How do you organise your annual leave?

[Amiunemployable]

I've gone from term time to working all year round. I'm trying to plan mine and DH's annual leave for next year. We have a seven year old.

I think we have 22 days holiday each plus bank holidays.

So there's February Half Term, Easter Holidays, May Half Term, Summer Holidays, October Half Term and Christmas Holidays.

We also tend to take a week off in June to go on holiday as we can't really afford to go in School holidays. But then that takes five days annual leave that could have been used to cover school hols!

How do you arrange your annual leave to cover the holidays? I realise we can't cover them all and will need to make use of some holiday clubs. We'd like some time off together in the school holidays but realise also that we will need to take a large chunk of our leave separately to cover as much as possible.

I suppose what I'm asking is how best to arrange our annual leave over school holidays to maximise time with our DS?

For example, say Feb half term, would you:

Have a day off each, so he has two days with parents and three days holiday club

Or

Have one of us book the whole Feb half term and another of us book the whole may half term?

That sort of thing, I suppose.

I tend to arrange ours so I'll do one week and my DH will do another. We don't get much overlapping tine sadly, but manage maybe a week in a half term together.
It's a flipping nightmare though, the annual leave to school holiday disparity 😣

For half term holidays which are 1 week, we each take 1 day off (different days), 1 day with family or friends, then 2 days of holiday club

For Christmas I take the full 2 weeks off as my work basically shuts down, but with the bank hols its only usually 8 days or so.

Summer holidays one of us takes the full first week , the other takes the last full week off and the rest is the same as half terms so 2 days of holiday club each week, plus a day with family or friends.

Sometimes we go on holiday in April other times in August so that is just an extra week where we are both off.

We both get a lot more than 22 days + bh to take off though as annual leave so makes it a bit easier, but if we had less it would just be more holiday club days

Remember you can each request to take unpaid parental leave. I think it’s 5 weeks each before he is 18 to be taken in one week blocks.

I get 6.5 weeks. DP is self employed so if a job comes in he has to take it.

I work PT but I take the equivalent of 1 week in February half term, 1 week in May half term, 3 weeks over summer and a week in October half term.

I work from home and DP / grandparents cover the rest of the summer and Christmas holidays (I usually take off Christmas Eve and the days between Xmas and NY)

I am lucky that I have 20 years + service so I've earned extra leave over the years (the equivalent of 1.5 weeks so I get 6.5 weeks leave as opposed to 5 weeks + BH) I am also able to work an extra day per week in busier periods and take it as TOIL at quieter times so I usually earn the equivalent of another week like this. I always keep a few days for ad hoc days here and there as things crop up.

I'm very lucky but the flip side is DP has very little flexibility so even if he is expecting to be off for a few weeks if a job comes in he has to take it. We block out 2 weeks so we go away each summer, usually just UK though.

Mine are 21 and 17 now but I used to take a couple of days in the 1wk breaks and holiday clubs the others. Same in the summer, though i’d generally take a couple of weeks then. Christmas was harder as no holiday clubs so always needed to take time off then as had no family to help. My ex took some time but he worked overseas for 8yrs of their childhood so a lot of it was on me.

What works best with your work? Is it trickier to take odd days off and does one of you have a busier time of year or find it harder to have leave approved?

What other resources do you have? Are there grandparents who your DS could go & stay with or could they come & stay with you and look after him during the day? Are there any friends who you could do childcare swaps with? What does your child like doing and are there any holiday clubs which are linked to that? What clubs do his friends go to in the holidays?
Can you take occasional days of leave or does it have to be a week at a time?
Christmas is also key. How does your work organise leave over Christmas? And what about your DH? Do you have family or friends coming to you or who you need to go & visit?
What happens if your DS is ill? Can you wfh with him parked in front of the TV, call on grandparents or do you have to take a day off?
All of this affects what pattern might work for you.

I agree with it depends on your work a lot.

For us, my husband has project based work and taking a day or two in a week means he just has to do the same work around that time off. Whereas if he can take a week or two off at a time, he gets a break from work as the projects will get assigned around prebooked leave like that.

So for us he does October half term as that's my busy period at work. I do Christmas as my office closes over Christmas anyways, and he has just done October.

February and May half terms we'll do one each. When it is just a one week break we find ours are happy to have some family time whereas longer breaks mean they look forward to holiday clubs as they start to miss their peer groups.

Easter and Summer we will each take some annual leave in at least week long sessions plus clubs. We tend to coordinate clubs with friends so they are in the same weeks.

Taking odd days does work for me so we sometimes coordinate with DDs friends e.g. one week I'll have 2 days where I look after DD and her friend then another 2 days that week DD and her friend are looked after by the friend's parents. We do similar even with holiday club pick ups and drop off which also helps.

When I returned to work after DS I went part time so I had 2 days in a week when I can have him, DH would organise work so he could do other days

We had no family to look after apart from my DB and his partner would take him out for a day in summer hols and sometimes Easter and then Oct half term but DS only child loved a football or rugby club so that usually sorted Feb and October half terms. We would tend to take holiday together in May half term and then 2 weeks at the end of summer holidays.

A couple of years he had a football or activity camp that we payed for in weeks 1 or 2 of summer holiday

Do as my colleague does..is always sick for at least half the annual school holidays!

We do a mixture. We probably have a couple of weeks off a year together and the rest separate. My kids complain after more than a couple of days in holiday club in a row. If we aren't going away, in a normal week we tend to do a day off each, a couple in holiday club and maybe a day with grandma.

It's been a while since my DC finished school, but I do remember being shocked to discover that some holiday clubs didn't in fact run for the whole of the summer holidays - I learned the hard way that that the last 2 weeks of the English summer holidays were very hard to cover! I don't know if that is still the case but thought I'd mention it.

All of this.

So much depends on what work you do / how flexible it is (remember a lot of holiday clubs are school hours, not 'full day at work + commute' hours). Also on the personality of your child.

Also depends if you know anyone who might be up for some swapped days or even a week where you have their dc when you are off and they have yours when you are at work. Doesn't have to be local - we used to go and stay with cousins in Wales for a week then they would come and stay with us for a week when I was a child many moons ago.

Someone may have already said this, but you can take unpaid parental leave, by law, I think it's 4 weeks a year, up to 18 weeks total, for each child. (Or something similar)
You could use it to pad out the holidays, you don't have to use it all, and every parent is entitled to it.
I used mine when my children were younger.

Roughly we do this... one week each at Easter. One week each at October. I take a couple of weeks at Xmas as DH can't guarantee to get it off, though usually has a few days. We each take a couple of weeks each in the summer, one of which will overlap for a family holiday, and dp will take an extra week of paternity leave in summer.

Random public holidays we split between us. But the DC at older now 11 and nearly 15 so I can WFH with them here sometimes. Dp works shifts so sometimes he has days off during the week of doesn't start work until 3pm on back-shifts. It's all a big of a juggle and we don't have much time off together but it works out okay.

I'd take your holiday in May half-term instead of June, it's a much better use of holiday days (only four) and your DC doesn't miss school.

The rest I would take a day each a week and use holiday clubs for the remaining three days for at least some of the holiday, particularly the short ones e.g. Feb half term. It's a shame to be in a club for the full five days and not get any days out or time at home.

I'd definitely take the time between Xmas and New Year together.

So maybe:

1 day in Feb
1 day at Easter (plus bank holidays)
4 days at May half-term
6 days over the summer
1 day at October half term
3 days at Christmas

That's 16 days each, so you each have six days each to play with, if you wanted another week together in the summer/October half term.

Some employers won't let you take leave like this and insist on full weeks.
Also I really need a longer break to completely shut off from work so this wouldn't work for me. Studies show it takes 4-7 days to really start to relax and stress levels don't drop properly until day 4 or 5.

This is why I don’t take holidays in school term time as it makes a bigger problem in the holidays.

I am driven by holiday club availability- so I don’t tend to take half terms off as there’s ample holiday clubs on offer. Inset days need annual leave as there’s no holiday clubs running.

I don’t take more than the bank holidays off at Christmas as work is very quiet and the local football club runs a camp that’s 9-3 then DS watches tv and chills out. We don’t have to travel to see family at Christmas though.

I would never take my DC out of school for a holiday. I set up a colour-coded spreadsheet for the year with all the school holidays to work out what cover we had and when we needed to book holiday clubs, etc. I had different colours for me, DH, both sets of grandparents, our family holiday and the different holiday clubs. DH is pretty disorganised so I sent him calendar appointments for the days when he needed to be off!

I would also advise booking holiday clubs early and agree with a PP that lots of holiday clubs finish before the end of August.

Ways to maximise your annual leave @Amiunemployable

If this could work.

Could you afford to go on holiday in May and take DC out say 2 days before the Friday they break up OP? Often costs about the same as a week in June, since the weather isn't quite as reliable, and saves a couple of days leave compared to doing a full week in June. A lot of people do that. I actually suspect we'd get a higher rate of term time holidays than we do if it weren't for the annual leave issue.