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 😩

Just be glad you are not NHS staff who have to work weekends, nights and bank holidays including Christmas day. I was lucky in that DH had two weeks off at Christmas when the children were small

Try Sitters, it's babysitting agency.

I worked for them for years and would often do a few days in school holidays and entertain the children for this reason.

There's still time to book people in to do the odd evening so you and the children can meet them beforehand.

yanbu
it's bloody hard

dh and I ended up tag teaming with both working reduced hours. one from silly o'clock early morning till about noon, the other noon till late.