AIBU to wonder what you do with your children in school holidays whilst you’re at work?

[foxesandtoadstools]

My children are 7 and 10 and I was a stay at home parent for their first years and have now been working towards an Accounting degree and will be starting my final year in September. Which brings me to my question… this time next year I will be working full time and I have absolutely no idea what people do with their children in the school holidays! My partner works very long hours so can’t provide any support with this. My mum is local but I can hardly ask her to have them for a five week summer holiday (and the other eight or nine weeks off a year). So what should I be looking at in preparation? Summer camps? Do they even exist in half terms? We live on the Isle of Wight too to make things even more tricky as we don’t tend to have a lot of organisations for this sort of thing. I guess my other option would be a childminder, but I don’t know what age they even go up to? And how long do I need to be doing this before they can be at home while I’m at work? 13ish maybe?

I promise I am usually a pretty competent parent but I feel like I’m entering a completely foreign world where everyone else knows how it works but I’m in the dark!

You are also entitled to take extra unpaid parental leave every year - 18 weeks per child between when they are born and turn 18, capped at 4 weeks per child each year.

So some people will use this between age 4 and 13, 2 weeks per year, if you have 2 children that's an extra 4 weeks a year but it's not paid so you need to be able to afford it (although obviously you save on childcare and travel to work).

Though you will have a problem if your kids are the sort that hate holiday clubs.

Childminder, annual leave between parents, one set of grandparents, and I managed to negotiate some time off unpaid during the holidays when my days (am part time) increased.

Friends with older primary kids who didn’t like clubs would hire older teens to look after them so they could be at home. Worked very well - do you have friends or neighbours with sixth form /student age kids? The sort that help at Brownies etc a good place to start

Mine didn't like activity clubs and wanted to read and do more home based things. I managed to get outside help by asking around and one small ad. One year I had a local lady who was not child minding over the summer, she brought her lovely daughter with her. One year it was the student who did babysitting and the last time a newly qualified teacher in the summer before she started her first job. This worked better for us .

I would say you can't manage this alone. Despite his super important long hours man job your partner is going to have to either drop them off or pick them up, and he is going to have to take some holiday

I so agree with this. In fact I would say your DH has had it easy for the last 10 years, is likely in a senior position at work and therefore actually needs to take MORE of the burden to enable you to get yourself qualified and settled into a career. Start talking to him now about potentially taking 4-6 weeks parental leave next summer if you will have just started a new job. As a relatively junior member of staff/ trainee it is unlikely you will be able to take more than 2 weeks during the school summer holidays.

I work particularly tine do can normally cover it through taking 2 or 3 weeks annual leave (we go on holiday) occasional reciprocal agreements with friends, grandparents and DH taking leave or WFH. I haven't used holiday clubs but note people stop using them at about 11 and children tend to stay home alone from then. Now my eldest is a teen she can watch the younger one too.

We got together with a couple of other parents in a similar situation - 2x full-time working parents - and hired a temporary nanny through an agency between us for 4 weeks. Went on our family holiday the other time.
Last time we hired a teacher and they had a great time going out and about. Personally I preferred it to the holiday camp option where they went to the same place every day. It can work out expensive though. We may look for a uni student this year as the kids are a bit older (9).

Reading your OP again DCs are now 7&10, you have one more year from September, so if you finish this time next year and give your start date as Sept 2022, the first summer you will have to cover they will be 12&9. The older one will have done a year of senior school so will be too old for all but the most expensive clubs.

Combination of me taking time off, DH taking time off, going to grandparents in Devon for a week, holiday clubs, swooping days with friends so when I am off I will have thier kids for a couple of days and vice versa.

We take our 2 week family holiday
DH and I take turns to take some annual leave - on these days we often take a friend child and they return the favour another day.
Camps
As they get older you can have the odd day WFH and give them jobs to do and a movie afternoon.

We are in London and my DS gets 7 wk hols and the clubs etc are costing us around £650 for one child

Single parent. Two weeks off myself and then some long weekends but use the school club now. It used to be my childminder. Occasionally have asked family to help for a few days but that involves getting her to them as they live elsewhere.

Summer holidays it's not the only problem. As you know schools are closed various times a year for different reasons which can make you use a lot of your Annual Leave. Hope you have other people available to help out if you don't have a childminder.

Holiday clubs. Also I tend to take 1 week unpaid statutory leave per year (you are entitled to 6 weeks per year until your child is 18) just to add a bit of slack.

They are not cheap but residential camps are great especially if you can compress your hours a bit during that week and buy a bit of flexibility when you need it. And then it doesn’t necessarily need to be on the IOW.

It’s tricky. I’ll take a week, DH will take a week, get grandparents to stay for a week etc.

On the IoW I know that both Ryde school, YMCA and UKSA run summer day club activities so there are some good options out there.

Shall never forget the Easter when dd's school had the two weeks before and DS's the two weeks after - 5 weeks in total.

This is why when I went back to work I switched to education where holidays are generous and work locally. HE - 35 days A/L. However there were still 13/14 weeks of school holiday to cover. We covered it with a combination of A/L, grandparents and our au-pair. If your dc are 7/10 now you will until the youngest is 12ish have to have after school care in any event so why not go the au-pair route?

Summer: first four weeks activities, 2nd 4 weeks we have a family holiday. DH never worked in August.

Autumn half term: Ours had two weeks - dh and I were always flat out. They did a week at my mother's and au-pair covered the other week.

XMas: 2/3 weeks - au-pair and dh's parents.

Feb half term: we usually went away

Easter: clubs, grandparents, au-pair

Whitsun: holiday

Yes it’s a big problem for parents like me especially as where I live, the summer holidays for primary aged children are 9 weeks and 12 weeks for secondary aged children.

There is no wrap around care offered by local schools so our primary school hours are 9.20-3pm.

I can’t work outside of home because the only holiday clubs anywhere near where I live run for about 4 hours a day and are sports related, which my DS won’t enjoy.

When you live rurally, your options are severely limited unless you have additional family support, which we don’t have. Most of DS’s school friends live on farms so there are adults around and when they’re old enough, they work on the farm during their school holidays, week-ends etc.

i was part time, and my dm took them for 2 days per week, occasional holiday club but difficult with 3, time off also

If so, you will need to source after school care, especially as you may well find yourself studying on the mainland for your professional exams.

There are a few different accountancy bodies, but I have 3 different accountancy/accountancy related qualifications (glutton for punishment) and I have always studied remotely.

This has been the norm during the pandemic when even the exams themselves have been taken remotely, and that will continue next year.

Yes as others have said, a complete mix of

My annual leave
DP annual leave
Holiday/sports club
Odd shared childcare day with friends
Couple of days with grandparents

Can I just check- the way you immediately dismissed the idea that your DH would be able to help- why? Did you genuinely mean that your starting point was that he would not be taking time some of his annual leave while you were working? Because that is what working couples simply have to do and for him not to have thought if this raises some serious questions about how supportive he is generally about you going back to work.

I got the number of weeks wrong on the statutory parental leave, see other poster but also guidance on govt website. Also DH and I tag team on a lot of the annual leave bar 2/3 weeks we take together.

Most people I know who have to work summer hols use family and or friends if they have any locally or a childminder and holiday club.

What will you do for wraparound care during the week once you are working?

For ds I used to have to plan so far in advance , drawing up timetables! A mixture of my annual leave , family, and holiday clubs . Now he is older and I have a wfh flexible job it's a bit easier .