoption Month in 1990, it has become a time for families, adoption advocates, policymakers, judges and volunteers to come together and celebrate adoption in communities across the nation.

For parents who adopt internationally, this holiday is also a reminder to support multi-culturalism and help children identify with their birth culture. There are many suggestions as to how to do this, but according to one of the largest studies of transracial adoptions, released by the Adoption Institute in 2009, “Positive ethnic identity development is most effectively facilitated by ‘lived’ experiences such as travel to native country, racially diverse schools, and role models from their same race/ethnicity.”

Cultural Care Au Pair host parents LaClaire and Bobby Stewart of Spartanburg, SC—who adopted son Josh from Guatemala as an infant—have taken this to heart and make integrating his culture into their every day lives a priority. LaClaire, a fluent Spanish speaker, talks to Josh and her biological son Gray in Spanish regularly, and they are both bi-lingual as a result. The family is planning a trip to Guatemala next year. And, the Stewarts have hosted three au pairs from Central and South America since Josh’s arrival.

Says LaClaire, “Having an au pair supports the effort Bobby and I make in bringing Latin American culture into our home. Our au pairs help Josh and Gray improve their Spanish because they only speak Spanish with them during the day. Our first au pair cooked tamales for us at Christmastime, and our other au pairs have brought fairytale books and games from home—ones that we might never come across in the U.S.”

Sondra Hopmeier, the Local Childcare Coordinator for Cultural Care Au Pair in Charlotte, NC, has supported the Stewarts throughout their time on the program. “Seeing how impactful the program has been for Josh and Gray, I advocate for any adoptive family to investigate the au pair program.”

Just weeks after host parents Kristi and Bob McKeown brought their adopted son Spencer home from Guatemala, their first Latin American au pair arrived to join the family in Raleigh, NC. They’ve hosted three additional au pairs since, all from Colombia. Kristi shares, “The au pair program has worked beautifully for us. Our au pairs have helped enabled ties to Spencer’s heritage and development in three ways: intellectually, socially and academically.” She adds, “When we are sitting at the dinner table, he speaks to his au pairs in Spanish and then turns to us and speaks English. It’s amazing to see him learning in this way. Hosting an au pair is not just childcare for us—it’s a gift of cultural immersion.” Their family also travels to Guatemala every year at Thanksgiving to celebrate their son’s culture and for what they are most thankful.

“Transracially and transculturally adopted kids need more than loving parents, more than culture camps, more than ethnic art and books. They need people like themselves in their lives,” says Jana Wolff, bestselling author of Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother, who adopted her multiracial son at birth. Jana adds, “Hosting an au pair gives adoptive families the opportunity to enrich their lives with a positive and personal multicultural experience.”

Lara Peterson of Bellevue, WA is also an adoptive host parent—to three girls from China, Gwenn, 12, Ella, 9 and Lucy, 6. She has been a long-time host parent with Cultural Care Au Pair welcoming a total of 8 au pairs into her family’s home. Although one of those au pairs was from China, the rest have hailed from Finland, Poland, Sweden and Germany. Her current au pair is 19-year old Sophie from Berlin.

Says Lara, “Having a diverse family has always been the norm for us and our au pairs have enriched our multi-cultural experience even further. Although it was exciting to host our one au pair from China, it’s just as important that my daughters see that we can welcome people from all around the world into our family, regardless of their race or cultural heritage.” To ensure her daughters are exposed to their Chinese roots, the Petersons are very involved in Families with Children from China, a support organization for families who have adopted children from China.

The number of adoptive parents who are inquiring about au pairs is rising according to Melissa Fredette, the Executive Vice President for Cultural Care Au Pair. “We’ve had more and more interest in the program from adoptive families in the past few years. For them, hosting an au pair fulfills two needs: affordable childcare and exposure to a different culture.”

Asking for Help: Determining What We Need

We have all had things in life that are difficult to navigate—a death in the family, a parent’s divorce, a big move, etc. While these are difficult situations that often bring with them grief and hardship, they are merely speed bumps and obstacles in our path designed to make us slow down and pay more attention. Speed bumps are a part of life. HOW we handle these challenges makes all the difference.

There is something in psychology called “subjective distress.” It refers to the individual’s perception of stress. It encapsulates both the experience of stress and the effectiveness of the coping skills applied. All of us have stress, but how we perceive it, experience it, and then cope with it, are all necessary factors in determining whether the experience will propel or stifle us.

The first step in understanding a difficult situation is to accurately evaluate it.

Step 1: You may ask the following questions to determine the severity of the problem:  

• Am I in any danger?  
• Will others be harmed if I do not act?
• Will others be adversely affected by my decision?  
• Is this a situation I can handle on my own or do I need the help of others?

Step 2: If you answered “NO” to the Step 1 questions, chances are you are not in a crisis situation, but a stressful situation. At this point, it is important to determine the following:

• What do I NEED and what do I WANT? (Remember, wants and needs are two different things!)
• What is my vision of what it will look like when it is no longer a problem? (What will or will not be happening?)
• What part of this situation is in my control?
• Am I looking at the situation honestly, or do I need perspective from others around me?

Step 3: If you thoroughly answered the questions in steps one and two, you have a new perspective on your problem. You have determined whether or not you can handle your situation on your own or if you need the help and feedback of others. By going through this process you have demonstrated determination and follow through. NOW comes the challenge: You must determine whether or not this is a situation you can navigate on your own, or do others need to be involved? Understanding the situation from a place of authentic self-reflection is the key to moving forward. When you find your voice and stand up for what you need with clarity, you will feel less consumed with anxiety and stress.

If you have gone through these steps, and you still feel overwhelmed, it is possible you need to confer with another trusted person for feedback. As long as you come from the perspective of needing to find a solution and doing what is best for all involved, you will make the best decision possible.

Lisa Bravo, MC, LPC, LISAC, NCC
Program Counselor, Cultural Care Au Pair

“Why I think my host family is the best.” An au pair letter

We received the following letter from au pair Anna Karstens, a German au pair who just extended her year for another 12 months with the Paradise family in NJ. It’s a great example of how Cultural Care Au Pair is a cultural exchange program as much as a childcare program. We hope you enjoy it, too!

My name is Anna Karstens and I am living with the Paradise Family. This are Jennifer and Gregg and they have four adorable kids and a dog named Bailey. Noah is 6, Benjamin is 4 and Madelyn and Sydney are Twins in the age of 2.

Since my first day here, my host family made me feel like a part of their family. I am invited to go everywhere with them and they like when I spend time with them. They been there when I had any problems and tried to help me. When I am not feeling good, they are asking what is wrong and are interested in my feelings. When I say something to the kids, take toys away or punish them, they are standing behind me.

Jen and Gregg made me never feel like an employee. Even when the kids are not around, they like to spend time with me and make me feel that I am welcome. Both of them support me with everything that I have to do and offer their help. After a long day at work and they are maybe annoyed, they don’t let it out at me.

I am allowed to bring friends home and can use whatever I need in this house. Because of them I feel like this is my home for as long as I am staying with them. Jen and Gregg are really nice host parents and the atmosphere in the family is good. Everybody is making jokes and is kidding around and we have a lot to laughs together.

My host parents are great and I am really happy, that I can be a part of this family. I love the kids and I have so much fun with them every day. At the weekend we are doing a lot of different stuff and I like to go and enjoy my time with them. If there would be the possibility, I would pack them all in my suitcase and take them home with me!!!

Thanks to my great host family for the time that we already spend together. I am looking forward for a lot more great month!