[Closed] School Hols - how to balance work etc.

One of you gives up work?
Share child-minding with other parents.
Grand parents/family.
Holiday clubs.

You've had at least 5 years to think about this.....

Parents
Grandparents
Holiday clubs (these work quite well if you find a good one)
Friends (sharing works, so you alternatively take time off to look after all the kids together)
I did a lot more working from home during that period
Cage under the stairs
T'Pit (you'd be amazed how hard it is to find one that employs children nowadays.)

What do you do now?

Well he's at nursery 3 days a week and my wife doesn't work the other two.

My wife and I have the same problem but we're a year behind you Kryten, our in-laws are getting on a bit and probably wouldn't enjoy having a 4yr old+ for several weeks.
Why are the school holidays so long? they should just get 2 weeks off in summer like the rest of us, teachers wouldn't be laughing then!! (if you're teacher I'm joking of course, I appreciate all the hard work you do and I could not do it myself so hats off to you, why don't you put your feet up, for 6 weeks and 2 weeks at christmas and 2 weeks at easter and another week in the middle of term too, grrrrr)

Only took six posts for someone to have a pop at teachers' holiday length. 🙂

This is one of the reasons I've left my career and now work part time at the weekends. Sure we have a lot less money, but I'm always there for my kids (3 and 7) and the wife loves her career so stuck with it where as I can't stand work. Summer holidays for me means getting eldest out on her bike with me everyday, youngest is in nursery 3 days a week so the other two days we will do fun stuff.

Wouldn't change it, I guess I'll have to go back to work full time once the youngest is in school. I don't know why more dads don't do the same, finances permitting, kids are only young once and there's nothing I like doing more than spending time with them, plus there is always someone there for school runs and holidays.

Only took six posts for someone to have a pop at teachers' holiday length.

I was more amused that it only took one post to blame it on the OP

You've had at least 5 years to think about this.....

I was more amused that it only took one post to blame it on the OP

I did grin at this. Of course during the last 4 years and with kj02 as well that's all I've thought about

So, a couple of weeks of holiday club and that leaves only 12 days to sort...

Well he's at nursery 3 days a week and my wife doesn't work the other two.

Is it not possible to continue this through holiday periods?

We were in a similar situation with Nobby Jr, albeit he was at a childminder as opposed to a nursery. We asked the question at an early stage & she agreed to still have him during holidays.

were in the same boat...

Friends (sharing works, so you alternatively take time off to look after all the kids together)

Hmmmmm good shout!

As above, holiday clubs, friends, grandparents, aunts, uncles etc etc

My wife is very good at making sure we sort this out weeks in advance, but the truth is that we simply can't have time off together as much as we could before.

you had four years sort it out.this is what we did.my wife gave up full time work,she found a evening cleaning job 20hrs a week,we made adjustments ,basic tv ,no sky tv no foreign holidays,no iphones,etc etc,We relied on no one. at the end of the day they are your children,the amount of grandparents I speak to sayI I love having them to bits but it's a tie and very exhausting having them everyday, that's why women don't have children at 65,it's not just holidays what's your plan when your 4yr old wakes up sick and is ill for few days, best of luck.

Completely pointless post ^^

Sickness etc is adhoc you react as you can you don't plan it. My wife (and I) would rather she maintained her career rather than give it up.

Anyway, FWIW the grandparents work full time also, so it seems a mix of holiday clubs and time off will be the way to go.

right I've researched this intensively and by intensive I mean I've searched on google for 20 minutes. The antiquated holiday system has it's origin in the past when kids were required to help gather crops and they finish at 3.30 to help round the house etc.

The roots of the scheduling rest in our agricultural heritage, when families required their children’s labour in the summer to pick fruit and farm the land. The reasoning behind a 3.30pm finish was largely the same: children were needed to help at home, with cleaning, cooking and laundry. Nowadays the chores consist of little more than turning on the dishwasher.

It's time for a change I feel. This system is no longer relevant to modern life and it's about time it was changed to favour the capitalist society in which we live, in order to assist the working family. Now who's gonna suggest it to the teaching unions?

So your solution that kids should

1. Stay in school much longer each day than they currently do.

and

2. Get far fewer holidays than they currently do (I'm assuming that you don't want to keep the holidays the same as this wouldn't solve the OPs problem.)

Do you actually like children?

right I've researched this intensively and by intensive I mean I've searched on google for 20 minutes. The antiquated holiday system has it's origin in the past when kids were required to help gather crops and they finish at 3.30 to help round the house etc.

You probably need to be doing a bit more research.

Is this ^^ all going to happen before next August?

yup that sounds about right gofish. I love my little girl but I wouldn't see her any less because I am at work. I finish work at 6 most days and get home at half past, if she finishes school at 3.30 or 6 I'll still see her the same amount of time. Likewise in the school holidays, whether she gets 2 weeks off or 6 I only get a limited amount of days so won't be with her any more or any less, but it would mean we wouldn't have to inconvenience the in-laws.

. I love my little girl but I wouldn't see her any less because I am at work.

I have to say I was thinking more about her than you. I can see how these changes wouldn't impact you but I can see how they would have a huge and negative impact on your daughter.

I'd love to tell a lofty story of principled and stoic self-sacrifice, while still remaining humble enough not to get preachy about it. Like the one above. However I can't. I just make sure the DVD player and Wii are switched on, leave them enough pop and crisps to get through the day, then go to work.

We've got neighbours with kids the same age, so if they really get in trouble they can go and impose themselves on them for a bit. Usually around lunchtime

oh I see, well perhaps school doesn't need to have so much time spent on education if they're in there for longer.

Who was it who had somebody's kid knocking at his door all day? Maybe his parents are taking the binbins approach. 😀

Reading the press this week, apparently the schools will get the power to decide their own holiday. So if you have one kid at primary and one at secondary potentially you may have more than 6 weeks to cover.

I wish I could put my feet up in the holidays... Loads of work to do, parents to ring etc etc.

Best to think of it as time the kids aren't at school rather than holiday in the usual sense.

GB

Make friends with a couple of teachers and have them coordinate their holidays to make sure you can off load junior on to one of them for the duration 😉

Cheers,
Jamie

Hmmm, perhaps a chain of "summer training workshops" in textile production could be the answer. How young is too young for operating a sewing machine or steam press? 😉

It's time for a change I feel. This system is no longer relevant to modern life and it's about time it was changed to favour the capitalist society in which we live, in order to assist the working family. Now who's gonna suggest it to the teaching unions?

Yeah, if there's one thing wrong with schooling it's that it's not capitalist enough. 😕

You or your wife should go into teaching. Loads of holidays and a short working day. Sorted. *

*Only joking, my Mrs is a teacher, so I know the reality.

First year for us with my son at primary school

Some holiday taken by us
Mrs Clubber works 3 or 4 days a week so covers the other days
grand parents (staying with us for some of the holidays)
grand parents v2 (Kids stay with them for a few days)
Son looked after by his friends' parents (and we return the favour)
Summer camps (sports/activity camp type things for a few days)

The main thing we've found is just to get it planned in advance so that you know what's covered and what's not - we then take holiday for any gaps.

Why are the school holidays so long?

Kids need the rest

So that they can work in the fields collecting the harvest. Maybe...

johndoh - Member
You've had at least 5 years to think about this.....

Is it the heat or have you always been a knob?

Shame on me for thinking that the OP might have considered all the implications of havings kids. It's not like long summer holidays are a complete surprise.

Anyway, do you have anything constructive to add to this thread or is personal abuse as much as you can manage (well, after self abuse I guess)

[img] [/img]

scotroutes - do you have any kids, and if so, did you spend the first four years planning out their little lives to the nth degree?

Or did you go through a manci change management phase like the rest of us and sometimes have to deal with these kind of issue. You might not however if you read my OP properly, I am giving myself a year to deal with this, I humbly considered that to be enough....

Well you could have done what I did.
I finished work yesterday until the 1st week of September.
Even better no kids!
Even better I am a teacher.
Best of all a supply teacher no nothing to do over the summer.
Smug git goes off for another bike ride after a morning with the chainsaw 😆

Kryton - yes and we did consider pretty major stuff like childcare arrangements and costs thanks. Like I said, it's hardly news and that's why I offered some suggestions iny first post.

Well, well done on being so organised. I have to admit to considering most things before birth, just not the activity / work life balance in the school holiday period 5 years hence.

Scotroutes - are you related to Iain Duncan Smith? Your tone just has a sort of familiar note to it

LOL!

IDS is my twin brother. What are you insinuating?

Scotroutes - are you related to Iain Duncan Smith?

He is related to druidh

STW at it's best...some shockingly opinionated twunterism on display 🙄

My adult kids know full well that if they have kids then the last person they would ask to babysit would be me. After all, I do have a bike to ride! 😉

Or did you go through a [b]manci change management phase[/b] like the rest of us and sometimes have to deal with these kind of issue. You might not however if you read my OP properly, I am giving myself a year to deal with this, I humbly considered that to be enough....

Eh?

If you give your employer enough notice, they may allow you to change your core working hours for the summer weeks. If your wife asks the same from her employer then that is only three weeks each.

Not all employers are so helpful but worth asking, it is not an unreasonable request.

Personally, I am pretty lucky and work have allowed me to work a late/late shift from 330 ish (when Mrs Callous returns home) until near midnight. So I childcare from the morning to the afternoon and then head to work. It is a long day and by the end of 6 weeks I am the walking dead but I get to spend 6 whole weeks with my boy and that is great.

Just don't take them to work and leave them in the car (there's always one or two deaths a year 🙁 )

We sent first to grandparents for a week at a time (with day trips to France, no less), nursery continued and Mrs TiRed worked part time. Plus at least one week on holiday (two sometimes). We also used a summer club one summer holiday, but Son1 was really a little old for it. Son2 loved it. Then there was the week long sailing courses. Not cheap, but great fun. They'll both go again this year.

By mid August, you'll be looking forward to going back to school 😆

Jekkyl is very good at this, that sort of light touch has been lacking lately- well done chap.

Mine starts in September but I haven't given summer holidays any consideration whatsoever, that's not my job.

I note that some smugly describing their organisational arrangements just seem to be dumping their kids onto their parents. Bravo!

Buy him a briefcase, stitch some leather elbow patches onto his jacket and get him an internship with the management accounts department of the company where you work
Sorted
🙂

It's a pain in the ass having to sort out the summer holidays, but we have always known it was coming and planned accordingly.....

MrsMCTD works three days a week, with some flexibility. This year she is doing a full five day week this week to get a couple of days credit. I'm having two full weeks off, we are away for the middle of it, I get the kids the rest of the time while she is at work. Think both sets of grandparents are having them for just 2 days each (they are in their 70s now), and that just leaves me a couple more odd days to take off while MrsMCTD works.

We both spend chunks of the Christmas/Easter/half term holidays on leave separately to give us enough leave left for the summer. I have to say, term time only working seems tempting sometimes.....

Marry a teacher. End of thread!

cinnamon_girl - Member
My adult kids know full well that if they have kids then the last person they would ask to babysit would be me. After all, I do have a bike to ride!

Some of you guys think the british schools days are too short! I am dutch and all primary schools had wednesday afternoons off, and the infant school classes also had friday afternoons off.

Term times more or less the same as here.

Yep, still went to High school at 11/12 ish, all kids in the class being able to read/write/do maths and speak/write a little english. That despite not starting 'proper' school till age 6.

School is for educating our children, it's not a babysitting service! (no I am not a teacher!).

Simone

School is for educating our children, it's not a babysitting service!

Girl power. 😆

[s](that'll learn 'em)[/s]

😀

You've had at least 5 years to think about this.....

Is it the heat or have you always been a knob?

Spot
Cock
On

😀

The long summer break is nothing to do with harvesting. (What gets harvested in August? Nothing.) It's to match the long summer break taken by the legal profession and parliament - when compulsory education was introduced, we were a pretty urbanised society.

Can't help you with suggestions for childcare; both of us are teachers 🙂

Like Rene says, your employer (especially a larger employer) is obliged to consider flexible working for stuff like this.

My company would consider a 9hr 4 day week or even a 12hr 3 day week as fairly reasonable, or home working where the role is suitable. I'm not really up to speed with it but I think they need to prove the request is not compatible with business operations in order to refuse it.

I gave up work

Lucky you can afford to bernard.

We chose our boys school further afield based on the Sure-Start scheme they have on site.
Costs us £9.00 a day term time for wraparound care, & the holiday club during school hols works out at about £21 A day. Wife just averaged the total cost for the yr & pays that.

Jekkyl.... Not really directed at you but it gets on my tits when people say that, my mrs worked really hard at uni and her subsequent career to earn a decent wage, my job was always recession prone so I saved money so I would always have a buffer. When we bought our house etc it was done based on one wage, our spending commitments was based on one wage. It is not luck, it was hard work that enables us to do it. We do not live an extravagant lifestyle, drive fancy cars, go out very often blah blah blah

Part of it is luck. If you are born with the aptitude to do well in something that pays well, that is fortune. Plenty of people work their fingers to the bone and still can't earn enough to buy a house on two salaries never mind one.

I know how lucky I am that my wife does not have to work. Even though it would help a lot if she did.

Anyway this is a stupid argument. The OP did not plan, he knows this. So why are you queuing up to berate him for it? Are you trying to act like parents to a wayward child or something? OP is an adult. What are you expecting? The OP to issue a statement of surrender admitting that you are better than him? Would that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside?

Mole grips...rubbish, she worked f..ing hard all through school, uni, job to get where she is. And as for the rest of your post I past no judgment on the op's position or stated that I am in anyway better than him. So you can politely stick your post where the sun does not shine if any of it is directed at me.

Hire a swedish au pair...

Yeah Molly! I think Bernard needs to give himself a pat on the back (a thought that has clearly never entered his mind) for his admirable protestant work ethic.

He's a shining example to the rest of us slackers, to whom working hard is a completely alien concept. Especially to the lucky ones like you, young man.

Now go to your room and have a think about what it is you've said. Then you can come back and apologise fully

You've had at least 5 years to think about this.....
Is it the heat or have you always been a knob?
Spot
Cock
On

It's a reasonable point surely. Or is this one of those things where no-one is allowed to question anything to do with parenting for some reason?

Hello, OP here.

So, at least two of the posters here seem to have organised their lives from the ground up based on a six week school holiday. I say congratulations to you.

Unfortunately for me whilst we were busy working, buying a house and having said 2 children I seem to have forgotton to do so. Silly me. Yet however, I've still a year to go and based on my own interpretation of my intellect and ability I feel that 1 year is enough time for me to plan ahead and achieve a viable work/life/school balance during the 2014 school holidays. Some of it will be taken up by our annual holiday anyway.

I'm sorry if my formulae for doing so causes passion to rise in some people.

FWIW I live and work in London which is expensive*, am not fortunate enough for my wife to stop working (although nor does she want to). I can work flexibly, but that wasn't the question I asked. I was merely asking how others balance the issues to glean the benefit of thier experience.

I sincerely wish you all a very nice day 🙂

*I realise this is a choice and I could move to the country side near Leeds and raise sheep for less blah de blah....

I think amongst the [s]lofty, sanctimonious, self-congratulatory moral pontificating[/s] sound and helpful advice, a lot of people seem to have missed that the OP isn't talking about these summer holidays, starting this week, but the ones in 12 months time.

Maybe that got obscured, possibly by clouds, when trying to read it from a particularly high equine saddle. Its understandable.

When we bought our house etc it was done based on one wage,

Look at average house prices, the average wage, and then come back and apologise.

And for all those going "one of you should give up work"... Even if it was financially possible, have you not perhaps thought that the OP or his SO might actually quite enjoy their careers.

In our case, were we to sprog, even though I probably do earn enough to run the house without my wife contributing, she doesn't. Which basically means if all you aloof horse riders had your way, she'd be forced to give up her career. She doesn't earn less than me because she's less good at her job than me, or that it's less worthwhile (quite the opposite, on both counts probably), her career pays less, and careers in caring always will pay less, especially in the third sector.

I could give up my job to look after said sprog, but then we'd have nowhere to live. I'm glad your lives are so much more straightforward.

Maybe that got obscured, possibly by clouds, when trying to read it from a particularly high equine saddle. Its understandable.

And through the fog of zero experience but a desire to offer advice or criticism anyway. 🙂

And for all those going "one of you should give up work"... Even if it was financially possible, have you not perhaps thought that the OP or his SO might actually quite enjoy their careers.

In our case, were we to sprog, even though I probably do earn enough to run the house without my wife contributing, she doesn't. Which basically means if all you aloof horse riders had your way, she'd be forced to give up her career. She doesn't earn less than me because she's less good at her job than me, or that it's less worthwhile (quite the opposite, on both counts probably), her career pays less, and careers in caring always will pay less, especially in the third sector.

I could give up my job to look after said sprog, but then we'd have nowhere to live. I'm glad your lives are so much more straightforward.

+1.

Except in my case, my wife earns more than me. We've both made adjustments in our jobs so we can be at home more with the nipper, but she's never expected me to give up my job.

Mole grips...rubbish, she worked f..ing hard all through school, uni, job to get where she is.

You need ability AND hard work. More of the former requires less of the latter. However if you haven't got any ability in anything saleable, you're out of luck.

If you are suggesting that ANYONE can obtain a highly paid job by working hard, then you are dead wrong. Sounds like your wife has worked hard, and that's great. However, hard work is not the only thing you need to succeed.

If you are suggesting that ANYONE can obtain a highly paid job by working hard, then you are dead wrong. Sounds like your wife has worked hard, and that's great. However, hard work is not the only thing you need to succeed.

This is true. I reached a glass ceiling because my political ability is crap tbh, which in our organisation is not sustainable at Director level. That may be morally wrong, but its the way things are.

I liken it to older style Army Captains and Generals that buy thier way in to position vs the wizend Sargeant Major whose been through a lifetime of campaigns with the troops and has been promoted upwards from the ranks. I see myself as the latter.

Kryton, not sure if this is feasible for you but friends of Mrs Nobby's have revised their working lives to fit their first summer holiday season since their lad started school.

Dad is starting his 9-5 at 7.30 with a 30 min lunch break & finishing at 5pm - but only 4 days a week, i.e. he does his weekly contracted hours with a day to spare, and no longer works on Fridays.

Mum is working 3 days a week (has been since returning to work after Jr was born).

Grandparents & an aunt are helping out one day each week (alternately).

This means that between them they only need to use a days leave per week to have everything covered (in addition to their 2 week family holiday).

Not sure all employers would be happy with the dad's arrangement (his is permanent/all year) but maybe felxible enough for the period in question. He's done it on an annual basis so take into account all the opther school holidays too - apparently he can even have his Good Friday bank holiday on the Thursday.