If you work FT where are your children during half term/holidays?

[27dresses]

I'm currently looking for full time work. I had DD (3) during university so I had no problems with childcare.

Just wondering where DD will go when it's the Easter/Summer and Xmas holidays. Do I need to fork out £££ to pay a childminder so I can continue to work?

People use combinations - so, pre-school, you use either a CMer or a Nursery that isn't term time only.
Then some CMers will have the children they used to have pre-school as wrap around care and school holiday times. Some Nurseries also do wrap around school and have holiday clubs too.
Then you work 'swaps' with other parents (relations or friends) - you have theirs for a couple of days and they have yours for a couple of days.
Some people are lucky enough to have Grandparents (r other relations) who will have them for a few days.
Once they get a bit older, there are holiday clubs they can go to (some of which have wrap around care, others don't).
Then you share out some of the leave you and their other parent has and use some of that.
Some employers (depending on your role) will let you do some work from home once they get old enough to entertain themselves but not quite old enough to be left alone, for a few days a year.
A few people are lucky enough to work term time only themselves.
It all starts to add up.

Grandparents/relative may help for pay, childminder(s), kids holiday club. In the summer mine did a lot of weeks away - camp, survival skills (which they used to love), surfing, coding, making robots, look after a horse... just to get through. Thankfully they are now 17 and no longer need them! Nightmare of leave juggling and dropping off/picking up.

This weeks they are with gps. Easter they are going with DH to his country. May I have taken annual leave. Summer is a mixture of gp’s, annual leave and DH. Thinking of a couple of holiday schemes this summer now i’m working full time and have some extra cash.

Annual leave. which covers about half of it
Grandparents doing the odd day here and there
Sports camp

Its a bit of a nightmare really. I get so stressed in the run up to the huge summer break trying to get the logistics to work. We have 7.5 (instead of 6.5) weeks in summer this year too as every 5 years or so we get an extra week to bring the whole thing back into sync

A mix of annual/flexi leave, grandparents and dh taking them to work with him. Its all about logistics, i hate the holidays!

I made mine learn musical instruments, and then they spent most of their summers at orchestra camps.

Easter and Christmas were always harder though - mostly I took time off or their grandparents looked after them.

It’s an amazing feat of planning that mixes a family holiday time, with WFH or short days & holiday clubs & swapsies with friends & visiting the grandparents or having them with us for a bit. The good news is that the BIG one - summer hols- is generally quieter work wise as many people are off themselves and that all work places I’ve been in have parents doing the juggle too. With the ‘freer’ staff I.e. not having school age children, less worried about having loads of time off in the summer because they get to jet off to lovely places in the autumn and other cheaper times. One of my younger staff asked me why on EARTH would I choose to take a holiday at Easter when it was so expensive (!!!) like I was some mug !

Holiday club.

08.00-18.00
£28.00 incl all snacks and meals.

3 full days of childminder.
2 hrs at drum school
The rest at home (he's 9). He's had a tough time recently and not keen on going to some of the camps they have at the sports centre (not to mention the £££).

I work from my garden office out the back. It's not ideal, but I'm bloody stuck this 1/2 term.

Hoping someone might offer to take him out for a few hours, but not looking good.

DH and I used our annual leave entitlement, so we each covered a few days, I’d also work from home and we used a summer camp for four weeks of the six week break.

My friend was a teaching assistant and occasionally had DD for a day, but we preferred having firm arrangements in place by covering it ourselves, or with formal paid childcare.

I try to not stress about it - it can feel like ‘forced’ time off and we’ve decided that it’s good that we’re forced to spend time off with our kids, and that mostly the benefits ( quality-ish time, doing things we would never do without children - ( the circus or shows or swimming or activities or playing tag or whatever!) outway the cons ( getting evils from some colleagues for being half there most the summer)

Annual leave. Family. Friends swapping days. Some kind of activity or sports camp.

I use a mix of holiday club, my mum and friends.

I’m lucky I can compress hours in holiday time to increase my time at home.

DH and mine annual leave, working from home, other family, last resort- holiday clubs, managed not to use for over a year.

I have a few days off from work now. During term time I pay someone who lives in my apartment building to babysit the children. My partner is my main provider of childcare. Have you checked to see if you qualify for childcare funding? We applied a few weeks ago since we also have a part time qualified childcare provider.

Between dh and I we have 10 weeks hols, we have one off together as a family, my dps do 2 days a week in the hols other than the week together and over Xmas. We also have 1 or 2 days off together over xmas

I've done a mixture of parents having them, and going to activity camps - was a real pain before we had au pairs (or when we've had gaps between au pairs) but luckily my manager is good at letting me work from home in holidays when I had to.

It's getting tricky now as DD is getting too old to enjoy same camps as DS (she is 10 and he is 7) and come summer, when she'll be 11 she really won't want the same things but she's not old enough to make her own way to events. I've basically told her she'll have to suck up a few weeks at camps she might feel she's outgrown, but on the upside she might meet kids going to the same secondary school as her there at least.

I also take a couple of days off, or if I can't I will give the au pair extra pay to take the kids out for the odd whole day, especially if there's like an extra one day in a week off before school restarts etc

I had an au pair until recently. Then holiday clubs. Now I'm self employed and don't get paid if i'm off. I'm thoroughly juggling this week. It's not easy.

I met someone this week (where I'm currently working) who's a single parent who shares childcare with another single parent.

we've always worked around each other to avoid large childcare costs ( 4 kids).

If you both work are you entitled to 30 free hours? you can spread this across 2 childcare providers. Ask to have the hours over the whole year and not term time. Equates to about 22 hrs a week but then you’ve not got a lot to pay out each holiday period.

We do a mix of childminder, annual leave (which we take seperately unless we are actually going away), dm, dmil, activity clubs and swaps with other parents. In can be quite stressful to arrange, and it costs a fortune.

I'm eligible for 30 hours just wondering how I'll afford out of term childcare plus 10 hours I'll have to top up per week.

We would find it hard to save for the holidays, let alone an actual holiday.

All sounds so expensive. How do people cope?

Activity clubs, sharing with other parents & annual leave.

We use holiday club. Both DH and I take advantage of our employers' childcare vouchers which helps.
We have no family help to call on. The cost of holiday childcare was a factor in us only having one child.