AIBU to find it annoying when parents moan about the summer holidays?

[mirrorballbabe]

I really love hanging out with my children every day during the holidays, and sometimes feel like I can't wait until term ends so we can spend proper time together. I try and organise activities every day and make sure everyone is having fun; I've heard lots of mums here complaining about how long they are, but I'm not sure why? Feels like quite a negative way to talk about the sunny months and spending time with your own children? Even the mums at the school gates have been complaining about Easter recently and I can't relate or understand why they see it as such a challenge.

Because all day every day with kids is hard work?

Because spending £50+ a day to send the kids to a holiday club they don't want to go to is miserable for everyone.

I agree I have seven children , four with disabilities so it’s very challenging with meltdows, sensory issues and restrictions on activities and days out, however I had my children because I wanted to spend time with them.

Goady much?
Seriously you really need to ask?..

Because when they have special needs a week feels like a month and not a happy month at that, a hard slog of a month.
Because my dd doesnt sleep well nor do I as she keeps me awake then constant challenging behaviour through the day. You try and enjoy that day in day out. I am not saying it is all dire we have a good day now and then.

I really love hanging out with my children every day during the holidays, and sometimes feel like I can't wait until term ends so we can spend proper time together. I try and organise activities every day and make sure everyone is having fun

Let me say this very clearly so that your tottering comprehension will grasp the essentials: because we do not all spend our summers 'hanging out with our children' and 'making sure everyone is having fun'. Some of us have demanding FT jobs, and need to arrange expensive childcare, and/or an amount of AL juggling with a spouse or partner that involves more negotiation than Brexit.

Because not everyone is blessed with getting the school holidays off and trying to juggle childcare is stressful. I enjoy what time off I can take but I can only take part of each school holiday

I genuinely enjoy spending days with my children over the holidays, but balancing that between two working parents with very complicated work schedules is stressful and can be expensive (my dh sometimes works 7 days a week in August as it’s his business’s busy season in the summer, I have a long commute and am out of the house 6am-7pm 3 days a week).

But when we do get time together, it’s lovely and we are grateful to have professional careers that allow us that flexibility. The summer holidays are long though and require a lot of juggling. I can only imagine they are more so for parents who don’t have the flexibility we have.

Some people have jobs and have to pay for full time child care.
Some people have other commitments such as caring for family members who are elderly or disabled and adding in school holidays tips the balance.
Some people find weeks on end of the company of small children boring.
Some people love the holidays but find the extra expense a strain but are embarrassed to say that.

And some people have very snug judgy pants.

Do you work OP?

Well, I love the holidays too, but that is because I am a teacher and get the time to spend with my children.

Meh out of 6 weeks summer holidays I have been lucky to be able to book 2 weeks off. My husband has 1 week so they are in holiday club for the rest of it.. However if I didn't have to work and could afford days out it would be fab!!

Yes OP you love yours so much.

More than the people with jobs and therefore a nightmare of balancing childcare for 6 weeks on top of all the other holidays.

More than the parents of kids who struggle with the change of routine.

More than the parents who can't afford to do anything particularly exciting.

More than the parents who find it isolating to be cut off from their regular adult contact.

More than the people who occasionally think day after day stuck inside in the rainy weather is tedious.

None of us can emulate the love that you have for your children.

We stand in shame.

As a SAHM I love the school holidays but I know that if I worked it would be a nightmare trying to sort out childcare and they would be far less enjoyable.

I hate all the really annoying posts on Facebook over the holidays, parents moaning and pulling their hair out on day 2. If only they realised how lucky they are! I'm a single mum working full time. Almost all my salary goes on holiday clubs during the six week holiday, and my eldest now is getting to the point where she hates going. So lucky you that you get so much time with them. Not all of us have that privilege!

I've just spent 30 minutes crying at the the thought of the summer holidays. Not because I don't want to spend it with my kids, because eldest is now a teenager but has Autism and cannot be trusted at home alone but there are no childcare options available for him anymore.

I need to seriously decide whether to give up work because I can no longer work holidays, leaving us skint and me very bloody bored for the 40 weeks he's in school every year OR risk leaving him and hoping that he doesn't cause havoc.

So excuse me for having a whinge!

I also love spending time with my children, regardless of the weather (I’m not sure why the OP only likes spending time with his/her children in the sunshine ) but I also have a full time job that involves a long commute. The reality is difficulty covering childcare and balancing it with work commitments.

I could not work instead but I like my job and want to do it.

Because if you are working, it’s a financial and logistical nightmare and source of guilt.
If you are not working, it’s tiring if you are sole or main carer 24/7 even when you love them; and a financial challenge, as social media and other people can make you feel the days should be packed full of activities, many of which have costs attached.
My own mum used to ask me what I was doing with my Dds in half term etc. which given she did fuck all with us, not that we cared as we were happy just to not be in school and to play, - struck me as surprising.

I think the summer holidays are too long, they are an unhelpful legacy of our agricultural past. Children struggle to retain the progress they have made at school in the previous months.

I do look forward to the summer holidays but I am always glad they're going back by the end of them!

We don't have loads of spare money and I find August and September really really expensive with new uniforms to buy, days out to pay for, extra food costs and then 2 September birthdays. My kids get a bit fed up with each other in the last couple of weeks too and start bickering which just does my head in too to be honest.

I work in childcare. So a few weeks off over summer is still me doing childcare...just for my own children, while everywhere is busy and full of children. Maybe I'm in the wrong job

I always enjoy listening to people moaning about having to make provision for the children they (for the most part) chose to have, as though the school holiday pattern has changed dramatically since they themselves were children.

I always enjoy listening to people moaning about having to make provision for the children they (for the most part) chose to have, as though the school holiday pattern has changed dramatically since they themselves were children.

How bizarre to actively enjoy listening to that.

It’s fab that you enjoy the holidays but it’s unfair to judge others who don’t share the same thoughts. I would love to enjoy the holidays but I live in Cornwall, and the school holidays are manic with tourists which isn’t ideal for DS who cannot manage busy places - he has asd. Everywhere is also very expensive! Even paying to park on your local beach is expensive in the holidays! I like the quietness or term time!

I’m a SAHM so I don’t have childcare issues, but it’s hard for working mums too.

Routine is important in this house and school holidays are never very routine 🤨

😂 oh OP

🤔 Were you not paying attention during MN ortientation? Children are nessisary inconveniences which women should struggle through raising to evidence their resilience and validate their own strength of character!

Children should only be enjoyed via social media, on special occasions and appropriate public holidays, whilst simultaneously complaining about some secondary child raising issues (which apparently didn’t exist before making the decision to have children) ... like bills and ft jobs.

I also think there is quite a bit of competition about what children do in the holidays. I am 27 and I’m pretty sure when I was a kid we never went out and about to different places every day, we would stay at home play in the garden, play with the neighbourhood children, do crafts, read, watch movies but now parents are expected to do all sorts! And with social media some parents post everything about what they’ve been up to which is great but not everyone has a lot of money or can visit these places as they have children who can’t handle busy places! 😭