School holiday childcare - what age to stop?

[SheWoreYellow]

I’m vaguely musing next year’s summer already 😳

DH and I will be WFH on most days, I’m presuming our older two will be amusing themselves. The youngest will be 11. Hates sports so no chance of booking him into an actual thing.

This summer DH and I took odd days off and had a student looking after the youngest two on other odd afternoons. But I think middle one will be off with friends next year and youngest will find it a bit awkward just him and student.
I should be able to be off three weeks due to end of my work contract mid summer.

I dunno. What do you do with your older children?

I didn't use any childcare this summer, my kids are 14 and 11. But we also haven't used afterschool childcare since covid as we both had to work and there was no childcare available, so they are used to being home alone and are very sensible. If your youngest is 11 now I'd say you definitely don't need any childcare next summer

I don't think you need childcare, but I would make sure to plan some activities for them/help them to plan things for themselves so they're not just mooching about all summer. There are loads of summer camps/activities that aren't sport based so maybe look into that too.

I didn't use childcare once dd was at secondary, I think she went to a summer club the year between primary and secondary but didn't want to go again.

I took annual leave in the middle of the summer holiday to break it up, if we weren't going away I took two separate weeks and the rest of the time she met up with friends, had days out with grandparents etc.

This was the third summer I've WFH so I've been around at lunchtime and after the lockdowns stopped I've been able to drop her off at friends houses, train station etc. my job is pretty flexible. She's also done NCS, DoE and done some courses she was interested in.