Christmas childcare!

[Christmaschildcare]

Before I had children, I thought parents wanted Christmas off because of the ‘magic’ of Christmas with children. I’m sure some do but I now realise it’s mostly because THERE’S NO FLIPPING CHILDCARE OPTIONS AVAILABLE

I have three children under six. Their school is (naturally) closed, their nursery is closed. There are no holiday clubs in our area open whatsoever. We have no one to ask - everyone either works or is in same boat as us so cannot look after THREE CHILDREN for us.

We need to find cover for two weeks. My dh can take a week, and I can take a week, so we’re lucky that we can plan to share.

but even that has been an issue for both employees. We’ve both been told we ‘need to do our part’ and ‘can’t expect to be off just because you’ve got kids’ and ‘well it needs to be fair to everyone’ etc etc.

while I agree with this in theory - in practice, what on Earth am I supposed to do for childcare? If my employer says I can’t take the week off - well, unfortunately, I will be, as I can’t leave three children at home. I’m not being difficult, I genuinely have nowhere and no one to send them to. I wish I did.

is there some magical Christmas childcare solution I’m missing? Please enlighten me 😩

yanbu but in practical terms can you split your leave up between you rather than take a solid week each? So maybe you’re both working a bit between Xmas and new year? Rubbish for you but will resolve some of this.

These may not be options where you are but Bubble or Nextdoor?

Do you have a street whatsapp - we haven't needed to ask, but I've seen people ask on there if there are any university students home for the holidays who want to earn some cash doing childcare, and there are always a fair few volunteers.

We're in north London and there are plenty of holiday camps here - it comes at a price though and sometimes needs a fair bit of travel for drop off and pick up. There may be more options in nearby areas.

DH and I tend to take the Christmas period off though as his DPs visit from overseas and we like to spend the festive period together.

@deiskan we are in a similar neck of the woods, would you mind PMing me the camps you know of? I’ve found one so far. Thanks.

My son went to nursery when he was small and the one week the nursery was closed was from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day, so no good for Christmas childcare. We still had to pay for that week as well. Fortunately we both have office jobs so were able to work around it or work from home and before someone says OH NO YOU WERE WORKING WHILE HAVING A TODDLER AT HOME there wasn't really anything to do, we were just on call in case there was.

Yanbu

It's the main reason I left nursing. Lone parent of kids with additional needs, no grandparents and no childcare available locally. Something had to give.

I used to work in an industry that needed 24/7 cover all year, and we had to do either xmas day or boxing day every year. I used to save money throughout the year for it and use an agency nanny for the day I had to work (lone parent then). If you have to do a couple of days out of each week over xmas, this is an option for you, always worked well for me (just as well as had no other choice!)😀

Could you both not take your 5 days off each in parts, so half of the week each to space it out so others have a chance of being off too.

In the same boat here. My team has a holiday allowance, it can’t go over 50% during the Xmas period. If we have more requests than the allowance then it’s “names in a hat”. If I don’t get the requested time off then who is going to look after my 1 year old when his nursery is closed?

Christmas childcare is impossible here too. I tend to save all my annual leave so I can have as much leave at Christmas and make the most of the holiday clubs during the summer and Easter holidays and have hardly any leave then. Not sure what I'd do if my work didn't let me take the leave at Christmas though... Very tricky!
Any friends or parents that can help out?

Ps. We often have granny come to stay with us to look after the children in the holidays. Could you do that?

It does sound like a temp/ emergency nanny is the best bet - not cheap.

one thing I’d start checking out now, is there childcare clubs over the whole summer holidays or not. They are often run in schools, and schools often stop rental availability for the last week of the holidays so they can get ready for the new school year. Round us all the 2 working parent families always were away for the last 2 weeks of the holidays.

Same boat… luckily my DH can look after our child though. But if I didn’t have anyone then I’d have to find a job that understood/wasn’t open around that time.

My old job didn’t allow us to book Xmas holidays until December and then it was a complete stress. I was lucky enough I could get baby sitters for most days including Xmas Eve but some people really struggled.

Now I’ve changed jobs and we finish up a week before Xmas, I return the favour to all of the ones who helped and some old colleagues from my old work place.

Its not easy at all and I really sympathise with you, it’s a horrible situation and just changing jobs isn’t always easy either.

In an attempt to be practical - as a variation on the childminder / baby suggestions, it might be worth sounding out the nursery staff.

I know a few friends who’ve solved the enthusiasm round us for random ‘bank holidays’ for schools that don’t exist for other jobs by having nursery staff come and do informal cash in hand ‘babysitting’ in the children’s home.

Some nurseries have rules that stop parents asking, or stop staff doing other work for kids at that nursery but if that’s the case and your know any parents of others nurseries then that’s a similar route to ask about.

and on practicality basis you might want to offer to have two of them for some of the day.

Amazed me that people don't plan when they have kids! You pick a nursery that is open all year, work part time and share annual leave with husband to cover all the holidays.
Somehow we all make it

It's amazing to me that people think everyone reliably can plan for the availability of annual leave from both employers several years in advance. As if nobody ever loses a job, or organisations go bust, or change their policies. Same with childcare providers. Even if you identify one who does Christmas before TTC your first, you'd need a time machine to reliably plan for this still being the case in years to come.

Sure, there are some jobs where you'll always know in advance that this is something you'll have to deal with. Like if you train as a nurse or join the police or whatever. But it doesn't work with the same certainty the other way round.

Ask your boss if you can bring them to work and then see what they see. Also ask them if they are asking you to leave them at home, because that would be illegal for your boss to suggest such neglect and discrimination. Can you work from home? Or is this not a desk job?

They are not allowed to refuse, but can decline it being taken at a specific time if it would cause undue hardship to the employer: an example might be if multiple people had requested the same time e.g. Xmas, or the same week in summer holidays.

There are holiday clubs open over christmas - mostly based at nurseries! they do upto mostly age 11. Contact afew you will be surprised!

Meh, I stand by it 🤷🏻‍♀️

You shouldn't, it's ridiculous. As if people can reliably know 7 years in advance what policies their employers will have and what childcare will be available. OPs eldest is 6, so presumably was conceived in around 2017-18. All the research in the world couldn't have told her what changes there'd be in the childcare sector since then.

Plenty of nurseries open at least partially over Christmas. There are also nanny agencies and some holiday clubs, though often not all are open (ours will open a few days). There are 3 bank holidays so most parents only need to find 7 days of childcare, every FT worker in the uk is entitled to 20 days AL + BH or equivalent. You are also entitled as a parent to unpaid parental leave until they are 16/18 if disabled. Christmas timing is very predictable so you can book it off as soon as your holiday calendar opens. It’s not an insurmountable challenge.