I feel like a failure!

[Casetteu]

Just dropped dc off at school and had to listen to several mums discussing their upcoming holidays. I go to work and have to listen to the same from my colleagues. We have no holiday to look forward to.

A few months ago I lost my job. I was made redundant from a job I loved and had been working at for many years. I now work in a supermarket. Trying to get holiday time off is like getting blood from a stone. All the longer standing colleagues have booked all the best dates years in advance. I have been left fighting over the scraps. I have managed to get two days off during August. Neither are together. It’s that bad!

We had a holiday booked for mid spring which was cancelled due to a health scare.

Anxiety prevents both me and my husband from driving long distances so even a little camping holiday is not possible.

I feel so guilty when I look at my dc and realise they have no holiday to look forward to, when all their friends are flying off somewhere. We can’t even have a local holiday.

Only posting as I feel sad and needed to tell someone.

I don’t know if this will help OP but I was brought up in a single parent household and going on any holidays, abroad or otherwise, was unheard of for me! If it helps though I still have amazing memories of my childhood, I remember lots of trips to the park, summer fetes, picnics, playing games, crafting, reading, getting to sleep in late and watch extra TV, having at home movies by printing cinema tickets off and buying little cardboard popcorn holders… I’m 39 now and still really remember all these things. I had nothing to compare it to so I grew up happy with what I had. Don’t feel bad, your children will be fine, I am! Just concentrate on creating some lovely memories for them at home and they will still have plenty to look forward to

Thank you for your reply @twobabiesandapup
It was the same for me growing up. I have nice memories of day trips and fun activities at home but still remember the odd feeling when my friends mentioned their holidays. For me a holiday was a day trip to the beach (which was very rare).
We always had to write about our summer holidays when we returned to school. It made me feel embarrassed that I didn’t have a fancy holiday to talk about.

OP, I was a single mum to five (with an absent and non-paying XH). My kids are adults now and often talk about their holidays, which were almost exclusively spent in our (fortunately quite large) garden, playing, bike riding, making 'dens' having garden picnics and generally just milling about. Admittedly we lived in the middle of a rural stretch of countryside and they had each other to play with, but they honestly remember those days with a lot of fondness.

They got the odd 'camping in Cornwall' holiday with their dad, but they weren't overly keen - they would rather be home and mucking about in a big hole in the garden, and although they do talk about their time camping, they were clearly much happier being at home.

You're doing your best! You've lost your job, got a new one already- it took me a year to get a new one after my previous place of work closed down. You're trying. And you love your children.

We don't have foreign holidays- it's just me and my daughter and no other family. We do free things and have picnics in different parks, go to the museums, feed the ducks. There's a city farm here, is there anything like that near you?

Don't be hard on yourself. You're doing everything you can and you need to be proud of yourself!

I know quite a few families who aren't going on holiday during the summer holidays - I don't think they're struggling financially but I think many people don't find it good value with decent weather in the UK and lots of nice places to visit.

I was a skint single mum and sometimes had very cheap short breaks in Travelodge or YHA places, I always took the train (with railcard) and just went for 1-3 nights so that could be doable for a weekend break even if you can't get time off.

If you can't stretch to that, using the weekends and days off for cheap day trips is another idea. Beach day trips or NT properties can be cheap if you bring a packed lunch (there were some vouchers for free NT passes somewhere online). I still can't drive but have done plenty of days out by train.

How many days a week do you work OP? Can you do things on your days off?

We are not going on holiday this year - I'm finding this a bit hard as historically DH and I have always had multiple holidays over the year but since having children (infant primary and preschooler), this hasn't been possible. DH is currently out of work as a contract ended.

However our diary is packed!

Days out include: museums, events, seaside, swimming (there a aqua type pool an hr away), cycle track thingy (an hr away, its like a mini street for kids to cycle in).
Some of it will be after I finish work.
Eldest also has playdates with friends both personal and sch.

Admittedly we live outer London and have a car so access to loads and clearly we have some cash - we save all year for summer hols.

Use trip advisor, local pages, facebook/instragram for 'things to do in x'.

It's tough OP try to do special and unusual things that they will remember in lieu of a holiday. My pal got a train to another city, went to the zoo and for chips and home again in one day and her DS remembers it as a holiday. She also went to a beach one evening and camped there overnight and fried sausages for breakfast then swam and went home and he genuinely believed this was a camping holiday. Little kids are easily pleased, teens not so much. Maybe be a tourist in your home town or nearest city, do the open top bus or whatever for a day and just pretend. It's hard though, feeling you are the only one left out. Pls God things will turn around for you soon

OP, just remember you are only talking about a handful of parents out of 100s of parents at the school.

I went to a bog standard MC village school in a semi affluent area, and only a few kids in my year went abroad. My parents did ok financially yet we only went abroad three times until I was 18, often we went camping though and did butlins a couple of times.

DD1 is disabled, so going abroad is logistically difficult and financially expensive and DD2 is only three, we are working towards going abroad next summer as the girls will be older but that def will not be an annual even. This summer and like previous summers we will go for a week in the seaside, and we are doing interesting activities in our local/semi local area.

One night my teen's slept in our trampoline! They loved it. Cheap tent and sleep in the garden? Bbq and marshmallow maketh the evening....

Please don’t feel a failure! Your working and times are tough. We often didn’t go away and I don’t think my own children have ever remembered it , they just enjoyed other things going on , a trip to a park or a picnic somewhere. Lots of people maybe also run up
debts too to have these breaks away. Don’t let it get you down , but it’s not easy I know :(

OP we hardly ever away in the Summer holidays. It's just too expensive. I'm a supermarket worker and thankfully do get 1 or 2 weeks off work then but our plans will just be bits and pieces. A holiday abroad is like 5k in the summer holidays, way outside our budget. Even a weekend at Haven costs you like £500 plus with the passes. We do a weekend away when they have a inset day instead.

Don't feel guilty. Not all of us are going somewhere. I'm trying to arrange a few things with dds friends here and there. Hoping from some good weather too.

Oh, so did we have to write about holidays, and once I had been on a Brownie Pack holiday, and wrote about that. And quite casually the teacher said it didn't really count.. It's been quite a few decades, but I haven't forgiven her yet for that.
Youth Hostels have good family rooms these days, maybe you could look into trains and do something like that. My skint single parent friend took his two little girls here: https://www.yha.org.uk/hostel/yha-ilam-hall and they adored it.

The only reason I had holidays “abroad” growing up was the fact we lived in Germany when I was a kid ( RAF) and we travelled on the continent and camped. Once we returned we didn’t really have holidays - I don’t really know why. If you’re used to going away every year then of course it feels like a deprivation so I understand the feeling. I think the driving issue actually sounds more limiting so I might work towards overcoming that. Perhaps you could camp and travel an hour away from where you live? My friends and I went as a big group to a campsite about that far. You could make a “ holiday bingo” card and tick off some activities as you go through. They don’t have to be big things.

I feel for you op but I think you should be proud of yourself for getting a job so soon after losing the position you loved so much.

I don’t think it is helpful to compare yourself to others. Some of those families will be paying for their holidays by credit card and getting in to debt. You are in a difficult spot right now being in a new job and having to have cancelled your spring holiday but this situation is not permanent.

I think your feelings are completely understandable about only having two days off with your dc but I think it might be helpful if you try and change your mindset because although you can’t change your holiday allocation, you are not helpless in the way you can think about and respond to this situation and - most importantly - your dc will take your cue from you as to how they approach the summer. If you get depressed about it, then they will too. On the other hand, if you can put a positive spin on it, then you will be teaching them resilience. You don’t have any choice in this matter so why not take the positive approach?

Some things which might prove helpful are:

• Print out a holiday calendar and mark in one expedition a week to child friendly places that you haven’t visited before and are accessible by bus or train. They don’t have to be expensive, Research all of your local free child friendly resources such as libraries, council run schemes, parks, strawberry picking, leisure centres, city farms, woodland, beaches, museums and art galleries often have free programmes for dc during the summer etc. And team that up with a once a week trip to your local park to picnic and play ball games.

• Start a jar of summer ideas of little things that your children can do when bored. Sit sound the table and ask your children to contribute. Fold up the ideas and allow your dc to take out one a day during the summer when they are bored. These can be things like: draw your favourite animal, learn to make pancakes, blow bubbles, do a jigsaw, go on a treasure hunt, play snakes and ladders. Depending on your children’s ages, there are lots of free on-line resources with craft ideas and other projects.

• again, depending on the age of your dc, get some holiday traditions in place that your dc can talk about when they return to school. This can be as inexpensive as a cheap tent in the garden or living room, or a den made of cardboard boxes. All that dc want is your time, focus and attention so planning is key. Maybe relax some rules and eat on your laps and watch a film one night a week? One night a week for family board games? One night a week cooking together or baking or making ice cream? Decorate a cardboard box and use it to store some cheap puzzle books and stickers and modelling paste and toys that you only use during the holidays. Introduce little video projects on your phone - film each child in a mock “interview” or start a very basic animation, buy a second hand dolls house and photograph playmobil figures doing a different thing every day. Sit around in a circle at night and drink hot chocolate and choose a longer holiday book to read, a chapter a night.

• get appointments with your gp so you and your dh can start tackling your anxiety over driving long distances. If you have dc, you don’t want to pass these fears on. You can start challenging your fears now in time for the summer holidays next year. And obviously, if you think you may be depressed, get some help for that too.

Good luck op! It’s far from easy to muster all of the energy for the above when you are working ft, but advance planning is key. If you can possibly start to get excited about the summer, then your dc will follow your lead! It’s a case of fake it until you make it I think. Good luck 💐

Firstly, well done on getting out there and getting a job after being made redundant. You should be proud of yourself!

Two things my DDs talk about all the time so have clearly stuck in their memories:

The night we camped in our garden last year. We put up the tent, cooked marshmallows and star gazed. All from our back garden so cost nothing.

The day I told them we were going on a train adventure. We went to the station and got a train to a nearby city so it wasn't crazy money. We got a hot chocolate at a café and then went to some of the free museums in the city, I walked them to a play park and we had a picnic and then let them buy a book and a toy each from a charity shop as a treat. The whole day cost me about £50....most of that was the train ticket and DD1 still says it was one of her favourite ever days.

I think sometimes we build up an image of what holidays others are having are supposedly like too.

We’re lucky enough to be on holiday now in Greece. I absolutely recognise our privilege, it’s beautiful and we’ve had some lovely moments. I feel very lucky to be off work. I’m very grateful we can afford this in terms of time and money.

However … it’s very hot and we’re all a bit lethargic. My three teens are still teenagers and therefore fighting with each other / being apathetic and sliding off to their rooms to chat to their friends on devices (we’re in a private villa). The fussy one is still being a fussy eater and it’s hard work. One is sunburned despite my warnings. Everything costs a fortune to do and of course the teens don’t want to do much with their parents …

What I’m trying to say is that each time we go away (which isn’t often), in my head I think it will be this idyllic experience and of course in reality it has all the usual challenges of life alongside it. But no one talks about those bits or puts them on social media … so we end up imagining that those going away are having this phenomenal experience. The reality is that stuff back home can be lovely too and with some creative thinking can be really enjoyable and memorable.

I think lots of families struggle to go away. We are both high earners and can only afford this around every 3 - 4 years. So many families will be staying in the UK.

I’ve had several moments this holiday of feeling like a failure as my teens are refusing to live up to social media standards - but of course they’re not because they’re still real people. I think we often carry the responsibility of making everyone happy and think we need to do more but actually our kids are pretty happy.

Also op, I wanted to add to my previous post that children don’t perceive things in the same way that we adults do! They won’t feel badly about not going away unless an adult introduces them to to the idea that they should!

I remember taking my youngest child out on quite an expensive day trip to a safari park and wildlife centre. We were talking about it a few days later and I was expecting her to mention tigers or giraffes, but all she talked about was feeding the ducks!

You are not a failure op! Please do not give your dc the idea that you are either. You are working hard on their behalf. Be proud of yourself for that!

It’s the dreaded social media isn’t it, showing big family trips or holidays and how fab it all is.
I tend to view a lot of that with a pinch of salt sometimes.
It’s unusual you meet a person who’ll tell the truth
’ hotel wasn’t great, food samey , pool cold long delays at the airport’ or whatever ( unless you go on trip advisor!)

Thank you all for replying. We will definitely try some of the ideas mentioned.