PIANNA

We are a Danish/British family living in Aberdeen, Scotland. Mum Pianna is Danish and Dad David is Scottish. Our children were both born in London where we lived until 2015 before we decided to move closer to family.

We have an active daughter Smilla who is 7 years old. She is in 3rd year of primary school and does lots of activities in the afternoons and weekends. She is fun, loving, caring and happy. Our son Karl is 5 years old and has Downs Syndrome, which means he is slower in learning things, but is doing really well. He is walking around, making lots of sounds and is a happy little child. He started school in August, in an additional Support Needs class, so he gets lot of support and is learning in his pace. He is the one that needs the most support of course.

Dad works as management consultant and has some travel days. Mum has her own company and works from home, so will be around to support and help - without being in the way - but has the occasional travel too.

We live in a lovely new house in Aberdeen, close to town and close to nature. Aberdeen is a midsize city with around 200.000 people. It is an international city due due to the offshore oil industry, so there will be lots of nationalities here. We are part of a Danish group where we meet for play dates, Julefest and Fastelavn etc. There are other danish au pairs here too. The nature is beautiful and so close by.

We are active, doing lots of activities in the weekends with the kids and often also with the au pair.

We have had au pairs for six years now and still think of all of them as part of our family and we see them both here and when we are back in Denmark.

We would like our au pairs to help with school, activities, play and entertain the kids and also help them develop. Working together with us as a team we want you to help our children to develop to be nice, polite, caring and fun people to be around.

Mum speaks Danish to the kids and we would like you to speak Danish to them as well. Smilla is bilingual and we think that speaking Danish as well as hearing Danish spoken (between Mum and the au pair) has helped. We speak lots of English in the family as well, so there will be plenty of chances to speak English and we offer you the chance to take an English course if you would like.

We want the au pair to have fun with the children, but also be firm when required - i.e. be able to say No. Our children needs to know that the au pair is in charge.

We never discuss disagreements between ourselves or with the au pair in front of the children. If we need to discuss something, we will do it later.

We want you to feel part of the family, like a bigger sibling, helping out with daily chores and supporting us with the kids. We often invite our au pairs with us to activities and visits.

The au pair works around 30 hour a week for us.
We do have a timetable, but we can be flexible if there is something on for the au pair or changes in the family schedule, eg. travel or holidays. Most of the support we need is during the day including kids school runs, light household duties and some cooking. We always help each other with the chores, but there will be things you will be responsible for.

We are a loving family, easy to be with and always treat our girls or boys (the first au pair we had was a boy) very well and take care of them. We like our au pairs to eat with us and do things with us. The last au pair we had came on holiday with us.

We hope we can tempt you to spend a year with us. We will be your family away from home. We look forward to hearing from you :-)

David, Pianna, Smilla & Karl x