If you work FT what do you do with kids in summer hols?

[Soundbathfan]

Hi all
My husband and I are due our first in Dec and I am thinking ahead in terms of childcare. We intend to carry on working ideally FT but have no family particularly close :(. What on earth do people do for childcare during school years in summer hols?!

I should add that she's just changed jobs and the new job seems wonderful, amongst other things they finish at 3pm over the summer holidays so that mothers can deal with the limited hours of childcare available.

I wish all this childcare had existed when my children were at home, I had to employ expensive childminders all the time as there were no breakfast clubs or wrap-around arrangements. Our primary school had a summer club for just two weeks of the summer holidays and the hours were very limited. And we could never work from home - what a luxury that would have been!

Early years was my MIL and childminder. Now they are at a school with wraparound which covers breakfast club, afterschool and holiday cover. I also dropped to part time work.

Sadly many parents simply can't afford to take unpaid leave.

so that mothers can deal with the limited hours of childcare available.
That does sound great but I think we all always need to reframe childcare as a parents’ issue not a women’s issue. As long as we talk about it as something for mothers to deal with it will continue to be mothers who are impacted, you know?

It's quite depressing how many of these posts make no mention of fathers...

Separate annual leave for 2 weeks each and then 2 weeks with a childminder. Grandparents would do a couple of days as well normally covering the days at the start and end of the holidays.

I think it's well worth thinking about in advance. We partly chose this area to live in because there are lots and lots of holiday childcare options (including several which take 4 year olds and run 9-5 or 8-6 if you pay extra) and all of the local primaries have wraparound.

Before someone says it, I know not everyone gets a free choice of where they live for a range of reasons but, for those that do, it is helpful to factor this in.

We used a combination of annual leave, holiday clubs and our parents.
Both sets of parents live 3 hours away so they would go for a week at a time in the summer holidays.
Now they are older we WFH so that they can see their friends.

Take a look at this:

I believe that this applies to everyone? You have to register for the scheme.

You lose Tax Credits if you apply, so you have to work out which is better for you.

DD is a single parent of two adopted children so there has never been a father in the picture. I'm not sure if fathers get the same treatment, but I would hope that they do.

When DS was very young we used nursery, between 4 and 7 we used a childminder.

Now DS is older we tend to use holiday clubs. I work 4 days a week. My work are flexible and let me accrue extra hours during term-time so I have TOIL during the summer. Our summer holiday now looks like this:

Week one: 3 days doing sports summer school. 2 days off with me.
Week 2: Same as week 1
Week 3: DH taking a week's annual leave to cover.
Week 4: on holiday
Week 5: I'm taking a week's annual leave
Week 4: 4 days of drama summer school.

I take enough annual leave, parental leave and buy additional leave to cover the school summer holiday, as I like dcs to be able to relax during their holidays. We do some holiday clubs for fun, but only short days. DH takes a fortnight annual leave which we take at the same time as mine, so we can have a summer holiday together.

Sorry to ask you specifically, feel free to ignore me! But do you and your partner have much leave together?

Asking as I work part time and we are discussing me going full time and I feel like we will spend a lot of time alternating and using all leave to cover childcare?

At the moment half terms are easy to cover but 5 days feels like it would be a lot harder.

University students. Our DDs found them fun and cool. Win win because they earned well for a few weeks but still had time to go off for their own hols.

Holiday clubs mainly - commercially run chains such as Camp Beaumont plus local council run schemes at local sports and activity centres which were more affordable and offered some interesting activities such as canoeing, multi sports, dance etc.

Also got parents to come to stay for a couple of weeks at a time to look after DC. They lived about 4 hours away but were retired so could spare the time.

Also a certain amount of swapping with other parents but only limited scope for this as worked almost full time.

We have two weeks off together and DS has two weeks by himself, I have four weeks by myself. So 8 weeks covered. We end up using about 4 weeks of holiday club over the year (usually autumn half term, summer half term, and two weeks in summer). Plus a couple of days of DS sitting at home while DH works - not ideal but ok for the odd inset day or when term finishes midweek.

Dd stayed in Creche all year round up to starting primary school. And we had to pay for all 52 weeks but we did take normal hols.

In primary, we did a combination of her after school club's summer camp (designed for working parents - 8am to 6pm, and each week had a different theme and activities, and heavily used the first few years), and added summer camps as she got older - from age 7 we could find some all day camps for a few weeks and I would do a few weeks of half days to cover afternoons from others (almost were 10-2pm locally). And our family holidays as well. We had a good sailing school near us that dd started doing 1 week age 7, and was doing 4 weeks by age 12. The uni near my office had an all day sports camp she would do a week or 2 every summer and commute with me.

But most locally were a few hours middle of the day. We did a cookery one and a science one and a sports one as she liked them but they were chaos on my and DHs diaries.

Childminder until 3 years then nursery. After that holiday clubs.

It's very easy; just expensive.

As with many PPs we used an independent nursery open for 50 weeks of the year until primary.

Then for primary 1 to primary 7 we used the independent but co-located out of school club. It provided wrap-around care (morning and afternoon) during term time and holiday care during breaks (if enough demand). We'd generally be able to book both DC in Feb week, 4 weeks in summer and Oct week. Easter and Christmas we covered ourselves.

It only ran Tue/Wed/Thu during breaks so I worked compressed hours (but part time). I have done since DS went to nursery. He's almost 17. I've basically been part time for 16 years not but for the last few have been able to do some freelancing to top up the family income.

We paid for childcare in one description or another for 15 years all told. I stopped adding up the cost at £75,000.

Live abroad and kids get 9 weeks. So this year they're at camp for six weeks, I'm off for three weeks.

All I can say is the camp is a bloody godsend. It's open 7am - 6pm.

This is my dilemma. I'm only allowed 5 days holiday in tbe summer holidays. No summer clubs on so just going to have to wing it

Where do you live that have no summer camps? Look all over. Some nurseries take older children during holidays, council run ones, private ones etc.....

Childminder until 3 years then nursery. After that holiday clubs.

It's very easy; just expensive.

I wish it was that easy for us, there are no childminders near us anymore (since covid) and local holiday clubs don't take children under 6/7. Almost all of our annual leave is used just to cover childcare.