School holidays and your employment

[marmee]

How do you get by when school holidays come around? How do you arrange life at home with the children while you work? Do you work from home?

I work from home and school holidays bring all sorts of challenges...mainly because my children think that I am not needing to work. Sometimes I think it would be so much easier if I had an office to go to...but the freedom of working from home is special.

So - I try to work when they are in bed (very late nights), I do play date swaps, have used vacation care a couple of times in the past but am not using it these 6 weeks, Grandma and grandpa come to the rescue on the odd occasion....and otherwise, I just have to sit here and work spasmodically when the children are occupied (often aka watching a movie). But I find I really can't get stuck into the nitty gritty then.

So - how do you manage school holidays and your work?

[lucylu]

Marmee that pretty much sums up my situation for the last few years, although I volunteer at school quite a bit so do a fair bit of work at night anyway. Holidays are a challenge but I'm grateful for the flexibility.

Although... I have stopped working for DH!! :hyper... sort of - still finishing off a bit of stuff though. So am not feeling the pressure so much these hols :)

[cherish]

I work Mon and Tues in the holidays- the kids go to vacation care and Matt to his day care as they are his booked days. I usually have time in lieu or take holidays.. so far it has worked out a treat.. so thankful for my flexible job!

[Eilleen]

I take my holidays for the long break over Christmas/New Year so I can be with them so no work! When I go back to work in mid January, the kids go to their dad's (he then takes his holidays) during the week and I get them back every weekend.

Other school holidays they go to a combination of school holiday care and my parents. My work subsidises school holiday care on top of what I already get off child care benefit so that helps a lot, though I do prefer to have holidays so I can be with them.

[emd]

My kids will do a few days in school holiday care, and the rest was going to be with either me or my partner on holidays from work. Except I just realised I need to cancel my holidays planned for the week 23-27 Jan so I can write a Federal Budget submission on what women want in child care and out of school hours care funding. How ironic.

[cherish]

make sure you included limited hours care (ocassional childcare) we have lost our federal funding :( The feds have withdrawn funding from all occ in Australia..

[Bron]

With my jobs, I can take my children (mainly only Josie, sometimes Xanthia) with me. The others are perfectly ok to stay at home alone.

[Joey]

I juggle it on a day to day basis, sometimes I have to work from home and sometimes they come to the office but mostly I rely on friends, their Dad, my sister in law and from now on my Mum to help out.

Sometimes it is really stressful and sometimes it ends up being easier than trying to work around school pick up/drop off. These holidays so far have been great, their Dad has had them about half of the time and my Mum is here so she has had them and taken them off on all sorts of adventures the rest of the time, they have been to a dairy, the beach stayed at my brothers place with their cousins and generally had a ball - the only downside to all that is that I miss them but its better than them having to hang out at work. I have all the public holidays off so they will be with me a lot in the next couple of weeks and then I have a week off in January too.

[emd]

Have decided not to cancel my holiday after all. Because there's no other time we can all go away together as a family - it's that week, or wait til mid-winter holidays (I'm already working in the Easter holidays). :(
So I'll just have to get my work done a week earlier than the deadline, and be in email contact while we're away.