to occasionally be a bit jealous of people with on tap childcare?

[PhoenixRisen]

My mum and my DH's parents and family all live abroad.

Everyone around us has siblings or parents who live locally to help over summer.

Don't worry, my kids won't be neglected, they're going into holiday camp the weeks we can't be with them (and DH and I have made sure one of us can be there 5 of 8 weeks holiday).

But it's times like this, when I struggle to work out how the fuck we cope during holidays and before school and after school, that I get a tiny tad jealous of people who have willing and able family or friends nearby.

(The flipside is I don't have to deal with any family fights or issues, and that is fricking awesome!!! They are all hundreds if not thousands of miles away)

All my family live in different countries to us (and my mum's an abusive nutter, so it wouldn't matter anyway). I remember feeling quite jealous of the women whose mothers/MILs I used to meet at playgroups who were all doing like 4 or 5 days' childcare for their kids. DH managed to convince my MIL to stay for 3 weeks when my twins were 8 weeks old and then that was it, it was summer and she had to get back to her garden. I know it's the woman's right to spend her time as she likes, but If either of my girls have kids and they want any help I'll be very happy to be able to give it. I can't imagine either of my girls struggling with lack of sleep etc and wanting help and doing anything else.

Has anyone else ever noticed either, I've got a few friends from eastern Europe and the mums are just awesome. They just drop everything and come.and stay for like 6 months. I knew one Polish woman who came to the UK, looked after her wee grandson for a year till he got a nursery place. Another mate of mine in Switzerland, her mum came and stayed for like 6 months when she had a second baby. She looked better rested than me and my kids were 5 yo! Her mum was lovely, I met her a couple of times and she gave me homemade pickles and really strong alcohol to take home. Honestly I couldn't decide whether I wanted to cuddle her or steal her. I know Scotland makes mums like that, I remember when I was a kid there were a few of them on our street who used to look out for me and fix me up with somewhere to go and have a biscuit when my mother was kicking off. For.me, having kids has been like a second chance to see how shite at being a parent my own mother was.

Op YANBU. Although mine are all grown now, I remember only too well what it's like to have no support or respite at all. Parenting is the hardest job there is, without a doubt.

I am SO SO jealous of those around me with lots of family to help out! Lots of our friends have Groupon weekend breaks around Europe just on the 2 of them. My husband and i have not had a night alone in 14 years!

. But times have changed and in families it is rare to have a SAHM there to do all school drop offs and ferry kids about to various after school activities.

For me personally I'm gobsmacked at how many kids mums are at school drop off and pick up

@ElspethFlashman
Couldn't agree more. FASH has great form for banging on about how perfect she is, her DH is etc.
Don't know why you bothered posting FASH. You have no idea what it's like to be in the situations detailed above.

We are very lucky in terms of grandparents and it’s absolutely understandable that people are jealous. There are always going to people people jealous of others’ situations. I’m jealous of those who can still work full time; I had to give up doing that after a serious accident so we struggle in other ways. I couldn’t cope without my parents for the school run some days as I often can’t walk in the morning after lying down all night; it must be so hard for others in a similar situation who don’t have that help.
Also, missing the point totally but 8 weeks holiday? (Ours only have 5 and a bit this year which seems shorter than usual). That must make it harder too.

YANBU. I get very jealous too. My parents and MIL all work full time so the juggle with DH and my work is tricky, especially if there's any sickness (and childcare costs of course). My mum fortunately lives not too far so we does babysitting now and then, so I'm lucky for that.

Yanbu
I cried regularly trying to cobble together teenagers and school clubs to cover summer hols
DH's parents 300 miles away
My parents ill/dead and never really knew DC
It's so difficult

The flipside is I don't have to deal with any family fights or issues, and that is fricking awesome!!!

Freedom!

We have no outside help. One of mine has additional needs and had to be withdrawn from mainstream education (hopefully we have a place at a special school for next year) so I'm currently with a challenging child all day every day. DH occasionally helps out on a weekend so I sometimes get to leave the house alone. A bit of respite would be great. But not if it meant having to deal with my awful family!

Yep we have no one my parents are NC and dh parents are racists so they hate me and the kids so don’t bother with us

We pretty much either have to pay for extra childcare or don’t go out yesterday supposed to go to a party didn’t have child care so didn’t go

My friend has childcare on Tap and moans a lot about them even going away to the US and moaning because her mum said she would have dd but couldn’t do all the after school activities for two weeks gymnastics and brownies

We have a family member who does a lot of childcare, but we pay them as they had to reduce their work hours in order to do it (which is fair enough).

However this arrangement only started very recently. Prior to that I was on my own and fuck, it was hard (husband works away an awful lot)

Apart from that one person, we don't have anybody to help and god knows what we would do in that situation. I suspect we would hire a nanny.

I have a friend who lives 2 mins from parents, who have been very much sharing the load since birth (having the baby several days a week etc). She is VERY lucky. I am very jealous of her situation.

I have this problem too, it's a major challenge, especially with shift work. But on the flip side, because I pay for DS's care I stay in control of arrangements, there's never any of the guilt others seem to have around relying on family and there's no obligation to reciprocate.
I have a fantastic childminder who is very flexible and hardly ever sick, which really helps. Also my work were very accomodating too when DH and I temporarily separated a few months ago.
I guess everyone finds a way to manage their own situation, no solution is perfect so there's no point in being jealous of others.

I know someone who bought a house next to her parents. Her mum does childcare fo her as the kids laundry.

My in laws live locally have my daughter on day a week and do babysit regularly. I know we are very lucky one of my colleagues is very jealous as her MIL will only do one overnight even three months and her Mum lives to far away but does have them for a big chunk of the summer holidays

YANBU to be jealous but you could try and change it, you dont need family available to help, just reading this thread most people in the exact same position as you so a lot of your friends/kids friends parents/neighbours etc will be too.
Most of our family we are NC with and any family we are live abroad, so we have never had any help from them but we have made lots of friends with children of similar ages and even some friends without children, we help them and take there kids or do other favours for them and they do the same for us.
We have our next door neighbours kids mon-wed mornings every week so give them breakfast and take them to school. They have our kids after school wednesday every week untill 7, so pick them up from school and give them dinner in return.

Oh don't get me started on grandmother's doing their daughters laundry oh my god.

The other day I was talking to a lady in her 70s about her new grandchild who is now 10 months old. She said "I suppose it's time I stopped doing their clothes as she's almost a year old now"

My jaw dropped.

"You've been doing their family's laundry since the baby was born?!"
"Oh well, it's been very hard for her as she has two older kids and that's a lot for her to do"

!!!!!!!!

I'm not jealous but I do get stressed when it's school holiday time trying to find childcare. I do have brilliant parents and lovely supportive family but the issue is they all still work full time! The only one who is retired is my 75 year old grandfather and although he is in good health it would be unfair of me to ask him to take care of a young child all week. He does do odd days for me but I don't expect him to do the whole of the holidays.

I'm muddling through this summer with help from him, my aunt who works in a school so has the holidays off, a couple of the mums at school, taking some time off myself and DS's dad taking time off. DS is also going to a sports club for a couple of days.

Same here. It also annoys me when I tell people we pay £120 for our overnight qualified babysitter to sleepover with our 3 children so we can have a night away. This is probably once a year. Mostly their jaw drops and they gasp incredulously “can’t your dad / ILs / BIL SIL do it?”. Oooo dunno, never thought of that !!

I do feel for people who don't have that support, and it was the reason I made a career change and moved from a city I loved so I could be near my parents. So yanbu but a lot of people who do have that support will have had to make sacrifices to get it.

And what makes it worse is that those with on tap childcare don’t realise how lucky they are

That's a massive generalisation.

My DM helps us out with childcare. We didn't have DC in the expectation of her providing regular childcare (we deliberately put off TTC until we were in a position to afford Nursery fees etc) but she offered and enjoys the time with DC. We are extremely appreciative and very careful not to take the piss- I took a significant pay cut to work term time only and one of the reasons for this was that I didn't want to be constantly calling on family for favours over the school holidays or for DM to feel obliged to offer. We know that not all parents of young children have family locally who are willing/able to help and do feel very lucky. The breakfast and after-school club at our DD's school has had to turn away a lot of children for the coming academic year as they don't have enough staff to cope with demand and I was just saying to DH last night I really feel for all the parents who are now going to be stressing about finding wraparound care for September and how we would be in the same position if it weren't for DM.

YANBU to be jealous of those with family help but YABU to assume we're all CF's who don't appreciate what we have.

Yanbu.

As a flipside when we visit the inlaws at Christmas I always think how naughty the grandchildren who live locally are. They are lovely children but the grandparents look after them all the time and never really say no to them. It saves sister in law a fortune in childcare, but I always think mine who have paid childcare are better behaved. It might all change in a few years and ours will be the handful. Anyway I always feel proud that we are bringing them up our ways with no grandparents feeding them biscuits all the time! Or giving us advice. I appreciate it is tough though.

I think sometimes it's the little things as well

The big childcare , holidays and sick days is certainly hard going but I was also a single parent at one point...and it sounds stupid but prior to that I was heavily into running, when my marriage ended of course it had to stop

I obviously couldn't leave the house had no childcare to just sit for half an hour or an hour to have a sanity saving run....well of course you do find a way around it but even small things like that really have an impact with no childcare support