To wonder how you cover school holidays with no family?

[LivingMyBestLie]

There are around 14 weeks of school holidays per year and I have three children (two primary school age, one 1yr old).

AIBU to think it's impossible to cover school holidays with no family childcare?!

For reference my partner gets 30 days annual leave a year, I get 15 (pro rata). I work 3 days per week.

Please tell me how you do it!?

We did this.

You need parents to take only some leave together (main family holiday) and then have separate times with Dad+kids and Mum+kids

Holiday clubs (I was always booking for the next one as soon as each hol finished)

Investigate every possibility for flexible working: see if you can 'bank' hours and take some TOIL, or ask to compress hours during some of the hols to give extra days. Once DC are age 10+ (ish) it becomes possible to WFH without undue distraction.

Au pair for the summer if you have room (only with older DC though, they're not qualified and shouldn't have sole charge of very small DC)

Make friends with your DC's friends' parents, and see if you can arrange some child swops#

But at the end of the day, just like everyone else, you'll almost certainly end up paying for quite a lot of it.

Remember that childcare is a joint expense, for it allows both of you to work. So you need to look at how much the household income rises, as well as how much household bills increase.

Factor in also things like job security - two earners is more resilient than one, being in the workplace means greater changes for progression and promotion. Also the longer term view - even if you see no increase in household disposable income, what would be the situation in 10 years (rather than 5) when you don't need as much holiday care - if you've been working, then disposable income increases considerable (costs go down) but if you haven't it doesn't, and you are perhaps then faced with job hunting after a protracted break. Also cost to you in old age if you have fewer years in your pension

You'll be fine we work the same, he's full time and I'm 3 days and we cover it between us with annual leave no problem.

For those working all-year round jobs.

Would you take a pay cut to work term time?

Knowing what you know about the logistical nightmare of childcare, would you choose a term time job at £20k pro rata, or a year round job at £30k?

I'm trying to decide what could work and what's worth it!

Parental leave - 18 weeks per child up to their 18 birthday, this is unpaid but you could weigh up the loss of wages vs holiday clubs. Can be taken a week at a time up to 4 weeks, I’m intending to use parental leave when I take a full week off leaving my holiday to cover days when DH can’t cover.

Buy annual leave from your employer - 1 week extra for their dad and me. That covers all holidays but you don't get time off together - 2 of our child too young for holiday clubs (1 year old twins). It is what it is and sacrifices have to made in the early years

If any of your children have Sen and you have no family support one of you will have to give up work

Bear in mind that you're at an expensive stage. childcare for a 1 year old is not cheap full stop, but will get cheaper, and the two primary school children will come out the other end and not need care any more. Although childcare for 3 children was never going to be cheap.

As well as all the other points made, can your DH work compressed hours? Then he can (for example) work a couple of long days when you are off, to enable him to have a day off at another point in the week.

I said it was obvious. Not that it was necessarily affordable. I currently pay a lot every month for childcare so I’m under no illusions that it’s not cheap. But it’s that or not work. And not working isn’t an option for me.

If you’re thinking in the long term, then it might also be worth thinking about the cost across the whole year - even if you only pay it at the points you need it. the summer costs loads, but spread across the full 12 months it’s not as much a proportion of your £18k (even if it’s most or all of August’s salary).

You can use tax free childcare to save a bit on it.

it’s possibly also worth thinking in terms of family income and absorbing the costs there, rather than seeing it only in relation to your own income. The childcare allows both of you to work. You not working at all costs the entirety of your salary. Whereas you working costs in childcare but that’s not the full £16k of take home pay you’d be bringing in presumably. And, longer term, your income can increase. Plus the whole pension thing.

I take my children to work with me, or I work at home with them. It’s always been that way as paying for child care has never been possible.

If you take some leave separately, you only need to have about 3 weeks or so of holiday club per year. About £40 a day here and you get 20% off with tax free childcare. Unless you're on a very low wage or have a lot of children, it's worth doing rather than term time only work.

Take them to work with me or…. Leave them at home if I won’t be long (obvs not the baby on her own but my oldest ones been doing it since they were five. Lockdown the kids spent six-eight hours a day in a van either driving from client to client with me or waiting outside while I was in a clients house then at night helping me up the farm. “Childcare” only helps those who work regular dayshift hours. The rest of us just have to manage it.

I quit for 5 years.
There was nothing round here that did anything other than 9-3. We needed 8-5.
I now earn less than half the amount, TTO.

Op it is a massive headache and needs planning.

Annual leave - take one week of hols together, leaving yr oh with 25 days. You only need three days a week so he can cover eight weeks with that.

Then you have another 12 days, that will cover another four weeks. Wow you are almost there! Two weeks of holiday clubs and done.

We both worked four days so similar to you; also swapped with families with similar dc. When they are older some wfh may help too if that's possible.

Dont make the mistake of thinking oh I earn 1500 and childcare is 1800 so it’s not worth working because in reality your share of childcare is 900 and you get to keep a lot more money the rest of the year (so don’t just look at school holidays to decide if you can afford to work). Then there’s the long term impact of being a SAHM on your earnability AND the dependency you have on your DH financially should something go tits up.

Even if you work at what seems like a loss in the summer holidays, don’t be short sighted and look at the total picture.

All annual leave used for holidays so dh and I don’t ever share leave, plus 26£ Per day holiday club and bankruptcy

I think a better option may be to work 3 days a week all year. Likely to have more options than just term time jobs and if your partner works 5 days you only need to cover 60% of the holiday days…works out okay with annual leave and not that much holiday club.

Get a term time only job. I work in a university, have to cover childcare for 2 half terms, but get Christmas, Easter and summer hols at home.

One is with a childminder and the other is Year 2. So I also have to cover younger one when childminder is on holiday and he can't go to holiday clubs as too young. We both work full time.

Older one goes to the childminder some days when she's working during holidays but that's expensive so we try not to do much (although he loves it as she's great!)

We take one week annual leave together and split the rest over the holidays. We use holiday clubs and swap with other parents.

I use the tax free childcare and overpay every month to have a holiday fund for holiday childcare. It's not ideal but needs must!

Agree. I also don't actually find it that much of a logistical nightmare - we have a planner and book it all in well in advance. Places like supercamps have advance booking discounts as well

Holiday clubs, babysitter, nannies

AIBU to think it's impossible to cover school holidays with no family childcare?!

I find these type of questions baffling.

I work full-time, have almost always done so, and am a single parent to 3 DC for many years. Ex is pretty dire, very limited help tho has some summers (when they agreed to go with him) taken them away for a week.

I now am able to avail of a Shorter Working Year scheme so I essentially take 2 additional weeks unpaid, but it's split across the year so I've a deduction each month in my salary which makes it easier.

But yes, I paid for full day childcare when I needed it. It was very very hard (I often had to pay for camps + top up care from my childminder) and I spent almost everything I earned on childcare sometimes. Occasionally my parents helped financially (they were at the time helping in other ways eg money for school uniforms so I couldn't ask for even more). I never thought of it in terms of I can't afford it. I had to. I need to work & want to work & it's an unfortunate cost I have to manage, somehow.

I don't have family nearby to help with the actual minding.

Now they are getting older, it's not childcare but activities that occupy them & that's costly & while not be strictly needed, I think it matters not to have them bored & at home all summer.

Holiday clubs, childminder or finding another parent or 2 in the same position who you can share childcare with.

I then got a term time only job - shocking pay (about £10k a year) but as a single parent it was practically impossible getting all of the holidays off or being able to afford to pay for childcare.

A year-round job. The £10k difference would cover the cost of childcare over the holidays , especially if you and your DH will both use annual leave for some of them.

However, I know that having only one child makes it easier cost-wise, and I have realised that I’m lucky to have a decent holiday club attached to DD’s school, and that a few of her friends also go there so she’s rarely reluctant to go.

It’s not really a logistical nightmare for us as long as we plan leave/ holiday club bookings well in advance.

We use a mixture of our leave, so a week each in the summer and then another week with us all off together, grandparents always do a week in the summer (just one week), then 3 weeks of summer camps. Camps are about £50/day here and so we budget for them throughout the year. I can also buy some leave back each year, so take the max I can (2 weeks) to cover at Easter/part of each half term. It is what it is, it’s not forever!

Your biggest problem will be finding a holiday camp that (a) your children enjoy (lots of them revolve around sport which is a no-no here) and (b) that operate what I would call normal working hours ie. 9-5. Though I've noticed more of them offering wraparound lately. Tbh you will find it a lot easier since you only work a 3 day week. I have one colleague who is lucky if she gets to spend more than a couple of days with her whole family over the summer. And as for a day off for yourself - forget it 😆