Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU for wondering why the government assumes 12 year olds don’t need childcare?

484 replies

HiddenPineapple · 08/05/2019 06:42

Hi folks,
Looking at Tax Free Childcare and I see it stops when a child turns 12.
www.gov.uk/tax-free-childcare
Can I ask what the heck working parents with 12 year olds are expected to do in the summer and why there is so little provision for that tricky bit where they’re pretty independent but you really don’t want them sitting around the house all day on their own?
DS is 12 and it looks like summer care will cost me £125 a week. Normally I’d apply accrued childcare vouchers, but the summer camps are not registered for childcare vouchers. The ones that are registered won’t take him because he’s 12.
Confused

OP posts:
isabellerossignol · 09/05/2019 07:05

Surely there must be some kind of bus even if only infrequent and with a walk at the end

The OP presumably lives in either Belfast or Derry. I live in a rural village outside Belfast. If someone wanted to visit me from Belfast by public transport they would have to stay overnight.

Original poster
HiddenPineapple · 09/05/2019 07:08

By the way, how many posters here would be happy to put their 12 year on a bus, to a village they’d never been to meet up with a child you’d never met?
Anyone?

OP posts:
SnuggyBuggy · 09/05/2019 07:09

Is it that rare for people not to live near school friends? Loads of people get school busses that only run term time.

Original poster
HiddenPineapple · 09/05/2019 07:10

Not if they go to a school with a very wide catchment area.

OP posts:
Original poster
HiddenPineapple · 09/05/2019 07:11

Sorry, I should have said ‘It is not rare if you go to a school with a wide catchment area.’

OP posts:
SnuggyBuggy · 09/05/2019 07:12

Only if I was available to go pick them up, in my experience busses are pretty unreliable and I'd want to be a back up

RussianSpamBot · 09/05/2019 07:18

Conceptually I think a lot of posters will struggle with the reality of life in rural NI and what isnt available, especially if you happen to be west of the Bann. Although even in Belfast, there just isnt the same provision of some things as there is in other large UK cities, let alone in Derry.

isabellerossignol · 09/05/2019 07:19

It probably wouldn't even just be one bus, it might be three connecting buses. Eg to use my own example it would be a bus from wherever the child lives in the city to the bus station. Then a bus from the station to the nearest town. Then a bus from the town to the village. They could be hanging round a bus station in the nearest town for hours waiting for a bus to the village. And the bus station in our nearest town is not the sort of place you'd want to hang round, it's like the wild west.

isabellerossignol · 09/05/2019 07:20

And it would cost a fortune...

bonbonours · 09/05/2019 07:20

I have a 12 year old and like OP although she is independent, travels to school by public transport alone, stays at home for a few hours on her own, can make basic food for herself etc, I wouldn't want her being at home alone /roaming the streets when I have no idea where she is or what she is doing for ten hours a day for the whole summer. Lucky for me I don't work in the summer but when she would have been home alone all day recently I arranged for her to go to a friend's house for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

This thread is another example of people for some reason acting like once a child goes to secondary school you can treat them like an adult. 12 is still a child, not mature enough to make sensible decisions or look after themselves for long periods of time with no supervision. For a start most 12 year olds would choose to spend six weeks staring at a screen and eating chocolate and crisps which I would not be happy with.

There's a lot to be said for the American summer camps...

WindsweptEgret · 09/05/2019 07:24

By the way, how many posters here would be happy to put their 12 year on a bus, to a village they’d never been to meet up with a child you’d never met? Change that to 'train' and 'city', and yes. He walked to the station and was met then dropped off at the station at the other end by the parent of the other child.

isabellerossignol · 09/05/2019 07:29

One train journey and being met at the other end by a parent isn't really comparable to several interconnecting bus journeys and lots of hanging about.

The first time my 12 year old got a bus alone, last summer in order to prepare her for travelling to school alone, I met her at the other end and the first thing she said was that it was ok but a strange man sat near her and her friend and wouldn't stop trying to talk to them and find out where they were going etc. It was fine because they were going to town and being met by an adult at the other end. She'd have been terrified if she was getting off in a strange village and having to walk to a friend's house along a country road. Alone. And sadly not without good reason.

Original poster
HiddenPineapple · 09/05/2019 07:34

Thanks @isabellerosignol

OP posts:
SnuggyBuggy · 09/05/2019 07:35

Trains just feel safer, in my experience bus stations tend to be rough as fuck, there are no announcements when a bus doesn't turn up to give you an idea of what's going on and some routes are just unfathomable with loops and figures of 8 depending on the time of day or whether the moon is in Jupiter.

They are also really expensive. A common conversation with my mother was "Can I have £5 for the bus," "What £5?," "Yes it's £4.70 for a return," "Oh sod it I'll drive you,"

MariaNovella · 09/05/2019 07:36

There's a lot to be said for the American summer camps...

There are fantastic summer camps this side of the Atlantic! Try Village Camps - absolutely top quality.

Blueroses99 · 09/05/2019 07:39

This thread reminds me of how much I hated school holidays because I was left at home all day every day in charge of a younger sibling. I was not allowed to go out, not allowed to meet friends, food was left ready to be microwaved so no cooking or food prep required. Lots of sleep, TV and books, which I usually enjoy but once it felt like I had to because there was nothing else I could do, they stopped being enjoyable. It was a boring and lonely existence.

Springwalk · 09/05/2019 07:42

This thread really comes down to two different sets of parents

Parent A - thinks once they hit secondary school they are virtually adult, and can be left pretty much to their own devices. They do not need organised activities, sport or any kind of childcare ever again. The children are left to roam.

Parent B - thinks that children need supervising and caring for until mid teens. They don't like the idea of their children roaming the streets or spending all day on screens.

It boils down to a stark difference in parenting.

Parent A will never understand Parent B and vica versa. There are some parents that will be forced to be Parent A due to circumstance, I suspect and are really Parent Bs in reality, but on the whole if you are Parent B op you are never ever going to feel comfortable with the set up over the summer for your son. I agree the government should change it to 14 years old, but that won't happen by July so I hope you find someone or something in the meantime.

We live nowhere near our school friends either, and no bus service, and I can totally understand why you are worried about your child. Best of luck Flowers

BrieAndChilli · 09/05/2019 07:42

We live in a tiny small village. There are 2 towns about a 20 minute bus ride away and several cities which are 45-60 minute bus rides away. Buses from our village are only one every 1-2 hours

The only childcare options in the towns are -
council leisure centre sports camps only for primary age kids.
Local primary schools run holiday camps (our school does one for only 2 weeks of the summer holidays and again it’s only for primary age kids.
Couple of drama/gymnastics clubs runs a week here and there of clubs but they are generally silly hours like 10-3 and neither of which of interest to DS1 and are in places inaccessible without a car.

That is literally it. Luckily for us as we have 2 primary age children a lot of the time either me or DH are off with them or they go to Devon to MILs for a week at a time so DS1 doesn’t have to spend much time alone (which tbh he loves s has ASD)
DD is starting secondary in September so she will also staying home with DS1. They are both very sensible children, DS1 is not a rule breaker and will follow instructions to the letter, DD is very practical and good at problem solving and cooking etc so between them they will cope with most things. I only work 10 min away so if any problems I can get home quite quickly.
Hankfully by the time DS2 (who is a little monkey) is in secondary they other 2 will be in years 10 and 11 so I won’t have to worry so much as they will be around to look after him (and stop him wrecking the place!!)

bonbonours · 09/05/2019 07:51

@Bogglesgoggles I would disagree with you. Potentially it is very unsafe to leave a child of 12 unsupervised for hours on end with Internet access. Presumably you haven't heard of grooming? Aside from the fact that spending all day glued to a screen is not good for their mental or physical health. And going out hanging around the town when parents have no idea where they are potentially means doing dangerous, anti-social or illegal things. So yes I would say it's a safety issue.

RoseAndRose · 09/05/2019 07:53

It doesnMt boil down to a difference in parenting, unless you deliberately choose to ignore alk the posts which show the inbetween ways, with a mix and match of options which suit the DC and the wider family.

All that changes when the child is 12 is that government tops defraying part of the cost (and remember, it's less than 2 decades since there were any taxpayer-funded assistance for childcare at any age).
Now, if you want a higher age ceiling, what would you de-prioritise from existing DofEd expenditure to pay for this?

And would you also be seeking to change other govt policies - such as end to CB NI credit to match?

RussianSpamBot · 09/05/2019 07:57

The OPs problem appears to be lack of provider rather than inability to access vouchers once child turns 12, since she was going to use already stashed vouchers if she could find anywhere to accept them. Thread title is very misleading, but this isn't a costs issue since the state has effectively already provided the subsidy now anyway.

isabellerossignol · 09/05/2019 08:14

I think a lot of people also have no idea how little there actually is in some areas. We have next to no public transport, no after school clubs or holiday clubs etc. When my children were small there weren't even any nurseries I could send them to.

We live where we do because that's where we can afford to live. If we could afford the cost of housing somewhere with more facilities then we'd live there instead.

BogglesGoggles · 09/05/2019 08:15

@bonbonhours do turn off the internet and don’t let them out or place reasonable limits on where they can go. I can see how with a particularly bad child it could be a safety issue but not with an average 12 year old.

Re the bus thing it’s not that uncommon. Thefamilies at my sons school live all over the place. Getting from the house of one furthest family to the other would be about an hour and a half in the car and it possible by public transport. Outside of big cities public transport options tend to be really really poor and it’s nit realistic to expect everyone to have access to usually public transport. Where we live the on reliable public transport is the train but it only goes in two directions, cones rarely and doesnt go to any villages etc. No point in trying to takes a bus. They don’t turn up sometimes, they run late frequently and stop in really useless spaces (e.g. three stops within a hundred meters of each other and then one stop on the side of an A road and then no stops for another two miles, not in a village or anything just on the side of the road).

Springwalk · 09/05/2019 08:15

rose it is a difference in parenting, of course it is. There is no way I would leave my very sensible twelve year old dd all day. It isn’t fair to them, and it would worry me even more leaving her on the streets with teenagers. Bearing in mind she isn’t even a teenager yet, but still very much a child.

I would suspend free tv license and fuel top ups for very wealthy pensioners - and would means test free tv licenses, free bus passes and fuel top ups. Easy. I would always prioritise keeping the young safe over pensioners topping up their cruise fund.

NewAccount270219 · 09/05/2019 08:22

It's a difference in parenting but also circumstances (e.g., do you have public transport where you live that is so frequent and reliable that you would feel happy for a child to use it with no back-up? Do they have friends within walking distance?) and also personality of the child. I was genuinely fine being left at that age (no internet at home though - we got that later in my teens) and quite liked it. If my brother had been the older child it would have been disastrous, and I think mum would have had to find some solution she didn't need for me, because he certainly couldn't have been left all day at 12 without either getting very upset or doing something risky.