Teacher and summer holiday childcare

[treetop122]

How do other teacher parents do it?

I am a teacher and therefore I am lucky enough to get the summer holidays off.
I have 3 children… 11, 6 & 3. All three are at home with me all summer and it has always been this way. DH has a ‘normal’ job and usually takes 1 weeks annual leave during this time (at the end of the holidays).

As the years go by I can’t help but feel hard done by with this arrangement. Yes I love my kids. Yes o enjoy the easier days.. but 3 kids for 6 weeks is hard work. I struggle with the thinking about what to do every day. The constant food and providing meals then clear up then a meal again. The kids are fighting a lot, have different needs due to ages. Holiday clubs are not an option as finances are too tight. We are very active though and I get them out every day. This also adds to the demands of packing up lunches/subcream etc…

My husband has come home saying that he is going away for 48 hour trip next weekend and I am annoyed. Now before anyone suggests I do something similar, all my friends are looking after their kids too/juggling work and childcare/ going on family holiday.

Am I right to feel like he should be home at weekends over the holidays helping out with the kids? His argument is I am not working and he is so he needs time off..
I know I certainly don’t get any time off.

How do other teacher parents do it (one one partner is a teacher and the other is not?)

Im not sure why I am finding this tough this year. I do appreciate the slow mornings and freedom. The weather has been great. We have plans in place of where to go and what to do etc most days.
The house is tidy, washing on top of and dinner is cooked and on the table every night. This is after the children have been entertained and stimulated each day.. I feel taken for granted and I do this every year. Then it will be time for me to go back to work and then that’s always a real push for me to get organised for September.
maybe there is something wrong with me and I will regret feeling this way.

treetop122
I suppose I am more interested in the ideas around one parent doing all childcare over the summer holidays whilst the other one works.
Is work seen as the harder task or am I right to feel like 6 weeks (well 5 weeks) on my own is hard work?

Both are extremely hard work in different ways. I come home from work exhausted but my days off with the kids- as exhausted!! I get it must be annoying op but we tag team here, I work retail and we are nearly opposite each other. The thing is you both have weekends free so hopefully ye get to do family stuff (I get he’s going away for a weekend but the other weekends). I also agree you definitely need to do something with friends to make up for his weekend away

To answer some questions.. All summer clubs I have seen are around £40 a day. No half days etc. So for two kids it’s out of our budget. I would still also have the 3 year old (which would still seem like a break!).
I have told him how I feel. He will still
go as he thinks he needs a break.
kids clubs I have to take them all with me when he goes away. Which isn’t the best but doable (as usually sat for hours in a pool)..

I’m a teacher and my husband has a “normal job”. He takes two weeks off in the summer so we can go away and we tend to do it in the middle of the break so it’s only a couple of weeks either side which he’s working. I love it but u have two not three which is probably easier. My saviour was play dates. Kids are easier when amused so I’d arrange something for a few hours to exhaust them and then take it easy at home. I also drop my standards during the holidays; I’m not stressing over a messy room or a few hours extra of play station.
I think your husband going away is beyond cheeky. It’s just really inconsiderate and I’d be having serious conversations. Does he normally have any regard for your needs @treetop122 ?

I’m a teacher, and the summer holidays as childcare used to stretch out in front of me. I used to work at the school that DS went to, so did all school runs, and was default childcare at all times. DH has worked shifts our entire married/parenting life, so although he gets time off, it’s random, so I have to be able to do everything, as there’s no guarantees that he’ll be available. We were at a private school, and our summer holidays were 9 weeks long, so a lot of weeks to fill and it was very intense.
I made lots of plans with teacher friends with young children to get out the house as much as possible. I arranged play dates and generally did my best to structure our time. Now he’s 14 life is A LOT easier 😅 difference in our case was that DH was actually helpful when he was around, and did understand that it was full on. It still frustrates me even now though that whenever he does a week of nights, he gets a week off afterwards automatically (he can’t take holidays on nights) and there have been many many times over the years that he’s done a week of nights over half term and then had a week off the day that we go back to school 🤣🤣

I understand your point about being busy and then back to work. You need to find yourself some downtime, whether that's through summer camps or grandparents etc helping out. It's only a few years when it is crazy like this, but you also deserve some rest.

My DH couldn't help much during the summer due to the complete unpredictability of farming, but grandparents would muck in and DH was more flexible at other times of the year.

your kids ages are very spaced out which probably doesnt help! And three of them. It was never going to be easy with that set up.

my dh has our family holiday off. Other than that all holiday parenting is on me. He does not even bother himself to think of any ideas of activities for us to do. Not even weekends. He has no ideas. He does make the evening meal every night though. So all the time and planning for entertaining children is always on me.

He would never announce a weekend break for himself though.

As he uses most of his AL during school hols (summer, easter and Christmas etc) I dont think a weekend away is unreasonable. However it should be a discussion not a statement and you should also get time to yourself. Maybe you cant organise a weekend away with friends, but at least go out for a full day/evening and do something for yourself. Even if nothing you want to do yourself then send him out with the kids for the day. Take some time back in some way to make you feel less taken for granted. Make sure he does 50% of the care outside of work hours.

I’d be livid OP. Genuinely. 3 kids is really really hard. He should be taking more time off and you should be getting a break from the kids!

I’m confused at why having the whole summer off is seen as harder than working with young kids. I’m a single parent, no dad on the scene. When mine were little I worked 3 12-hour days per week. No down time at all, until they were in bed. The easiest part of the school summer holidays was when I had a week off work.

OP I think your problem isn’t having to look after your kids all day every day. It’s having a selfish husband.

Surely the older 2 kids are pretty easy to manage, but I get that the 3 year old is a bit harder work. I’m not a teacher but I usually take some parental leave over summer so have been off for 5 weeks this summer. Have an 8 and 9 year old. 2 weeks at home doing a mixture of days out, friends round for play dates and just some chilled out days at home (thankfully the weather was great so they loved just being out in the garden in the paddling pool etc). Then they were in holiday club for a week (weren’t too fussed about going but I told them they were going and they enjoyed it once they were there). It was the local council one in the leisure centre which was about £45 for the week per child so not too much financially.

Then a 2 week holiday abroad. DH only took off the 2 weeks for our holiday from work so I did the rest myself. Loved having the time off work and spending some time with the kids without the usual busyness of school and clubs etc.

If your DH is pulling his weight otherwise then I wouldn’t begrudge him a weekend away, and I would make sure I got similar in return. But if
he’s not pulling his weight at home in general then I can understand why you would feel
resentful.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5562483-aibu-to-expect-dh-to-use-annual-leave-in-the-holidays?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

There's a thread on exactly this in aibu too

Not the point! She still deserves some time off !

Bear in mind op that your DH is okay with this. He KNOWS that you don't get a break. He KNOWS he's exploiting you, taking advantage, and he doesn't care.

Personally I'd take at least one week for yourself: send the kids to a summer club.

I bet it's your DH saying you 'can't afford it'.

Honestly, your summer sounds amazing to me, with the exception that your husband shouldn't disappear off at the weekends.

I'm self employed and it's much easier for me to be flexible with how much work I do and when. So like you, I do the childcare for the summer holidays (minus a family holiday and the occasional fault day), but I still have to fit work in and end up working most evenings. I then often work at the weekends as my husband can cover those.

So many of us are doing an impossible juggle during the holidays, the ability to just be 'mum' for the summer holidays, even with the stresses that brings, sounds bliss.

Honestly? This disparity exists right across my friendship group where the working mum ends up somehow ‘responsible’ for covering / finding childcare for all of the summer holidays, bar a tiny bit that the (much higher paid) dad takes AL for. Some of this is down to the nature of the dads’ jobs and some is simply a crap attitude. None of my friends are teachers! So on top of the disparity, we are also trying to work over the summer plus stressing about having to take AL / source childcare.

I would say that sort of job is less exhausting than teaching (I did office work for 5 years before I went info teaching).

I think your main issue is the age gap. It will be almost impossible to find things that all 3 like to do.

@treetop122 I used to work term-time only from when my children were 7 and 5 so the childcare understandably fell to me. I would always know though, that I only had to be sole entertainments manager for them from Mon-Fri and arrange things I could manage on my own with them and then come Fri Eve - Sun we could do more exciting things and go further afield as my H was on hand with entertaining them / caring for them too.

We’d also go on a family holiday at some point.

Never in a million years would it have crossed my Hs mind that he wasn’t on duty with family life once he’s home from work. He certainly wouldn’t book a weekend away during any school holidays.

Sorry OP, you should have chosen better I’m afraid, or at least stopped at one child if you knew what he was like.

I only have one child but doing the majority of childcare during what is meant to be my time off to recover from teaching all year is very hard! I have a very energetic 3 year old who does not stop all day. Luckily my husband can work from home some days so at least he's around to supervise or help if needed. And if I've been doing childcare all day then he does all the bedtime routine so I can have a break in the evening. We've also paid extra for nursery on a few days because we thought it was worth it even if we can't really afford it. I would definitely book a spa weekend or hotel by yourself very soon....

But most people don't get time off to recover during the holidays. It's a luxury few of us get regardless of job, but it's part of being a parent to young children. There is no relaxing - there's working or parenting (or sometimes trying to juggle both simultaneously).

We try to take a day off for our birthdays (husband and I), but that's usually done by working in evenings to build up a Flexi balance effectively. That's it.

The idea of holidays being recovery time from work when you've got small kids is just a pipedream.

It's never bothered me that I do all the holiday childcare because I'm just pleased to be able to do it. It's better when we're all off together, but DH only gets about 30 days a year so it's obviously not possible to have that arrangement all the time.

I stopped teaching for a while, and trying to juggle our 'normal' jobs with school holidays just didn't add up. My DH never just takes himself off though, that would piss me off a bit.

How much active parenting does he actually do?

Yeah, he is taking the piss I'm afraid OP.

Given your relative working patterns, it's completely understandable that the majority of holiday childcare will inevitably fall to you.

But he is being completely unreasonable to claim that you are somehow "on holiday" yourself. Yes, in many ways it is a privilege to have this time with your children, but at this age it is (very) hard work, and crucially your time is no more your own than it would be in an average office job. Unless he has some bizarrely difficult and responsible role and you have three of the most easygoing children to have walked the earth, I'd imagine that you are going to be the most exhausted at the end of the average day than he is.

It's also completely unreasonable for him to unilaterally make decisions about how to allocate his annual leave while assuming that you will simply fit around his plans.

I get it can be a lot but would you rather be working the summer and juggling childcare?

I would much rather be off with my children!

I’ve been both (non teacher and teacher) with kids, and yes I agree that the holiday childcare juggle is a nightmare when you are out at work. I definitely prefer being off with the kids. But that’s not the OP’s issue. She IS off with the kids and she is finding aspects of it (or rather, her husband’s attitude to it) difficult and exhausting. Essentially responding that an OP should be grateful, when they are struggling, is never particularly helpful, whatever the problem they are posting about.

OP, it sounds like you have very high standards for yourself in terms of housework, cooking etc on top of full time care of your children. Does your husband help with any of that? He should.