Ellen's blog: Summer Holidays

Will this school  holiday ever end?? The summer holiday experience seems to be very different depending on the parents’ working arrangements. I must say I don’t know how at-home mothers (or fathers) cope with so many weeks of having to constantly come up with new and interesting things to do to entertain school-age children, who are not shy of providing feedback (“this is boring / I am cold / wet / I want to go home / why can’t we have another ice cream / why are we not going to DisneyLand”)

In my case, I am lucky enough to have my au pair with us through the holidays, with the exception of her own 2-week holiday back home to Italy where they are currently experiencing a Category A National Emergency heatwave and she is having to stay indoors. We are trying to make sure she does not have to work extra hours in the holidays, because going from before and after-school care to looking after the children all day is a bit too much, so instead we are covering the holiday period with a combination of our own summer holiday (2 weeks), a holiday with the grandparents (1 week), a camping trip with Daddy (1 week), Summer Tennis Camp (1 week), Multi-Sports Summer kids camp (1 week). Many other parents at my kids school have to do the summer camps almost permanently through the summer holidays – which must be very financially draining as some of these summer football-skills-camp-things seem only suitable for parents on footballers’ wages.  It seems to be costing a fortune to pay for the children to go to the holiday clubs, in order to allow me to go to work to earn the money to pay for the clubs!

I know some mums who work part-time and then spend their days off work looking after the kids. These people should be awarded medals for services to the UK economy – not only do they contribute tax and national to the public purse, they spend what is left on visits to overpriced ‘family day out’ local attractions throughout  the Greater London area. I feel very guilty when trying to arrange playdates with children in this situation because my kids are either on holiday or only available outside work hours due to their summer holiday club commitments.

Since I work full-time I need to keep an eye on the number of annual leave days I have remaining. Currently I only have 6.5 days left to the end of the year, which my husband considers is more than enough because he hasn’t made allowances for the half-days off required for attending school Christmas plays, HALF-TERM in October, and the Open Day at school in about November where parents are invited to be shown round the classroom by their children, etc etc. So we have agreed that I will be exempt from the camping trip, but will conceal from the children that this is mainly due to my hatred of camping.

Must dash – it’s time to plan the childcare for October half term….

Ellen has worked in the City for 17 years, mainly in banking, and currently for an inter-dealer broker. She has two children aged 7 and 4, with an au pair at home to help out.