Younger teens and school holidays

[crazychef]

I need to decide whether to apply for a new job, and I just don't know what to do. I've got two kids in secondary - currently aged 11 and 14. So far, since going back to work a few years ago, I've always worked in a term time only role that fitted into primary hours (rubbish pay and not that challenging, but very convenient). A job has now come up for a much more interesting role - longer hours, higher pay, more demanding work, and all year round.

I'm very, very tempted to apply - although I'm very happy in my job at the moment, this would be a real step up. It's not really about the money, it's just the desire to do a challenging job again before I wind down to retirement. But it would mean that I'd no longer be around as much in the school holidays. The holiday entitlement is good, and I would split time with DH, but there would still be several weeks in the year when we'd both be at work and the kids wouldn't be at school.

Maybe I'm being a bit dense about this, but what do others do with this age of child in the holidays? They're too old for 'childcare', but I'm not sure I'd want to leave them alone for whole weeks at a time (I happily leave them for a day here and there if necessary). They're not terribly sociable, so don't tend to see friends much in the holidays - we usually just hang out as a family. In the past, the GPs would happily have had them to stay, but they're getting older and frailer now, so I can't rely on that. Plus, we live rurally, with basically zero public transport, so the kids really can't get anywhere without being driven.

Interested to know what others do in this situation. Do I go for the job or stick with the easy life?!

I think you do go for the job. And you encourage your DC to be a bit more adventurous and creative - whether that's arranging for them to spend a day with a friend, go somewhere etc. Getting around if your'e local might be a challenge but do you absolutely 100% have to drive them everywhere? Not a single bus/train? No ability to walk/ride? The occasional taxi?

Go for the job!!

Split the summer with dh (two weeks each) then send them off to PGL or similar for a week.

Can you work from home at all? So there but not there?

Any grandparents nearby who would be around just to be on hand if needed?

Thank you both. Although I can split holiday with DH, we do want at least a couple of weeks overlap in the year so that we can take family holidays. I think you're right that I need to encourage the kids to do more, I guess it's just a bit alien to them as they've never really craved independence, particularly the older one - they've always been happy doing stuff with us/each other. Tbh they'd probably be perfectly happy hanging out at home alone for a week or two, but I'm not sure that's a great plan. GPs are a couple of hours away and have some heath issues these days, so they might do a little bit but I couldn't ask them for too much.

Re transport, there really isn't much - there's one bus every 2 hours that goes in the opposite direction from where their friends generally live. No trains that you can get to without a car. They can walk into the village but there's not much there - and the roads really aren't safe for getting anywhere useful on a bike. Taxis are a possibility if it was a particular thing. I do like the idea of PGL - it hadn't occurred to me that they took individual children as well as school trips. I ought to look into residential orchestra schools too, as they're both into their music - I dimly know these things exist, but don't know anything about them.

@crazychef I've just posted a near identical op. What did you do?