How do working parents manage school pick-up with a long commute?

[Somethingsgotthagive]

DC currently goes to nursery and both me and DH have a very good commute.
We are planning to move further out to afford a house and DC will be in school next year, so that will mean longer commute and shorter childcare hours (afternoon clubs in various schools I checked close at 5:30pm or 6pm latest and the majority of these are oversubscribed anyway so difficult to get a place).

How do you manage school pick ups and wrap around care during school years if you both work full time? I can only WFH twice a week and need to be in the office the rest of the time, DH needs to go 5 days per week.
I am not a great fan of CM as I don't like the idea of having DC staying at home with a stranger and their family (please respect this, it's my personal opinion and feeling and I absolutely do not judge parents who do that). What are we supposed to do? Employ a nanny for pick ups only? are they even easy to find? Give up on the idea to have a house further out and just stay in a small flat in current area instead?

DH and I both had 1hr+ commutes and we adjusted our hours slightly so one of us did morning drop off and one the evening pick up. We used school breakfast club and then a childminder after school. There was an after school club but as we needed childcare in the school holidays so we found a childminder easier as holiday clubs near us were generally only school hours and our CM would have them all day. You just have to be very rigid leaving on time if you are picking up the evening

We used a CM for wraparound care when DS was young, but he also had two children in local primaries that he'd pick up for after school care.

Otherwise look at the breakfast and after work clubs? In our old area they would pick up and drop off the kids from school.

It's not just wraparound, it's the endless holidays too.

We have a nanny that we share with another family. She does school drop offs and pick ups and all holiday care. We pay her a full time wage between the two families as she realistically wouldn't be able to find anything to fill the gaps. It's brutally expensive but works.

When we both had to be in the office we staggered our hours a bit, one work 8-4 and one working 9.30-5.30.

I think you would need a nanny. What happens if the trains are down and you both can’t get back quickly. This happens a lot with no warning. This is one of the reasons why we chose to stay in London, as we don’t have any family close by we would be stuck picking up from nursery and school if the line was down.

We couldn’t manage. Keeping the children in school until 6pm, was just too late for my liking. I had a frank chat with my boss, I went down to three days a week, all which had to be WFH otherwise I’d have to be a SAHM and leave my job. Two parents working full-time with primary aged kids is nigh on impossible IMHO. There is a breakfast and after school club, but 8am - 6pm is too much of a long day for my 5 and 7 year old.

I didn't like the idea of a childminder either but had to deal with it because there were no after-school club places. Tbh I'm still not keen, but going into Y1 now and there are still no places. (Thankfully we didn't need breakfast club as we live close to the school.)

We WFH most days but there are days when we're both in London. It's shit I really miss nursery. Holiday clubs are also less available than we were lead to believe - our school holiday cub only operates two out of the six weeks in summer 😂

DC’s nursery provided wrap around services that were the same as nursery hours (7.30-6pm) until the end of yr 1 that included walking them to and from school. We now use the school service that is the same hours. Essentially we had to adjust our hours/commutes to make sure we can drop off/pick up (our wrap around charges £1 per minute you are late after 6pm). Both have changed jobs over time and have much more flexibility these days thankfully, but actually the structure and routine suited DC when they were little

We used to have a Nanny- it was realistically the only way we could make the commute work.

your best bet would be to find a housekeeper/ nanny. You'd need the housekeeper part of the role, because a professional and qualified nanny will want more hours per week than just after school pick up.

There are after school only nannies, but they tend to be college /uni students or retired women wanting a part time role.

you could advertise for your own after school nanny, but you'd need to pay a premium for this to make it worth their while financially.

If you do not want a childminder then you may need to consider cutting down or condemning hours.

Don't forget the long holidays and teacher dev days in school too.

While they're so young, I'd find a different WFH job or work part time for a few years. I changed positions to WFH so can do pick up.

One parent I know quit her job and got a new one with school hours. Another has requested to work term time only, and will quit if they say no. These scenarios of course only work if one of the parents earns well so the other can sacrifice their career to an extent.

I changed my working pattern to compress my hours so I have availability on set days. DH asked for the same but his request was denied, however we both WFH at least a couple of days a week and bosses are happy for us to nip out for the school run (it's less than 10min walk). Before ours were old enough to come home and entertain themselves for an hour we used wrap around school club.

In school holidays each week tends to be one day with grandparent, we each book a day off (he has generous leave entitlement, I buy extra), my usual day off then one day of holiday club. You may find your child's friends also go to a club or hobby camp type thing, we tend to book ours in after discussing with their friend's parents what day they're going in so they enjoy this as they see their friends. Sometimes I'll take one of their friends out for the day then they repay the favour etc. it's a pain in the arse sorting the logistics but everyone's reasonably happy with the arrangements.

We have it fairly easy at the moment in terms of commute so staying in current area would be a lot easier but hard for our budget as we could only get a flat (London) whereas moving further out would mean we can get a house but it's realistically be 1 hr and 15 min commute

I worked an hour's commute away, DH worked 45 minutes away. Wraparound care closed at 6pm. We each WFH one day a week, one day a week DH went in for 7am leaving the house at 6:15 and 2 days a week I did likewise, so as to be able to leave in time to be back by 5:30 - always aiming to get to the wraparound care pickup half an hour before closing because there will regularly be delays and you can't mess them around by regularly turning up after closing time.

If you can't do that then yes a nanny is a possible alternative - and you are unlikely to get a part time nanny as there's no-one who wants a nanny for up-till-2:30pm-only so they can't combine working for you with another family for a full time wage . You would probably be able to find a nanny-housekeeper with full time hours of 12 noon to 7pm daily and duties of tidying cleaning, ironing and batch-cooking during the 12-3pm slot each day. You might be lucky and find someone who only wants part time work in order to combine it with eg study but this would be risky as you would be constantly vulnerable to them deciding their other priorities are more important than their work for you.

The workload of being sole-carer from 3pm untul you get home would be too much for a reasonable au-pair arrangement.

Yes I got a ‘nanny’ who collected my dc and took them back to my house until I got home from work.

When my youngest was in afternoon school nursery I had a private nursery pick up from home, take them to their nursery and then school nursery and then pick up and bring home.

I also had a childminder at other times and school wrap around club.

At one stage I had two childminders for different days and then they both went on maternity leave!

It was really hard and then at one stage I had two children in two different schools at different times and it was impossible and it all fell apart and I had to give up work.

If you have family nearby to help that is often the best solution. At my dc’s school there were always grandparents at school pick-up.

@OpusGiemuJavlo I can leave at 4pm when in the office, which isn't an issue if childcare ends at 6pm but makes it much harder if it's 5:30 as commute door to door is around 1 hr and 15 min and there are often delays

Flexible working.

This also means like many parents we know one of us ends up working in the evening or on the weekend.

We use an after school club which goes to 5.30pm. We are also lucky enough to be in an area with a few holiday clubs. Two run at half term but only one does 8.00am to 5.30pm.

We could use a childminder but it's more expensive and anyway the childminder we used to use latest pick up is 6pm. If I aimed to do a pick up at 5.50pm there is transport disruption on most days so I had to aim to get to her by 5.15pm anyway.

I honestly think it’s quite risky to have both parents working a long commute away, unless you have handy grandparents who can collect if the trains end up screwed or the child is sick and needs collecting quickly.
Most people (our family included) had one parent reduce hours/days whilst the other stayed full time.

When mine were at primary most families with two parents working would aim to stagger the day - one in the office before 8, able to leave at 16.45, the other doing the morning run and arriving later but working later.

@JustNormalMen we also do that but with long commute times it’s still difficult to be back on time for the end of the school day/afternoon clubs

@Reugny 5:30 pick up would be tricky if we moved further out as commute time is longer than 1 hr and if there are delays we wouldn’t make it even if leaving the office at 4. It’s so hard

We don’t have family nearby sadly

Sat through a legal session on everyone's right to request flexible working today which came in in April. Both parents can ask for flexibility to help manage this. so as a PP said you can try to manage drop-offs and pick ups between you. Worth an ask - we were advised to give people trials to see if it could work (ie business not detrimentally affected), your company may well have received the same advice. Search ACAS flexible working request to see how to do this and what the company has to do / consider.

We are just venturing into this as our daughter starts school in September. The biggest issue for us is my trains. We are fairly rural and I have 1 train and hour most of the day with the occasional extra one at rush hour.
We chose a nursery in a neighbouring town as it's station was on a different line and the train times were more convenient and gives me an extra 15 minutes in the office and is £3 a day cheaper than my local station. She's starting school near our local station. I WFH 2-3 days a week, in the office 1-2 days a week with 1 nonworking day. My partner WFH 1 day a week and in the office 4 days. We are hoping that he can WFH on the day I'm in the office so I can catch an earlier train before breakfast club opens. The real sticking point is my lab day once a month where I can't leave until I'm finished at that can be any time between 4 and 7, then battling with the 1 train and hour and can mean I have a 45-50 minute wait in the station missing bedtime. If this was more regular than once a month we wouldn't have been able to move to our current location as multiple trains an hour would have been a bigger priority.

My partner drives to work which makes are lives so much easier. On Tuesday all of my trains were cancelled and I had to call him to do the pickup at last notice. If you are both relying on the same public transport lines to get back to do the pick up I would proceed with caution. Pre child we both worked in Manchester and a few times found ourselves stuck without any way home and once had to a train in the complete opposite direction to my sisters work and she drove us the 10 miles back to our house. There was another occasion when there were no trains able to leave Manchester at all so we went out for dinner and were on the verge of getting my dad to drive the 20 miles into the city to pick us up when the trains started running again.

I don’t think it is feasible I’m afraid, you either need to compromise distance or have a childminder/nanny or one of you changes job.

After school nannies are expensive and no less risky than a childminder, but I think you will struggle to get one in some areas anyway. They aren’t very appealing to nannies.

I have the long commute 2 days a week, DH works from home full time. We absolutely couldn’t both do the commute at the same time as we can’t afford a nanny and no childminders past 6pm where we are.

We have nursery until 6pm now and school wraparound to 5.30 from this September. We partly chose the school for the wraparound arrangements.

School holiday camps are also an issue- many are for very short days. What’s your plan for those?

The support of a good school.

Another thing about independent schools that Labour conveniently forgets....

As a single mum, if I get stuck on a closed motorway, or behind a points failure, I call the school and arrange for DS to have his tea at the boarding house. I can collect him later.

When I need to travel overnight for work, I can book him into the boarding house for one night.

If independent school was out of my reach (on a 50% scholarship), I'd have to change job because I can't be in two places at once. I get no help from anyone else. The school is my safety net and allows me to do my job, pay my mortgage, not rely on the state.....!