Summer childcare – What's your family's plan?

The summer school holidays have a way of coming sooner than expected and can pose a major challenge for working parents. With the right childcare and a summer au pair as part of your family team, you and your family can relax and be ready to enjoy everything the summer may bring.

With school not in session, parents struggle to take care of the kids, handle their jobs and maybe (just maybe) to relax a little bit themselves. Kids' days need to be managed in a completely different way because the hours that are covered by school attendance need another solution in the summer. So what's your plan?

The old options: Summer camp, babysitters, relatives

There are, of course, various ways to handle the summer childcare challenge.

Summer camps can offer many different types of structured activities for children in daycare or sleep-away models, but only take care of a limited part of the holidays and often are quite expensive.
Local babysitters from the neighbourhood can be organised to provide childcare day by day, but this makes for a lot of individual arrangements that often fall through at the last minute
Relatives (typically the grandparents) can also be called in to help with the summer situation if they're available and willing, but this is rarely a full-summer solution.

Something new: A short-term summer au pair

There's another solution for busy parents that overcomes many of these problems and can give you and your kids a great summer experience – a short-term summer au pair.

From a kid's perspective, summer is a great adventure simply because it isn't school. Having truly free time at home to play and explore, to do sports and to discover what a lazy summer day can offer used to be the essence of a child's summer experience. With a summer au pair as part of your family team, this "old-school" version of summer becomes more possible.

Of course, different structured activities can still be planned and included in the programme. But also you can simply let the kids be kids – with an au pair on hand to help keep an eye on things. And at the same time, your summer has less stress and more possibilities.

With an au pair you use your own home as part of the childcare solution

One of the principal factors in the high-cost of childcare outside the home is providing a safe and comfortable place for your children to be while they're being taken care of. With your home, you already have this point covered – so why not take advantage of that?

When you integrate a summer au pair into your family, you use your family's domicile and existing routine to provide the au pair with room and board, thus taking care of a large part of her (or his) expenses. This is one important part of the win-win arrangement of au pairing that makes it such a beneficial and unique and relatively economical form of handling childcare.

Get started today

You can start planning right now for your summer childcare needs. There are many young people who are also beginning to think about their summer activities and are interested in finding opportunities that allow for a mix of work and international travel. AuPairWorld is the place where families and prospective au pairs can come together to make plans for great summers together.

You get the benefit of having a young adult who provides live-in help with the kids.
Your au pair has an exciting and culturally enriching adventure in a foreign country in the safe and affordable context of a family setting.
Your kids have the fun and flexibility of spending relaxed time with a new member of the family team.