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.

You must be very patient and have an incredibly high boredom threshold in addition to not having childcare issues due to work. I doubt your children are vastly more interesting or less hard work than most peoples.

I also loved the summer holidays with my DC.

For several years I was a SAHM and then a TA so had summers off. We always had packed food and used Tesco vouchers but we did a lot. A lot of my friends were school gate mums (yes them!!) and were also SAHMs so we had lots of joint days out with shared petrol, picnics and massive games of hide and seek, 20 20 or rounders (if anyone brought equipment).

Those were the best days of my life, not schooldays!

I don't enjoy the holidays that much. I don't organise activities. I can't think of anything worse. Occasionally I do.
My 2 ds's play x box, football with their mates, ride around on their bikes, or go swimming with their mates. I hardly see them. They only come home for food. Or money. Suits us all fine!!

OP hasn't been back? To busy having the most wonderful time with her children?

I'm not even near school holidays yet but I get it

I love the summer holidays and being with my kids for six weeks with no school run. However, i don't have to sort out all day childcare for two kids. I realise that for many working parents it's just more of the same but with more juggling.

People know kids need looking after when they have them

This.

I didn’t become a mother expecting someone else to be responsible for my DC. It’s great that school exists and does a lot to help but ultimately bringing up DC is the job of parents. If you don’t enjoy it and can’t afford it, why have DC? I love the holidays as that is when families get to decide on 100% of the activities DC do. And there are so many activities that school doesn’t provide, so it’s very refreshing.

organise activities every day and make sure everyone is having fun

[shudder]

I love the summer holidays. Our schedule is something like this :
Rise and shine at 5.00 so we can hear the dawn chorus.
Get dressed into freshly laundered cotton dresses and dungarees
Run through the woods or fields singing for an hour or two
Come back to make breakfast of fruit and yoghurt. Each of my 5 children picks and prepares a fruit and then we mix it into a fruit salad.
We then spend breakfast eating and discussing a topic, for example Brexit, Climate change etc.
We spend the rest of the day outside at various free but fun activities, enjoying one another 's company as well as the glorious sunshine.
We come back home and each child takes it in turn to cook dinner for the whole family, although the 4yo is helped by her 6yo brother. They are all adept at handling fire, tin openers and knives.

Did I beat you OP?

Meh. I'm sahm, so childcare isn't an issue. Dh earns well so money isn't an issue. But fucking hell, 12 weeks of my 3.6y ds, all day, every day? No. No. Not fun. At all. Shoot me.

If you don’t enjoy it and can’t afford it, why have DC?

What a ridiculous comment. While i agree that if you are utterly broke with no improvement in sight and hate children, then you might want to rethink your child bearing plans, most people don’t fall into this category though.

Most people can’t be sure what their financial situation will be throughout the next two decades or be sure they will enjoy being parents having never actually been parents much less to their very specific and as yet unconceived child(ren). Do you see what the problem might be here?

Because I work Ft and it’s a reminder about what a different life my children have to what I imagined
I can well afford the holiday clubs but it’s shit when your friends are hanging out and you can’t
Or if they go to friends and you can’t return the favour
Or if yours and your partners holiday week allocated doesn’t match making a holiday nigh on impossible
Get over yourself

@NotMyUsualTopBilling

Have you already used the unpaid parental leave you're entitled to? Someone I know had a similar situation and when her child reached teen years she and her partner used the unpaid parental leave to cover most of the school holidays.

Each parent is entitled to 18 weeks over a child's first 18 years, taken in blocks of up to 4 weeks at a time.

www.gov.uk/parental-leave/entitlement

I loved the summer when I was a sahm aswell, I still am but now I look after other people's children so can have 6 kids in the house everyday and all my 2 boys do is fight and argue just now so it's a living fucking nightmare. Also most people don't have the luxury of staying at home for the whole summer. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and presume you mean sahm with no children with SEN.

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

All of this. I’m stressing out about the summer holidays already. I’d love it if I were able to spend all day everyday with my kids, doing the things you describe but I’m not and when I do get time with them, I’m so tired and stressed out, the day’s not exactly a picture out of Perfect Parenting Weekly.

at @MerryMarigold

for OP because their post has pissed me off for all the reasons already mentioned.

As you were.

If you don’t enjoy it and can’t afford it, why have DC?

Oh yeah of course, only those that fit into a certain segment of society should be allowed to have kids. Bore off.

I'm amused to see that the only people on this thread who like the school holidays are teachers! I'm a teacher, and I'm utterly exhausted. In fact I'm ill now because I hit the wall half way through last week and it's so relentless. I can't wait for the holidays so that I can spend some time with my own kids that isn't spoilt by me feeling churned up and anxious about the schoolwork I should be doing. I can't wait till we can all have a few lie-ins. No doubt there will be moments when my DC will drive me slightly mad but at least I won't be so stressed I lose my rag over tiny things. I don't have a lot of sympathy for parents who don't work who find having to be with their own kids challenging. However I do have a lot of sympathy for people desperately trying to share out the childcare or persuade older kids to go to a holiday club they are sick of.

OP has chucked the Goady Bomb in and run cackling gleefully to herself, never to return...

MerryMarigold you forgot to frolic joyfully in the sparking waves, while petting fluffy bunny rabbits and flying kites.

I don't think OP was taking about people who feel they are not able to take much time off over the summer holidays to spend time with their children. I think she was talking about people who will be spending the summer holidays with their children and are moaning about it. I agree that it is nice to have your children to yourself and to set your own schedule instead of having school and clubs and sports and homework and packed lunches and clean uniform and all that term time entails. I don't care if other people want to complain about it if it isn't enjoyable to them but we enjoy being able to do what we want.

@Tawdry, of course these things are amongst the multitude of things we do in the consistently glorious weather, along with feeding our unicorns up at the stables. We don't need to watch any TV at all. No one ever fights or argues as we're just so busy having fun.

Wow, didn't realise people would be so annoyed! The holidays really seem to be stressful for some of us. Has anyone just tried asking their kids what they'd like to do, and then doing that? I find that's easier, and it means I know they're having fun

Mirror, are you actually as vacuous as your posts about this suggest?

I'm off work for the 1st time all this summer holidays ....I'd like to say I'll have fun but to be fair I'm normally pulling my own hair out after any annual leave of more than 2 weeks as im literally bored stiff !..I'm saving money to do things this summer but even still I hate not being in a routine for any length of time