"fucking school holidays !"

[mrsfuzzy]

have just heard the gentle tones of my neighbour with her two young dcs, they broke up yesterday ! how does anyone manage nowadays ? are more dcsgaming/indoors or do people actually take dcs out ? years have gone by since i did this stuff and i'm out of touch

Two full time workers here too. Currently in sunny Spain for two weeks but following that it will be work & childcare for my three boys. Would love more time off to spend with them. My eldest sons last summer before secondary school and he will mostly be with my mum who won't take all three out on her own - hardly a fun time for any of them but the bills must be paid, sadly!

I work in education and love half terms and school holidays. The parents are half and half where some are excited about spending lots of time with their dcs and some are dreading it. The latter view school as a childcare facility.

I've always loved school holidays. My DC's are now 16,14 &12 so would rather do their own things now 😔
I miss the fun days out and days at the park. I love the less restrictive lifestyle in the holidays and am happy that they are relaxed and having fun - I just play taxi!

In theory it will all be wonderful day trips and child led activities. In reality it will be a mixture of tv/tabs while I doze on the settee desperately trying to catch up on sleep, pokemon hunting, squabbling, trampolining, trips to blackpool, trains and buses around the north west, tantrums, an assortment of cheap cafes/wetherspoons/picnics, hanging out with friends and saving up for the highlight of the holidays - a real hippy music festival with a kids field and everything!

I'm a single mum with no money and a chronic illness which means I can't work much (I just work on the day the kids go to their dad) so time off school can be hard but is overall fun :-)

Hmm, I like my days off as they are a bit easier/lazier and we also do more 'fun things'. I plan them and enjoy them more with no school run.

Feel bad working and having them in childcare the other days more though. Wish I could have the holidays off!

Going away on a beach holiday this year so counting down the days.

I remember as a kid the endless possibilities of all that time of school. I remember it being sunny the whole time!

I work from home & ive got the kids sorting out all their Lego by block size there's enough to last all holidays but this has now morphed into making Lego animations and Lego musically 's

This year is my first school holidays with children of (pre)school age. I'm a student myself, studying for my degree, so have been looking forward to it from a personal point of view! My girls finished preschool almost a month ago as I had already finished for summer a while back and things have been so much less hectic and stressful since then. This last year has been so busy for us, so it's been amazing.

We've had a few days out, a couple of overnight trips to see family and have had a few days exploring our local area as the weather has been so good but mainly just days in our PJs, I won't lie - but we are going to stay with various family members in France for the month of August which is what we are all the most excited about!

I don't understand the hatred towards the summer break myself....but ask me in 6 weeks, lol.

I'm not a huge fan either. Of course I love the kids but combination of the weather being unreliable, not being loaded, it can be a drag. I've managed to get them out to the park today but now one is bumbling round in the front garden with dad who is working and the other is on the playstation. Luckily I don't start full time university till September so I am about till then.

I really don't get the angst about the School holidays. It's six weeks fgs' It's much shorter here than elsewhere in Europe!

Even though my DD is a teen and is off with her friends doing her own thing a lot of the time , it's still great do do stuff together like going shopping, or out for lunch. When she was younger, we always filled the six weeks easily, and we have no family nearby.
At the end of this term, her and all her friends were desperate for the holidays to come. There has been non stop assessments and exams.

We still have a music festival to come, 11 nights in Spain, and lots of meeting up with various friends.
DH, DD and I have just spent two nights in London.
I wish the holidays were longer..

"I really don't get the angst about the school holidays"

Why don't you read the thread and try, just put a tiny bit of effort into it, and think outside your own experience.

School is not, and should never be childcare. i agree with nikkifury I think she had it spot on.
I take it you all knew when you had children that they would go to school at some stage, and that school holidays would have to be covered?

School is not childcare = most overused phrase on Mumsnet.

Ok then, so it is not childcare, but it is a place where children are safe and therefore parents can work while the children are there.

As for the rest of it "presumably you knew when you had children" blah blah blah, what a pathetic non-argument that is. Really, it does NOT take too many brain cells to see the difficulties with 13 weeks off school for the AVERAGE family.

I wait at the school gates all day. Got nothing better to do!

Of course people take school into consideration when making decisions like can we afford children, how many, what sort of age gap... We both work, nursery was extremely expensive,

I wonder if parents in other European countries indulge in this annual angst ridden woe every summer.
Most countries have far more than six weeks off.

If there was no childcare element, parents would need to attend with their children.

I have to say that it hadn't occured to me to look forward to DS1's summer holidays. I work 5 days a week, as does DH; the only change for us will be that DS1 goes to holiday club for 4 weeks (we've got a week in a family house near a beach at the start and a week on the continent at the end).

Are the holidays meant to be a 'thing'? They never were when I grew up. We were just sitting at home and bored a lot.

Beginning to feel that either I haven't planned enough or that everyone else has planned way too much!!

I do enjoy the summer holidays and knowing there isn't any school routine but equally I find it hard.

My children fight, oh my word do they fight. I find this extremely stressful as my husband works very long days so is rarely around. We have no money to be going to theme parks or big days out or even to pay for the extra fuel to get to places and alas there isn't anything local to me as I'm in a small town.

This year I've found it harder as despite being only 4 days in I've not been able to do anything more than a paddling pool and play doh as I'm having quite a bad illness flare up which is leaving me with no energy and just struggling to walk around let alone anything else. I'm hoping that I can do more with them next week, just don't know what as per the reasons above.

I do feel bad that my kids don't get these amazing days out all the time, and the so called cheap/free stuff other parents seem to manage to find. But what can I do? I can't magic money out of thin air, I can't wish myself better.