Chloe, foreign au pair - PO5 Portsmouth

I am a happy person, self-motivated. I enjoy taking care of children and working with parents in order to provide the required needs for the children. I am empathetic, calm, understanding, and have the ability to deal with unexpected situations.

I have always been in contact with children in my personal or professional life. I have always had a good feeling with children since I was myself a child. I was eight years old when my parent's friends had a baby. I was taking care of her as well as a nanny. When they were coming over for dinner, I was feeding her, giving her a bath, dressing her, and changing her nappies.

Then when I was twelve years old I started baby-sitting for some friends of my mother and at sixteen years old I had my first professional experience. I worked in a recreation centre (equivalent to the YMCA in the UK) I was working with groups of children between 6 and 12 years old. Even if the difference in age was short between them and me I succeed to impose respect. I wasn't qualified to work with children so I was an assistant and should have always been with someone who held the right qualifications. However, my boss seeing that I was comfortable with the children, he often left me with a group of ten children, to make activities as ball games, dance, etc. As I couldn't afford the qualifications to keep working in recreation centres from my eighteen years old, I was unable to work for them anymore. From this experience I learned how difficult it can be to manage the varying needs of children in diverse stages of development. I honed the ability to care for each child individually, while paying close attention to the needs of the group.

My third and last professional experience was when I came in England for the first time. In January 2014 I arrived in England to take care of Jack, who was eight years old. Jack has some special needs, despite the qualification I did not have, the confidence between Jack and me slowly grew up and we worked as a team his parents and me to encourage and support him. I should have stayed 6 months, but as Jack progressed and the feeling with the family was really good I stayed almost ten months with them.

After that, I moved with some of my friends in still in the South of England. They have a little boy, Remus, he was one year old when I moved with them, but I knew him since he was 6 months old. I learnt teaching basic social skills, I planned interesting things to do, helped him to learn through playing and all the everyday routine, feeding, bathing, changing nappies, dressing, put to sleep, etc. I also speak to him in French most of the time, which I think is good as it brings him some learning skills and open his mind.