If your DC go to private school, how do you arrange childcare in the long school holidays?

[MandMand]

If both parents work, its hard enough to cover childcare during the ordinary state school holidays, but how on earth do you cope with the longer holidays at private schools?

If both parents need to work full time all year round in order to pay the school fees, what on earth do you do when your children then have three or four weeks off at Christmas and Easter, and two months off in the summer? Do you end up having to find even more money to pay for holiday camps/activity weeks etc?

I'd be interesting in any estimates of how much to budget for longer holiday childcare on top of school fees, but I suspect this may be a bit like asking how long is a piece of string ....

We pay for holiday clubs - as we dont want them hanging about in the street and go out with them and occasisonally invite friends over who have children same age as ours.

However, most people by the time their children reach age 11 at local private day schools just seem to let them wander about in the street while they go to work.

Just to correct my own facts here, the oldestrecorded natural ( not IVF) birth was to a woman of 59 in 2007 in the UK. The previous one to that was 57.

More unusual I think was the fact the lady concerned had her first child at 49 ten years earlier. Just goes to show folks. Its not just us old men who are getting it on over 50! :)

jabed - it annoys me beyond belief that old fogies like you come onto ths forum and actively seek to misunderstand a post.

Jabed - you talk about not getting married earlier as though you had people queueing up at the door asking to marry you and you had to turn them away because you weren't in a financial position to support them .

Also, you conveniently shy away from discussing whether all these women who had babies in their 50s in the past actually planned to have them, then, or whether it was a failure of birth control after having had the family they actually wanted at a younger age... which I strongly suspect was more usually the case with later pregnancies, which did happen and are the reason why the link between genetic defects and older age of parents (BOTH parents, NOT just the mother) has been known and understood for far longer than science has been able to show why that is the case... because human beings are NOT designed to have their babies in their 50s. You know perfectly well, I would have thought, that women who got pregnant in their 50s in the 1950s were far more likely to be pitied or criticised for their foolishness than to be applauded for their financial acumen.

sorry MNers - he cannot be real.

Jabel - some of us aren't two parent families!!!! If I don't work, then there is no one to pay the school fees, or the holiday clubs or keep a roof above our heads - unless I wanted the state to do all of that for me of course!
Life takes unexpected turns.

Plus none of this has anything to do with the OP.

And to answer Jabed on the over 50's having babies, er, I suspect at least some of those 'parents' would have actually been the grandparents stepping in to cover an ooops...!

You should have told that to my dad - you would have gone home red faced. His mother had him in her fifties. He was brought up for six yearsbelieving she was his grandmother because his elder sister had a baby at the same time and they were brought up together ( in those days they all lived in the same house) . He often used to comment on finding out his " gran" was his mum. But he loved her.

jabed I think you have gone off on a tangent.....

None of this has anything to do with the OP. rabbitstew.I had opportunities when I was younger. suffice?

The OP just has to get to grips with it.

I have said through this thread

a) in the independent where I work there is some holiday club provision .I dont know how much it costs though.

b) my DW told me that locally a community church ran a holiday club at very small cost it seems. I said could the OP investigate if she had something similar in her area.

c) granny care/aunty care seems to be most popular.

Exactly, jabed - he had a much older sister. In other words, your grandmother was probably one of those women who had a failure of birth control post-bringing up the family she had planned, rather than a planned pregnancy at 50... and it was so odd in his eyes, it took him a while to believe she wasn't his grandmother. Or maybe she really bucked the trend and fancied having another baby to keep her daughter company?...

So there's nothing left to say then.....

In answer to the MandMand - the long summer holidays make me sweat buckets & heaps of cash.

Some of the summer clubs don't run long enough to cover holidays, so I try and book holiday myself for those weeks. My DS is autistic (another thing you can't plan for Jabed) and he hates most clubs, so I use a childminder & some smaller clubs that he can cope with. DD mercifully will do anything & go anywhere, so she is easy - but the logistics of getting them to different places at different times & trying to work is a giant nightmare.

This year, I had an operation (which I did need) performed in the summer holidays so that I would actually be at home & I could actually spend some time with the DCs & not have to cough up a fortune in holiday club money.

Be real? You know, I wonder the same about some of you too. £2100 outgoings and mortgages 14 X income? I doubt a bank would have allowed that any time.

Could you not have married one of your opportunities and then waited with her until you were both financially ready to have children? Or did you not actually love any of these opportunities enough to marry them? Or did you calculate that by the time you were likely to be financially ready to have children, your spouse would be a bit old to have them? (eg in her 50s....).

I dont think the words planned or birth control were particularly common in any era before 1960 .

(question directed at jabed, of course...)

Condoms of one sort or another have existed since Roman times or before...

So we could put it down to lack of female emancipation and education, then?

jabed - are you unable to keep up? the house cost 14 times dh's salary - our mortagage is not at that level. The reality of today's housing market is that very few first time buyers are able to buy a house that costs 3 times their salary. that was my point.

Rabbitstew, it may be that because I work in an independent school I see far more mature ( for a better phrase) parents. Therefore I never feel out of place. I also pointed out my wife was young.

Add to that none of the research you "quote" is more than correlational.

Of course I understand the statistical risks but it always amazes me how I have met few of them amongst those I have come into contact. On the other hand I have met a lot of children whose parents ( mothers) were young who seem to have SN children.

However, we off on a tangent as others keep pointing out.
I will leave it there.

harsbatsy ( I see others like to mispel my name too but lets not worry) - £2100 outgoings a month? Thats not real.

Well, you didn't meet many of these children in the 1950s because they were institutionalised. And you don't meet many of them at your private school, because they wouldn't get a place there. And because some parents choose not to give birth to them. My father was a doctor and he saw the link clearly enough.

rabbitstwe, whilst no expert, even I am not that old,I dont think condoms were in common usage in most married relationships.

You would be amazed how many families in the past had secret siblings that the world never got to know about, because of the shame and embarrassment.