Anyone else had a rubbish school holidays?

[Blueybanditbingochilli]

Namely because of:

1. The fucking WEATHER. No doubt I will be piled on telling me to buy puddle suits and ‘crack on’ but it’s been absolutely miserable and I will not hear otherwise. We haven’t been abroad, we don’t have nearby family to visit and we don’t have good inexpensive indoor local attractions so every rainy day (which has genuinely been most days) has been SHIT and we have gone out of our minds with boredom.
2. The age of my children (5 and 17 months), an ENDLESS treadmill of toilet visits, nappy changes, meals, naps, drinks before doing the lot again. They can’t be left alone together as they fight and wind each other up so to even go for a piss I have to strap the youngest, screaming, into his pram while the oldest desperately tries to get to him to cause more havoc.
3. My youngest has been ill on and off after starting nursery all summer with croup, ear infections, whooping cough and HFM, so on top of the rainy days we have also spent ‘ill’ days sat bored out of our skulls in the living room which I swear one day will be the purgatory I spend my afterlife in.

Not interested in smug stories about puddle suits, impeccably behaved children with fabulous immune systems or those who ‘love the cooler weather’. This is a rant thread for those who can relate to my position and nothing more. Roll on school!

I hate the shit "cooler" UK weather too 😖

I can relate for sure. And the wind has wrecked my plants.

Oh .... and I had a heart attack in July and have been in and out of hospital since. Not a summer I wish to repeat ......

The weather seems worse every summer, either that or I'm looking back on my childhood summers with rose tinted glasses. I had the paddling pool up for all of 3 days. It's been shit

Yeah me too. The eldest just wants to play on the iPad and the youngest just got diagnosed with asd. He starts reception in a few days, so worried about how he’s going to get on.

weather has been miserable too.

Yes these school holidays have been cursed for me.

Daughter locked herself in the car and I had to smash the back window to get her out.

One child come back from their dads with chicken pox

Tumble dryer stopped working

Washing machine stopped working

I got Covid

Freezer stopped working and slowly without me realising defrosted all my food over £150 worth of meat and stuff binned

I'm glad they are over as everything that could have gone wrong did and it has been extremely stressful for me. 🙃

I feel similarly. I know summer rain isn’t unusual and I’m not expecting weeks of 28 degrees and blue skies, but fuck me this has been a bad one. I’m not exaggerating when I say pretty much every week has been 4 days of thick grey cloud and rain, 2 days cloudy and 19 degrees, and 1 day sunny/cloudy but still not even warm. I think we’ve had 3-4 days with blue skies and sun at most.

11yo, 9yo and 6yo.

Wasn't our best summer. Have to say the weather was alright for us though?

Noro took me and 2 DC down at the start so we almost missed our holiday

Family holiday was actually okay but it was followed by a patchwork of childcare for a week so I could work.

I then had two weeks off where mine moaned, argued, disagreed and the older two came to physical blows on occasion. Not much money for big ticket days out so we stayed local which sounds idyllic (canal walks, local woods. local nature reserve, local parks, meeting friends and family, swimming, cinema, library, crafting, baking) but it always ended in aforementioned moaning, arguing and disagreements.

2 DC went to grandparents for a week so I could work and the eldest DC had a few settling in days at their new school.

Thank fuck it's done.

I have a 17 yo asd son who hasn’t left the house since June, he doesn’t go back to college until 12 th. I can’t go anywhere bc I can’t leave him and he won’t go anywhere so been pretty rubbish.

@Blueybanditbingochilli do you live in Northern Ireland? Or somewhere similar ? Weather in the south of UK has been pretty good. Plenty of warm sunny days. My parents in NI have had a crap summer but that is the same every year pretty much.

Same here, I keep looking at posts that mention the weather but my mum and dad came down to the SW for 2 weeks to look after DS and they were out every day in sunshine, even if not hot. And DS did a week in Lincolnshire which was also sunny.

I grew up not far from Manchester so never grew up in dry summers!

We live south coast and weather here has been cool and damp a lot of the time! Nothing like it normally is,Had a few warm days otherwise in leggings! Have been unwell so maybe thats why .Anyway OP sympathies to you ,It should get better as they get older (dont know about the weather though!)

I’m not being facetious but I honestly don’t understand these ‘the weathers been great here!!!’ posts. I’m on the south coast and it has rained at LEAST 60% of the days, and most of the rest have been cloudy and windy. We’ve had probably 3 or 4 ‘proper’ summer days, at most. I just don’t understand how we can have such different experiences yet allegedly live so close together.

We had an ok summer, but my DS is much older than your two, and I am genuinely sorry you've had such a crappy time this year. Of course some folk will have had rougher times, but that doesn't mean you can't feel rubbish about your rough time! I hope a wee moan helps and that you've got some things to look forward to in the next wee while.

The problem is the age of your kids. It absolutely is constant toilet trips, snacks, naps etc. At those ages. It is hard work and everything feels like excessive effort.

Now my youngest is nearly 6 I'm coming out the other side of it and the holidays were actually enjoyable on the whole. It really does get easier to when you have kids with decent bladder control and can be reasoned with.

Weatherwise we've had some fab days and some horrid days, the inconsistency of decent weather has been a real pain though - warm day, pouring rain day, windy day, dull day....or even changeable weather within 1 flipping day! We are in N.Scotland though.

Mine has been terrible. We have had quite a few sunny days so that's not the worst, but the DC have been either at each others throats or at mine. They are crying and screaming when they don't get what they want and I'm just stood there utterly baffled by their behaviour. They are 4 and 7 so not toddlers. I cannot move or breathe without interrogated and I've not had a conversation with my husband as they shout over us and interrupt. It's honestly been hell and truly tested my sanity.
For the sake of our relationships with each other I'm going to use a holiday club next half term

🙋🏼‍♀️me. Worked most of it because I have a full time job. S18 refused to go on a family holiday, which meant S14 didn't want to go with just his boring old parents. They are not mature enough to be left home alone without fighting, so we didn't go away. I am back to my fully WFH job today after 2 weeks off. I have cabin fever because I have gone nowhere, done nothing and the weather is shit.

Yep, got a 4 year old and a 19 month old who fight over toys like cat and dog. The 19 month old clings to my leg and screams blue murder if I even try to go to the toilet without her.

I’ve done my very best to get out there and do days out etc but DD is going through a phase where she seems to hate everything, the car seat, the buggy, other people.

All that being said I’ve managed a bit better than I thought as I was really dreading the holidays but god has it dragged on now and I’m more than ready for school to start. It still doesn’t start properly until next week.

Far too much tv has been watched by the kids and far too much wine consumed by me after bedtime and now I can’t even have that as I’ve just found out I’m pregnant.

I keep hearing this but I live in the SE and the weather has been dry and warm, sometimes hot, for most of the summer holidays. Where do you live?

I feel like I’ve only had the washing out about three times all summer as almost every day I’ve been at home and not working has had at least one rain shower!

I don’t think it was as bad as the summer of 2007 when it rained for weeks on end and everyone blamed Umbrella being number one for it 😅

Same. We’ve had mostly great weather here. Sorry for those who haven’t.

I’m so glad I’m not alone with this.

I absolutely adore my daughter but she is INTENSE. She follows me around the house, literally every room I go into she wants to come too, I can’t take a shit without her trying to open the door or trying to negotiate with me about how long I will be. She asks me endless questions from the second she wakes up until the second she goes to bed - she doesn’t even wait for an answer before launching into the next one. It’s got to the point I actually zone out and just stare into space for a few seconds because it feels like my brain just melts down from the endless assault of questioning. She must ask me literally hundreds of questions a day. Nothing I do captures her attention for longer than 5 minutes - I set up the craft table or some kind of activity to make things a bit more interesting but within seconds she’s wandered away to find me and ask yet more questions or say she’s finished. She constantly screams over any conversation I try to have with DP or will literally come and sit on me to interrupt.

It’s got to the point we go for long and pointless drives just so they’re strapped in and not following or trying to climb on me. I feel totally mentally suffocated at times. After a 10 hour day trapped with them in the house i feel half mad tbh

It's been shit.
Husband got delirium.
Eldest developed pseudo-seizures.
Father had flood in his house and came to live near us for five weeks. This was actually lovely, but did add considerably to the pressures.
I was signed off from work with burnout - my family are supremely uninterested. I actually just went back to work, because actually it's at home that the pressures were on me.
Didn't arrange annual leave for start of September because I was asked to do jury service. Trial adjourned after two days and was told I'm no longer needed.
Fed up beyond belief.

Yep.
I had covid twice so have missed half of it. Holiday to mother in laws cancelled thanks to the ruddy covid.
Lots of things that were planned didn't happen.
I'm not "roll on school" though. I am actually gutted that's it's back tomorrow.
I want longer to actually enjoy summer and I am NOT ready for autumn to start.

I've had a really shitty summer holidays!

DD is 18 and ds is 12 (going on 15). I work ft and they've practically become nocturnal. They have started washing up after themselves after I lost my shit a few weeks ago! I got sick to death of coming home to a pile of pans where they'd made noodles or pasta for lunch.

I'm separated from their father, but he's refused to leave the family home until I have the cash to pay him, so he's there as well. Or at him gf's (ow) house. So the constant juggling and not knowing where I am has been super stressful.

I'm doing an abroad holiday with the kids in October as I've been too busy with work, so we've done days out here and there but the result is that I haven't had an actual break and I'm shattered!

So yes, I'm very pleased to get them back to school and college, and get them in a routine.