Work abroad in Carolin's family for 3-12 Months starting from Aug 2024 as an Au Pair and Granny Au Pair to take care of 4 children of 0 - 1 year old, 1 - 5 years old & 6 - 10 years old in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia Germany

DRIVER'S LICENSE WITH AT LEAST 2 years driving experience IS REQUIRED

We currently have an aupair from USA. She is so nice and would also be available for an interview and tell you what life is like here with us. She came here because she wanted to use the weekends to explore Europe from here. That works very well. She often takes Mondays or Fridays off and then makes up the hours on another weekend or during the week. She has quickly made friends here with whom she goes on weekend trips. They often travel through Europe by Flixbus, train or rental car.

All our children understand English very well.

It is relatively easy for US people to do an aupair year here. You can enter the country with a tourist visa and within 3 months you have an interview in German with the immigration authorities (Ausländerbehörde) (very simple communication). You will then receive your aupair visa a few weeks later.

Dear Aupair,

we are looking for a lovely, very active and very fun, positive person who loves to be outside in the fresh air. We live in Germany, but are also often in our little house in the mountains in Austria for snowboarding and hiking. We have had 6 au pairs in the past and therefore have a lot of experience. So we are looking for someone who has a lot of fun with us and especially with our then 5 year old daughter and 1 year old baby boy and wants to read to us, romp around, do lots and lots of sports, work in the garden, go to playgrounds and parks, ride bikes with us, skateboard and swim in the indoor pool of our house.
We live in a large city in the Ruhr area. Here, 8 million people live city to city. It is the largest conurbation in central Europe. The cities of Düsseldorf, Cologne and Dortmund are only 30-60 minutes away. Amsterdam is only 2.5 hours away by train. Many large cities can be reached quickly by train: Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, Frankfurt. It's also not that far to the sea. Our au pairs have always traveled a lot over the weekend (Flixbus) and have quickly found contacts and friends here via Facebook groups or WhatsApp groups.
You should be able to get up at 7:00 in the morning without being in a bad mood. We are very cheerful, like to laugh and make fun. We have already had two aupairs with depression, which has put a lot of strain on our family. Please only apply if you are a cheerful, funny and communicative person.
When we are with the children, we have smartphone-free time. The young children do not have smartphones, so we expect the aupair not to use the cell phone while babysitting during working hours. This is one of our few very strict rules.
Our aupair doesn't have to cook. We cook at lunchtime, easy cooking/food like soups, potatoes and vegetables, noodles and sauce (but always fresh and healthy) because the children eat at school and kindergarten. Of course, our aupair is also allowed to cook for herself as well, if we don't do lunch the other day. However, we are allergic to garlic and onions, so please don't cook these two foods, otherwise the host mom will get sick.
We have a vacation house in Austria. We also spend a lot of time there. We always take our aupairs to Austria, so you should also enjoy mountains, traveling and snowboarding with us. All the aupair girls have already learned to snowboard with us. That was always great fun.
We know that aupairs usually come to Germany with the aim of doing something else here afterwards. Studying, training, FSJ or perhaps finding a job. We think this is a good plan and we support it, BUT please, please, it must be clear that a little girl and a little boy need a nice, attentive and interested aupair. Our children are the main job for the aupair. Job interviews, appointments for residence permits, phone calls with immigration authorities, embassies, trial work, entrance exams for university.
It's all ok, but it has to be addressed with us and can't permanently get us into trouble in terms of time and our job. We often experienced very strange situations and it was very sad to see that our children realized that they were only of secondary interest to the aupair.
Our aupair is allowed to take our aupair car if necessary. Normally, however, our sporty aupairs also like to ride their own bikes a lot. We live in a big city and it's only 15 minutes by bike to downtown. Interestingly, there is a small forest behind the house. It's a great place to go jogging. The nearest supermarket (Aldi, Rewe, Edeka, DM, pizzeria, bakery, bookstore, ...) are 5 minutes away by bike.
There is an inexpensive but very good language school in the city center. It's called the Volkshochschule and you get lots of good courses at a fair price and get to know people.
Our 3 older children are at school at least from 8-15h. Normally your working hours would be from 7:00-8:00 when you take a school child to school on the Cargobike. After that you help out in the house for an hour every day. Our house is 300 square meters and everyone helps a little. We have a housekeeper but she just can't do everything. That's why the magic word is teamwork. So you would have to plan to help around the house between 8:00-9:00am. This could be activities such as: Driving to the grocery store, light gardening, folding and putting away laundry, vacuuming, tidying the kids' rooms, taking out the trash. Of course, you are responsible for your room and the toilet, which you can use on your own, and you clean it at least once a week outside working hours.
In the afternoon, at 15:00, you pick up 1-2 children from school with the cargo bike. Sometimes the older children go to sports, sometimes the 5-year-old girl. Your task is to accompany the children alternately by car and bike and above all to be a great, fun, loving playmate for the 5-year-old girl and then 1-year-old boy. You should talk to the kids a lot (in German or English) and teach them great new things. All the kids have a great talent for movement and are very clever.
We try to live in an energy-conscious way. We've already had aupairs who showered three times a day. That's not common in our area. It is very rarely really hot outside. Most of the time the temperature is between 10-25 degrees. Even in summer. That's why people in Germany rarely shower more than once a day. We also don't turn up the heating and open the windows and we don't cook soups on the stove for more than 12 hours. We also don't drive every short distance by car or fly unnecessary short distances by plane. We would soon like to obtain our energy only from our own solar system. That's our plan for the big house.
We have a small chicken coop in the garden with 10 chickens. It's great fun and we all have a lot of fun playing with the chickens.
We would really love for you to be our perfect match.
Please tell us why you would like to look after our little daughter (and occasionally her two older siblings) and the baby boy. And what plans you have for your time after the au pair year.

Best regards
Your new host family