Always find a teenager who needs money. If you child is out of school, the highschool may be out as well. I worked for a mom with three kids when I was a teenager. When I had kids I found a 15 yr old girl who was the oldest of 7 in her family. She was so excited to come to my house with only 2 children that I didn’t have to pay her much.
You could always try this option…
All of our local community centers have summer camps. So do the Y’s and the Boys & Girls Clubs. Or you could find a daycare for the summer.
At the age indicated in the OP, there were two families with kids in my building: yours truly and a family with three little girls. We’d spend a lot of time at each others’ homes (mostly me in theirs), and also being babysat by other neighbors. One of my first memories is from the sunflower one such neighbor kept in a flower pot: trying to pick its seeds, eventually being able to, discovering it tasted diferent from (roasted and salted) storebought sunflower seeds.
Eventually we moved out, eventually the Bros arrived, eventually we became latchkey kids.
I am very lucky in that my wife’s retired parents live very close to us and are happy to provide child care cover. Otherwise I suppose I would have to arrange to work from home, or use holiday days in such circumstances.
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We usually take turns burning vacation days to stay home with Boy Divine.
I have also exchanged babysitting on these teacher in-service days with other parents; last month, the Boy’s best friend from school came to my house for the day (I was home anyway). Boy will go to his friend’s house to play on the day after Easter.
I don’t think this has been mentioned — many daycares have summer-camp for school-age kids. Yes, it is at the daycare but it is a totally separate program. We had our kids in two different ones, one a for-profit chain, the other a church. Both were excellent, the church a little moreso. They took them to the pool a couple days a week, had a theme for the summer (Egypt was the theme one year), took them to the movies. They also had big craft projects, and they did watch a lot of movies in the late afternoons. Fun.
We used vacation/personal time & got help watching them from my MIL. It wasn’t always easy and in some bad years I had to sit down with HR about ‘excessive time off’. :smack:
The odd thing is that I have more family than her, but not one of them would ever watch my boys (who are really well behaved) for any reason, even for 10 minutes, even when they had no plans and were not working. It was one of my first wake-up calls that it wasn’t me who was bad-family.
I still remember when we had to take one of the boys to the hospital. All we needed were 2 hours.
My entire side said, “Nope, we’re busy.” :mad:
I ended up dropping my wife & my eldest off at the ER, diving an hour to my MIL to drop off my youngest, then driving an hour back. It wasn’t like we had show-tickets & wanted to foist off babysitting, although I’d done that for them from time to time.
I guess the moral is that when you watch another couple’s kids, you should know up front whether of not they’d ever be willing to watch yours.
This is something we struggle with, too, though not for the same reasons. My mom lives out of town, but she’s still asked me to drop the kids off for a few days or come by and watch them so she can spend time with. The thing is, I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her. She drinks. A lot. During the day. In fact, when we came home with our baby girl a little over a year ago, she was already hammered and it was only 1 p.m. and she was taking care of my son. I was livid, and what should have been a happy, relaxed day where I could reassure my son and more completely introduce him to his sister turned into a tension-filled day of hell with a screaming, crying drunken climax. Plus she watches TV constantly. As in, it’s never, ever off unless she leaves the house. Part of it is from living alone so long. Part of it is that she can’t stand silence.
Unfortunately, my son turns into a brat when he’s allowed too much television because he needs to move. But there’s no way my mom would take them outside regularly. In her world (and this is the way I was raised), kids are apart from the family. You take care of their basic needs, then they get put away (whether that means a nap, they play by themselves somewhere or watch TV all day) until you feel like taking them out again or they need more food. I don’t want my kids treated like that, even for a few weeks. Don’t get me wrong - I still kind of like my mom. But no way am I letting her have my kids without my or my husband’s supervision.
And I misrepresented myself about the Y (this is what happens when I don’t sleep enough). It’s not necessarily that they don’t offer summer programs. They do. My husband just doesn’t want to take advantage of them. Because they have the name Christian in their name (Young Men’s Christian Association), my husband doesn’t want them to have our kids for a full day. He’s convinced that they’re going to brainwash our kids into little evangelicals. But for some reason, he’s a-okay with them doing YMCA aftercare. I guess his reasoning is that they can’t do much damage during a short two- or three-hour period, but they’ll implement their nefarious plan to take over our kids’ minds if they have them in their evil clutches all day. It really makes no sense to me, but it’s hard to change his mind once he’s made it up about something.
But we’re still kind of going back and forth on this. I’m willing to consider his point of view, but at the same time, I generally take care of all the childcare stuff. So that means that, in addition to hammering out the aftercare and holiday care (which didn’t turn out to be all that bad), I have to research even more childcare programs and work out the logistics (getting to and from, any additional days off of the camp, camp content, etc.) even though we probably have one available to us in a setting our son is familiar with. It’s maddening. But that’s a whole different issue. I hope our son’s attendance at aftercare will change his mind.
The sprog’s after-school program has full-day care on most school holidays and inservice days, so that’s been a great help. They also have a day camp during the summer, but you can only have so much time off for family vacations, so I need to find another alternative for this year, because we’re going to visit family in Texas for a few weeks, then the sprog has his annual week with Grandma and Grandpa.
overlyverbose, I wouldn’t worry too much about the Y. The sprog went to their day camp one summer, and you can’t find any religious trappings anywhere. In fact, the organization has changed its branding to remove the “Christian”.
Our after-school programs typically opened full day on the closed school days. We also burned vacation days, and did co-op style covereage with other parents (we took one random holiday, they would take another). Our only request was return the kid alive.
As for the Christian part of the Y - there might be someone at the top who still considers it a Christian outreach group, but locally you will usually just find some people that enjoy helping out kids.
My family and I were constantly at the YMCA when we lived near them. Other than the C in the logo, not once was religion of any kind mentioned, or even alluded to. As a matter of fact I do remember putting up a new logo that was just a red and blue ‘Y’.
Now my family and I are Christian, but if the same progam was run by Buddists, Hindus, the Jewish community, any other peaceful, community oriented religion Iwould still embrace it. Even more so because its so important to me to have my children know about all types of faith and the people that suscribe to them. Like I said, we are Christian, but every year we celebrate things like Yom Kippur, Holi Day, Ramadan, Passover, and Dwali. Maybe its just because I like any reason to try something new and make it a party.
But I digress, spend some time at the Y and meet the staff and the other families before you completely rule them out. Your husband may have a point, or his concerns may be groundless, but only first hand experience and your instincts as a parent can tell you for sure.
Otherwise, find a Mormon teenage girl. They are a good bet to be reliable, honest, nonsmoking, nondrinking, nonboyfriend coming over, and genuinely interested in kids.
I grew up with two working parents. They had to purchase day care for after school, and the same places that offered it also offered full days. At first it was Kinder-Care, and then it was a program offered by the school district. That being said, while it got a lot of use during the summer, it didn’t during the school year; days off were days to stay with our grandparents, who were usually grateful for the time. (Just my parternal grandparents; my mom’s mom still worked during the day, so we saw her on Sundays). We liked it better than day care, too; day care didn’t have trips to the grocery store and The Price is Right.
Hahaha you guys just reminded me of the summer my brother and I spent at the YMCA. Our mom actually worked for the schools so she was off when we were off but there was one summer where she got a new job and we were slightly too young to be alone.
Anyway, my memory consists of a bunch of us kids who I didn’t know since no one was popular enough to be known, sitting in a damp basement (the local Y is an old house) playing with a bunch of games from the 70’s (it was the early 90s) where half of the pieces were missing. The kid who brought Uno was the most popular and the most exciting thing that ever happened was when the handicapped kid, Richard, had a little fit and needed to be calmed down.
I LOVED my summer at the YMCA!
The only letter left in YMCA that has any real meaning is the A. There’s nothing specifically “Christian” about them anymore, they’ve been coed for decades, and run programs for people of all ages. In fact my local YMCA runs all kinds for programs for women & families (including a woman-only workout area :rolleyes:), but nothing for men. In fact I think the staff consider childless men a bit suspect and would rather not have us there at all.
I grew up near an Orthodox seminary so I was often babysat by one of the students’ wives. Barring that one of my grandmothers. Or our next-door neighbors (went they weren’t in Florida) who were basically a 3rd set of grandparents (I actually called them Grandma/pa Lastname like I did with my real grandparents when I was a kid). Also my mother never had any problems taking time off work when I was a child (mainly because she worked for my grandparents).
I used to go to YMCA sleepaway camp. I’m Jewish, and the only way I could describe the program is “extremely nonsectarian.”
We had “chapel” every other week, but that consisted of going to a beautiful spot in the woods and discussing things like, being nice to each other, and taking care of the earth by not littering. Neither Jesus nor any other concept specific to a religion EVER came up. Not even “Jesus was a good dude, one of many important religious figures.” I never heard a specific religious fact mentioned.
Since I went for the entire 8 week summer, every year from 8 to 18, if they had a religious message to push I am certain I would have heard it. Later I worked there as a counsellor, and I can tell you that our training included “if you have religious opinions, keep that shit to yourself.”
It is possible that it is different in your area. But in my experience of YMCA camps, the word “Christian” somewhere in the name does not mean they push a religious message, any more than “Men’s” in the name means they push a masculine message.
Y summer day camp is fantastic. We’re Jewish humanists and we’ve never had any problems with the “C” in YMCA. My kids have a great time there. We also take advantage of their full-day programs when school is closed. They go on trips and swim with supervision. The day camp had swim lessons too. Love the Y.
This is one fucked up aspect of the US (having moved here 9 months ago after a 25 year childfree hiatus). I just don’t get it. Schools are not babysitting centers, but Jesus H Christ I have to use up my entire years vacation from work to match school but not work holidays and days off. Add the half day wednesday thing. Sheesh, good thing my wife doesn’t work but it’s still tough.
The next week long spring break at least my autistic daughter’s private therapy kicks into overdrive and covers the missing school.
Have you considered telling your husband “Sorry Charlie, you are a partner and not the veto guy?” If one member of the relationship is doing all the work and comes up with an acceptable plan, then the other person needs to do the work if he/she doesn’t like the plan. I think wives tend to get childcare responsibilities dumped on them but it should be a joint project.
That’s exactly what my coworkers-who-are-parents do. They jockey for who-gets-which-week off, they juggle who will be home vs. who won’t, they fret about babysitters – the whole bit. One of them actually drives his kids to a neighboring state (which luckily isn’t far – about 40 minutes) and has his mother look after them when his work schedule and his wife’s collide.
You’re right, it’s utter madness if you don’t already have a support system (i.e., family or neighbors).