Why do people not like using holiday clubs?

My children are now past the age for holiday clubs, but when they were younger, they went there from time to time. One was run at the local leisure centre, and another as an ad-on to a day nursery (basically a separate room/area on the same site).

Yes, they aren't the cheapest, but if your employer offers a salary sacrifice scheme for childcare vouchers, there can be decent savings to be made.
I never thought anything of the children going to these clubs - as long as the environment was good, and there seemed decent activities to do.

Although relatives helped out with odd days of childcare here and there (which I was very grateful for), predominantly childcare had to be paid for, and I was happy to do this - I always saw it as my responsibility to sort childcare....very simply, if you don't want to pay for/arrange, childcare, don't have kids!!

Some people seem to see it as a kind of God-given right that Grandparents etc. will step in and help out for free, personally I don't understand that mentality - the responsibility lies with the parent. (But of course if help is offered, it comes in very handy).

Grateful now I'm past this stage, but yes, overall experience of holiday clubs etc was positive.

Op I'm a sahm and I used to force my ds to go to them because I thought that he would be missing out. He hated it! He now has a group of friends who also hate going to camps. The one thing all these boys have in common is that there's a sahm parent. They would much rather be at home, doing things at their own leisure. And who says that they don't have a routine? Ds still does all the daily things he needs to do, we have activities out, trips arranged with his friends , lots of play dates with friends where this is impossible during the busy school week.
I also have a nanny for my younger baby, and she is here PT. She worked for many years with other families and always said the kids hated going to camps. It probably works for some but not everyone.

Actually I haven't, but I'm not opposed to them.
However, my one duvet day now and again is not the same as day after day, week after week of a 15 yo needing to occupy themselves while their parent works.

I had to go to a lot of holiday clubs as a child and hated it but DD bloody loves it! She doesn’t need to go at all this year as I’m on mat leave but she’s insisting she still wants to do two of them. All depends on the child I guess!

I mean they tend to be more like £40 £50 quid per day near me and I have two kids so £400/£500 per week

It does seem to vary massively what’s available by area. It’s also the case some clubs run super rubbish hours like 10-3 which are close to useless.
We are lucky and have sports ones (rugby, gymnastics/trampolining, multi sports, football, water based activities at the coast), arts ones (dance, drama, musical theatre, painting), multi activity with arts & crafts/some sports activities and themed things like Easter egg hunts) and some decent residential options nearby too.
They are anything from £20/day up to £50/day per child for the 7-8 hour long
ones. Residential trip eldest went on last year was about £350 for 9am Monday - 6pm Friday. She loved it and is desperate to go again.

I didn’t like sending my kids because we had two choices:

1. Sports camp in a school hall all day, which my kids HATED, and I felt so guilty leaving them there—I quickly stopped using this one.

2. Private school with loads of activities and amenities all day—swimming, cooking, IT, etc etc. It had wraparound care if you needed beyond the 9:00-3:30 session. Putting 2 kids in with the am wraparound and pm wraparound I needed, to do my hours at work, cost me MORE than my takehome pay. This is where I sent my kids, as I couldn’t bear leaving them at the other place. This is why it makes sense for some people to cut hours instead—care costs can be more than salary.

Yes even child me thought it was bizarre! She used to boast about how her boss was always on her back about using up her annual leave and if she left it too long, her leave would expire for that financial year and she wouldn't be paid extra for it. Like that was something to aspire to?! It was really odd, although my mum is an... interesting person 🙄 I was also put into childcare from 7am to 6pm during term time too for similar reasons. I really think she just liked the idea of having children but not actually the day to day aspects of it!

I'm trying not to let my opinions of her parenting influence my DC 🤣 I do put them in childcare but not 11 hours a day 5 days a week! We do a mix of flexible working between me and DH, a bit of time with PIL and formal childcare - it's a good balance in my opinion

She didn’t use her annual leave? That’s just madness!

I feel like I'm a rarity in my circle in using holiday clubs for DC aged 7 and 9. I wfh so the reality is if they were here they'd be on devices all day as I can't entertain them and work at the same time. I'd hazard a guess that in my friendship group who mostly also work from home, that they either don't mind the kids being on devices all day or aren't actually working.

I absolutely detested being in holiday club as a child. Maybe they're different now, but back then they were God-awful boring. I also grew up in a weird very affluent area where working mothers were considered strange so the only holiday clubs were miles away with kids I didn't know. My mum put me in them every single day of the holidays from 7am to 6pm, it was miserable. And no she didn't send me there because we couldn't afford to take annual leave - my mum willing forfeited her annual leave every year for no extra pay because she'd rather work than parent me. I don't use holiday clubs for my DC, but if they asked to go (there's one near us that's really good apparently) then I might send them as I don't want my shitty childhood to influence theirs.

Have you never had a duvet day?

@GRex

Great post thank you

@Sass53271 same here- early July for a weeks family holiday. In fairness I started a new job so less annual leave and legally not entitled to parental leave but I still can’t afford to take 4 weeks unpaid a year.

@Heronwatcher
unstructured downtime for a my child might look something like this-
lie in (until 6)
lazy breakfast (until 7.30, but only that long if given screens)
walk to shops or play- either in garden or indoors if weather bad
help make lunch (play until 10 sure, 2.5 hours, but with mum or dad; what does a 6yo do at the shops apart from buy yet more lego? We only food shop once per week)
hour or so TV (no, wants to play, already had TV at breakfast remember?)
Help do a few jobs, or play indoors (Lego, craft, den making etc) or garden (2 hours, again wants mum or dad to play with, then makes and eats leisurely lunch, 1pm)
Maybe choose something for dinner and help make it (ok 15 min making dinner, but we would do that any day and we still have 4 hours to fill before dinner, so we need to have an outing now to the park / woods / playground / anywhere, or more games)
eat dinner (5.15 - 6 if add screens)
watch movie (will want to watch during dinner, then play for an hour)
bed (7-7.30)

Rescheduled, this sounds like our typical quiet Saturday / Sunday at the end of term (one of us will have a lie-in on each while the other is up), except that we added an afternoon walk / outing. Then he's refreshed for the holiday. In summer that's 6 more weeks. Sure, a couple more days can be like this but 48?????? No, we would all go crazy with boredom. People who have multiple kids entertaining each other, or who don't mind ignoring their kid might manage, but you can't leave most children playing alone for 8.5 hours every day and expect them to be ok!!! 1 hour is the most we expect DS to occupy himself alone at a time, maybe 2 hours per day.

I envy the people who can believe with certainty that there is "one best way". If you have multiple children, clear you have ones which match, which must be easy.

I have one DC (7) who hates organised activities or being told what to do, and would rather potter round doing his own thing. If you leave him alone for ten minutes, he will decide to make <some crazy thing> out of scrap paper and cellotape, and spend hours doing a really creative job of it completely on his own.

My other DC(10) gets bored very quickly without attention. He will happily focus on any activity if you are with him, but hates being alone. He loves holiday camps with lots of people to talk to, and a clearly structured timetable.

So, it is clear to me, that there is no "right way", as no matter what I do with the kids in the holidays, unless I am not working, someone is complaining that it's awful.

My autistic DD who is very shy loved the holiday clubs I used to send her to. She was well looked after and could choose arty activities. Some of them took her on trips. I also used to send her to performing arts weeks which she enjoyed as well. I didn’t have other options in the Summer as I could only take two weeks off out of six. I didn’t know people thought negatively about them.

We're in a similar boat - also private school which means the holidays are even longer!! That's our choice I know - but we take a family holiday before the main school hidays and then they go to the holiday clubs for the remainder! They inevitably see friends there!

As for the wfh - my employment contract prohibits that in any event!! And I do a job where I time record so it's not practical anyway. But I suspect people are "wfh" and doing this a lot - as you say, we'd all go mad!!

I also live in London zone 1. You’ve really missed my point. The op asked why anyone would do a term time only job, and I answered. That’s all.
I wasn’t suggesting people give up well paid jobs to do so. I was just giving an example of why people would do term time jobs, as I did. If I had a well paying job or a good career in the first place I wouldn’t have given it up, and I would have used paid childcare like everyone else. I have no issue with holiday clubs. I couldn’t use them personally as my child has autism. But I really wasn’t saying what you think I was.

Just as an aside though, I managed just fine in London, working term time with UC top ups.

Same @Sass53271 but we both work full time in jobs that can’t WFH more than a day a week. PIL are too unreliable-notorious for agreeing to do two days in half term, forgetting and leaving me scrabbling around to find a holiday club. My parents do help but both work themselves.

I’m lucky that we have some great clubs near us and DS loves going, and they do 8-6/8.30-5.30 so we can just about make it work between us. DS is an only. He’s also at private school so all our annual leave is used for the school holidays where there are no clubs. It was our choice but the reality is our annual leave is dictated by that. So DS will be at holiday club 8-6 five days a week from late July until August bank holiday. He loves it (football focused and is football mad) but if he didn’t I’d reconsider my options.

Out of interest, do these chill days/unstructured days happen whilst parents are WFH? If DS was at home whilst I was working it would be miserable for both of us (7yo). 12yo I can see would be different.

@Freshstarts249

@ThepeopleversusworkI genuinely wasn’t having a dig. But the OP literally said why would anyone take a lower paid job to work term time, and that is why. The option is open to pretty much all single parents as the support from universal credit is there. Not saying that it’s the right thing to do, but I wasn’t ‘lucky’ to be able to do it.

Sorry but you must understood that it's a) not feasible and b) not desirable for people who have certain fixed costs to simply chuck in a reasonably well paid job for a poorer paid one supplemented by universal credit purely so they can avoid having to put their kids in childcare?

I live in London where costs are sky high as you may imagine UC would not begin to cover my costs. Making that sort of decision would force me to choose between a) having to move out to a much cheaper area and uprooting my DD from her school and friends or b) losing my home. The idea that this would all be worthwhile because I would be able to take more leave during the summer holidays to offer more "unstructured" time and to avoid holiday clubs is pretty crazy.

I don't regard giving up a well paid, secure, interesting and (relatively) flexible job in order to go onto a low wage job topped up by UC in order to take lots of leave during the holidays as a good trade off. I'm pretty sure my DD wouldn't thank me either.

I never said it was a good idea, but the option is there.
For me, I didn’t have a well paid job in the first place so it made sense to take a term time job and be around in tbe holidays. This really wasn’t the point, I was just answering the OP’s query.

I don't know about where you are but in my area they don't seem to charge by day. They want £200-£300 per child for a week and I don't have that. I'd rather they chilled out with family doing what they want.

A few of my older DDs friends are always in holiday clubs and they hate it! They hate still having to get up and be somewhere constantly.

I think sometimes some people who have never needed to use them just don't understand.
When DC were young enough to have to go to holiday clubs it seemed to me that nearly everybody else either had free childcare from relatives or friends on tap, or worked term time only, or had loads of holiday leave that they would share with their DPs.
My EX DP used all but 1 week of his annual leave to have holidays and time off in term time. I used mine for 1 half term, Christmas and 3 weeks of summer holidays.
One 'friend' constantly used to ask me why I was at work in the other school holidays. I used to ask her why she thought I had 13 weeks a year annual leave when the rest of the company had 5!

The option is open to pretty much all single parents as the support from universal credit is there.

I personally don't regard giving up my position in my well paid job, taking a term time job and claiming UC in order to be home for my child during all the school holidays as an valid option.