Working Parents - How do you cover childcare in the Holidays

[wonderings2]

Just as the title how do you cover the school holidays?

DD is 5 so this will be her first 6 week holiday. Myself and DH both work full time, mine is WFH all days. I have an amazing employer who is flexible - I have to be online at least some of the day and attend scheduled calls but as long as the work is done I'm not micromanaged and can log on whenever I want.

Grandparents have kindly offered to cover a few days (again I acknowledge how amazing this is) and I've booked a weeks annual leave.

That still leaves me around 15-20 days to cover, what do you do for these days, do DC go to clubs the whole time, do you let them roam free and hope for the best? What are these clubs and how do you find them?

I'm obviously in a very favorable position (Hats of to parents in the office full time - I don't know how you do it) and I still cant work out how to cover it all?

can your husband take a week off too? That’s 5 days less to cover.

any friends you can do childcare favour swaps with? You have their kid during your week off, they then have yours another week?

otherwise I think it’s clubs. With an older child you can let them play at home fairly unsupervised while you work but my 5 year old wouldn’t manage more than an hour or so without me entertaining her. It’s not fair to expect her to days on end!

Thats basically all there is, I am afraid! At least i havent found the silver bullet yet...

I do a mix of clubs, alternate annual leave with partner, childcare swaps with friends, flexing hours in different directions

All of this and also I use parental leave to take unpaid holiday to look after them. My employer is supportive of this and often works out favourably compared to holiday club costs for 3 kids

Annual leave and holiday club. Absolutely not working from home and leaving her to it because that’s shit for both her and me.

I work part time, which makes it only 2.5 days we actually need childcare for. We're very lucky in that my mum wants to have the kids one day per week in the holidays, so we only actually need 1.5 days per week, which we do quite easily between DH and I using our annual leave. I just wouldn't be able to work full time as we wouldn't have the childcare (we have a pre-schooler too).

Holiday clubs
annual leave
unpaid parental leave

A mix of leave (took two weeks last year), holiday clubs (very fortunate to have a great one at their school) and grandparents. I try to keep grandparents to a minimum as they are approaching 70 and it's not fair on them but they also let dc get away with murder and then when they actually need to get them to listen/stop something etc they don't. It is better all round for us to pay for the holiday club!

Thanks good to know I'm not missing something obvious. The childcare swaps is a great idea though I'll mention it to some of the mums.

The problem I have is that bc work is WFH and so flexible its just assumed that I'll cover everything, I still have 8 hours of work to do I'm just very fortunate I can decide when to do it

if your partner and you both take a week off unpaid parental leave. You take a week together, grandparents do part of the remaining 2 weeks and your use camps to cover the other days - you’re sorted!

Mixed in with the odd wfh day where they will mostly chill. And then play dates with friends also when I wfh.

Ha! You need to disabuse your husband of that belief immediately!

Why ON EARTY Wpuld he think that? Does he not understand what WFH is?

Also surely he wants to take a week off with his DC?

When is he taking his leave, if not in the summer holidays ?

<mind blown€

@wonderings2 I suppose if you really can do work whenever you want then maybe you could swap a day a week to a Saturday if he gets them out of the house you'd be very productive?

If not ideas are

• local six former or student home for holidays to babysit and take them on trips out and about

• parental leave (unpaid)

Yeah where's DH in all of this?

Also, how many weeks' of vacation do you get? Maybe take another week??

I think here is your problem OP!

Of the 6 weeks we take 2 weeks off each, with 1 or 2 together depending on holiday plans. That leaves 2 or 3 to cover.

With clubs if we both flex hours they can do half days a lot of times, or we can alternate dping long and short.

But yes ultimately if it is all down to one FT working adult alone it will be quite tough!

Not the issue but Im thinking of career changing and curious as to what job OP you do and other wfh flexible workers.

Id really like to be able to do school pick up (teenager) but they can then be happily left unlike a 5 year old.

I couldn't work full time when they were young partly for childcare reasons as Jo flexibility in my work.

The problem I have is that bc work is WFH and so flexible its just assumed that I'll cover everything, I still have 8 hours of work to do I'm just very fortunate I can decide when to do it

That IS the problem. DH needs to step up too.

A bit of this, a bit of that. As they get older (9 & 7) I am trying to be less rigid about booking clubs up as childcare. First time this year though so it's an experiment.

I've got some annual leave at the start. H has some annual leave at the end. I'll do some compressed hours and add in some flexi as we go along. I'm hoping grandparents will do some half days and that my kids might play together or use screens for the other half of those days. I've booked a more fun club for 4 days. Anything I can't sort they will go to the local holiday club at the senior school, but it isn't open for booking this early.

We have 8 weeks in Ireland. We take a three week family break, 2x AL, 1 x PL . One week language camp and then we each cover two weeks either with swaps, family.

I have in the past done 5-10am and then a couple of hours in the evening when his father was finished work. So covering a day's work just outside usual hours. Mine are older now thankfully.

Annual leave, split between us, and holiday clubs. We also wfh and have very flexible jobs but they have to be ill to be home with us whilst we are working.

A combination of "wfh" (where I struggle to do the bare minimum, so I use this option as little as possible)
Flexible hours (do some extra while kids are covered if I can)
Annual leave
My parents (thank GOD for my parents)
Their dad might take them for 4 days in the summer if he's feeling generous

I'm literally wishing my children's lives away, until they're old enough to stay home alone

It must be so tough having no flexibility 🙁

I work for a large consulting company in a HR-ish role, not high earning but due to the flexibility its a no brainer at the moment. The company is pretty flexible as a whole but my manager in particular is very family friendly and we are mainly made up of mums with kids...

I quit my job when I had my 4th, as nothing worked. I'm now working again, totally different role and I actually employ several people. 2 have young children and they have both booked 2 weeks off, 1 of them has also booked some early finishes and this is fine but I couldn't have them just letting me down at the last minute, the odd day due ro child sickness is understandable. I would consider them taking the whole 6 weeks off unpaid if they needed but it would have to be the whole 6 weeks to make it worth while for someone else, or even 3 weeks off each. I do have a couple of staff who help out occasionally.
Your lucky you can work from home.

When my kids were younger we were lucky to have a reasonably priced (about £25-30 a day) and well organised daycamp for 4-12 year olds that has been running for years locally, that ran 10am-4pm, with the option for 8-5 or 6 for a little more money and that was OK as I could WFH fairly easily. We leaned heavily on that with me and my parents doing the odd day as well. Once the kids were both in school I could pay for it with childcare vouchers, I don't know if there is an equivalent now with the replacement scheme.

I have to say, I am so glad the days of organising holiday care are basically over now.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I'm going to see if I can share childcare with some of the others mums - I didn't know this was a thing. I'll have a look at clubs too, DD is very outgoing so she'd probably really enjoy it.

I wouldn't let her roam free (Honest 😅) but there might be a few days where we are home together so I don't mind muddling through. I'm also feeling a bit bad, it'd be lovely to spend more time with her.

DH can be a bit a twat about this, when I suggested taking some unpaid leave he said "just go sick" 😡I'm battling against a mindset where the women's job can never be equal to a mans and the mum is the default for everything but I'll be telling him to book some days off.