2 parents working FT with kids in school - how do you do it?

[Hvfrruh8]

Hi,

Wondered how people cope with school hours and holidays for 2 full time working parents?

Currently, we have two kids in nursery which is cripplingly expensive. But doable. They are there from 8.30-6 ish, which works well with us working from home but would have meant shorter work days if we factored in the commute.

When they start school, we think there are breakfast clubs and after school options. But no idea how reliable or good they are. What are you experiences?

How do you manage holidays? I have noticed there is lots more for older kids but in the first few years of school there seems to be less available.

Is it possible to do this without doing down to part time? Are the nursery years the easiest, even if expensive?

One of us worked shifts in a 24/7 environment with quite a lot of flexibility to choose/ swap shifts within reason, and the other flexible office days (core hours 10-2 but able to start at 6am and work until 2pm or conversely start at 10am and work until 6pm) in a company where time is booked to projects and any time over the 7.5 hour day plus 30 minutes for lunch is accrued as overtime to use to work shorter days or take full days off...

So we covered the time between us, and long shifts and the model of working hours being calculated per month instead of per week meant less need to take swathes of holiday as often I'd have three free days per week, which were sometimes Monday to Wednesday, DH had weekends free, so only one holiday day each needed to cover a week of school holidays.

School where we are finishes at lunch time so we paid for afternoon care when they were in the first years of school (only available until 5pm with most children picked up by 4pm and the 4-5pm hour cost extra depending upon take up!).

These are all really useful stories to hear about.

Specifically curious how much you paid per hour for the childminder? Did they look after many kids in addition to your DC? ... Perhaps from the same school?

My CM is £4ph (£4.50 ph for 1-3yos), and yes she collects multiple children from the school. Some days it's a lot, some days it's one or two.

Private company out of school club that opens at 7:30am, does the drop off. Then collects and is open until 6pm. It’s also open 8-5:30 every day in school holidays and INSET days apart from the one week between Xmas and New Year.

It’s a lifesaver.

Dh and I both work full time, no extended family around. We chose a primary school carefully. One local school had a tiny asc so we thought the activities and company could be boring or limited for dd. Another had asc run off site by a private company, which we really didn't like the idea of.

Dd's school has a well attended asc, and it's run by school staff. They also have after school clubs for specific activities.

A local company runs a holiday club. We plan annual leave carefully. We've also been using some other holiday club provision so that dd does not get bored.

Our school has breakfast club - drop at 7.50 (school starts at 8.50). My daughter eats her breakfast there as she is a sleepy head and impossible to wake before 7.30. My boys are up at 6 and I assume they have two breakfasts. That’s £3.75.

After school club is £3.75 until 4.15 or £7.50 until 5.15. They get a snack like toast or something if they stay for the later one. At our school we can mix and match with sports clubs and teacher clubs. That is ideal if it’s a teacher club as they don’t charge for those 🤣 however, not quite so reliable - if a teacher is off for some reason it can be cancelled whereas ASC will always be staffed.

it does add up with 4, but then we were lucky with childcare early on as we had a nanny. She was £10 an hour and I think she did 8-6? We had twins so it was more financially viable than nursery. She would take the older ones to school, after school activities etc (bliss when she did the ruddy swimming lessons 😂)

i am a teacher so holidays are not a problem. Although I obviously work during the holidays I can manage my own time and do it around the kids. In our area there are a lot of holiday clubs including sports ones that are subsidised and £12 for 9-3 and a bit more for 8-5. We don’t use them as we don’t have to.

my husband wfh so covers when it’s TD days or for sickness.

Our breakfast and after-school club is good but there is a waiting list so when DD1 started we also used a childminder (they can have waiting lists too).

Holidays DH is a teacher but we also use holiday clubs to socialise her. We've found a couple we really like but they charge extra for long days. There's lots of choice round here: general sports, multi-activity, tennis gymnastics etc.

Being able to work from home is good if you need to flex your hours around settling-in arrangements, assemblies, etc.