Today is the first day for summer holidays here. We have had the usual running about organising holiday activities and care. It’s not so bad now as the PT clan are 14/12/10 and can mind themselves for a few hours unsupervised if necessary.
I grew up on a large farm, so it was never of any issue for my siblings and parents. Plenty to do in a relatively safe environment.
After grumbling about the burden/inconvenience of my lot, a question struck me.
In Australia we have a 200 day school year. We also have (usually) 4 weeks annual leave, so in a family with two working parents you can’t quite get sufficient leave to cover the school term holiday breaks, especially if you want to have any sort of family together holiday. So you need to rope in the grandparents, cousins, friends and maybe a couple of days at a sports/education camp to have the kids in supervised care for the duration.
What happens in the US where (I believe) 180 school years and 2 weeks annual leave are the norm? Doesn’t that leave weeks where working parents have to outsource care of their kids? What do the millions of primary/secondary kids do during this period? Camps? Run feral? Church? Guides/Scouts? What regional variants are there e.g. in the north when snow set in?
During winter break, I was with family members. I had a uncle who worked night shifts, so I could hang out in the house while he slept.
During summer breaks, I spent a lot of time being babysat by neighbors, although mostly that amounted to “running feral.” I’d also do summer school and day camps.
Yeah, I have three kids, 12, 8 and 5, and we do a camp or two for each and they spend a few days here and there at grandma’s. But my wife gets to work from home and can manage getting kids around and being there on non-camp, non-Grandma days.
However, I only have a little over two weeks annual leave, and usually only use one of them during the summer for vacation. I suspect this is something near the norm for Americans.
I was just left at home once I was old enough to feed myself from the fridge, maybe 7 or 8? Cold stuff and microwavables only though; I didn’t start cooking on my own until I was 10. We had an egg poacher and I liked making eggs benedict.
I spent the whole summer (8 weeks) at sleepaway camp.
Winter breaks, I don’t recall exactly, probably a mix of swapping out with other moms, staying with grandparents, and after about age 12, being left to my own devices. By 12 I could ride city buses and the subway on my own, and would often go to the movies or a bowling lane with my friends.
I have two kids in elementary school, currently 5th and 3rd grades (10 years old and 8 years old respectively).
I don’t feel that either of my kids is old enough to be left alone all day. Maybe I’m a bit overprotective, but as much as they fight, I’m fairly certain that one would seriously hurt the other if left alone day after day. (I’d put my money on the 8 year old beating up the 10 year old)
I work outside the home everyday. My wife works 3 to 4 weekdays outside the home.
During the summer break, we play “kid shuffle”. My wife watches some of the neighborhood kids when she is off and the other parents are working and the other parents watch ours while she is working. There is one mom who is a stay-at-home mom who tends to get most of the babysitting work. She refuses to take money, but we make sure to send more food than our kids could possibly eat each day.
I also take some vacation time and my retired in-laws usually take a few days here and there when the usual parents that watch our kids leave town for vacation.
During the winter holiday, the upcoming Christmas Break, which lasts 2 weeks for most U.S. schools, I take some time off. Between my wife’s schedule, my vacation, and retired grandparents living about 20 minutes away, we can generally cover the entire 2 weeks without involving any other neighbors.
My mom was a substitute teacher when I was a wee sprog, so whenever I had off, she had off. That was nice. When she got a fulltime position, I would “go play” at a friend’s house, which was usually, I thought, instigated by me, but now I wonder if it was viewed as babysitting by the adults involved. By second grade (8 years old) though, I would often just stay home alone, with strict instructions not to answer the door, and only answer the phone if it was our secret ring (two rings then Mom would hang up and call back, which was when I’d pick up.)
When my ex and I were both working fulltime, the boy spent one summer at the YMCA’s daycamp, which was just horrible (probably not everywhere, I hasten to add - it was horrible at this particular one because the girls working as “teachers” were lazy and undereducated, and just warehoused the kids in hot stuffy little classrooms all day). After that year, he found a friend’s place to be at, most often the apartment of my boss, which happened to be on the second floor of my work and included a boy about his age. That was pretty sweet. He’d just come to work with me and disappear upstairs, I’d feed them both lunch during my lunch break, and they played video games, watched DVDs, learned Magic the Gathering and such in between bouts of tormenting the other kid’s little sister. I’d have to break up a few squabbles here and there, and sometimes they’d come down into the business whining that they were bored, but my boss was okay with it because more than half of the time, it was her kids I was dealing with.
So yeah, flexibility, shared childcare, day camps, summer camp, paid babysitters, relatives. You have a pretty good idea of it already.
When I was a kid my parents worked opposite shifts so one parent was always home. It was the only way they could afford it. Then when one of us was old enough to watch the other they were all set. Now they have completely different jobs but we are all grown up now so it doesn’t matter it was just the first 12 years or so that mattered.
Ahh how times have changed. I think my sister was 12… when she started watching me. I could be wrong but that is my guess. We are both girls and were good kids small town knew everyone around us and about 10 family members within 10 miles we could call. might make a difference. So this is almost 20 years ago. How times have changed. If I had kids I don’t think I would leave my 12yr old alone.
Grandparents, day camps, sleepaway camps, just being home alone, and high school age kids general either get jobs, go to camp, or work as camp counselors (although I think this is on the decline). I spent alot of time with my grandmothers when I was too young to be left home alone (of course my mother’s parents ran a general store that & Mom worked for them so I ended up spending alot of time at the store).
You know, I never thought about this question, as my mom has always been some sort of teacher, so she gets off when I do.
That said, my private school as a kid had a summer program that I attended–as my mom worked there, too. There were a lot of new kids during the summer, so maybe that’s how some parents handled it.
12 years old is old enough to be left alone legally in the US. A 14 year old is absolutely babysitting age. I certainly hope you can leave your children alone together while you’re at work. I’d hate to blow through my paid time off in your situation. They’re old enough. I can not imagine getting a babysitter with a 14 year old around.
I was (illegally) a latchkey kid at the age of 11 in 6th grade–since 12 is the minimum, but I was very responsible and my mom knew I would behave myself (and it was expensive to do the YMCA after school program 5 days a week). I let myself into the house and just read books, play nintendo, or watch tv until my sister got home an hour later, who was a year younger than me and still in elementary school. My mom would get home shortly thereafter and nothing bad ever happened. We had strict no fucking with the stove/electricity rules that we wouldn’t have thought of breaking. It wasn’t ever necessary to cook for ourselves because someone was always home by dinner. It just wasn’t a big deal because I, as a rule, was a loner anyway. Sometimes I would play barbies with my sister but most of the time I just read.
I ran feral through the neighborhood during the summer holidays, as did all my friends. But these were Leave It to Beaver-type days, when everyone’s Mom stayed home as housewives. I never knew anyone who went to camp. This was West Texas.
Illinois allows for a lot of judgement on the part of the court for this. They take into account the environment the kid was left in, the circumstances (parents at work vs. parents take off to the casinos), even the maturity of the kid involved. It’s a refreshingly common sense system, actually, not based on a strict rubric of age. But it’s anything under age 14, not 12, where if the situation is brought to the state attention, they will look into it.
I want to point out that “old enough to babysit” may still not be “old enough to be left alone all day”. I’d have no problem leaving a 3 year old with a reasonably mature 12 year old for a few hours in the afternoon or evening, but leaving two 12 year olds alone in the house for 8 hours a day, day after day is just asking for trouble. They are more mature when they have a job and responsibility, and a lot LESS mature when they are grouped with their peers.
I went to daycare in the summers until I was 10 or 11, and after that I had older siblings to keep an eye on me. That 12-14 range is really the worst: you are too old for traditional babysitting, but you are smart enough and big enough to figure out serious trouble, and still foolish enough to go for it.
When I was a kid (1970s/80s) our mother didn’t work outside the home, so she was always there. Of course we would leave the house with friends in the morning and not come back until dinner and it wasn’t unusual. We’d just play around the neighborhood all day. We also had camp for two weeks but that didn’t start until 7th grade.
My wife stays home too, and honestly it never ocurred to me what a hassle it would be during the summer if she didn’t. Day care/summer school I guess?
My wife stayed at home with my son until he was school age, then went back to work.
When he was very young (up through 3rd grade/9 years old), he was in day care in the summer and for the February and April breaks. We always take vacation between Christmas and New Year’s, so we were home with him then.
When he was older, we sent him to day camp. Our town has a day camp for kids up through 6th grade. It’s outside for the summer and April break, and is held in the school gym for the February break.
For 7th grade and beyond, we’ve let my son stay at home for the February and April breaks if my wife and I were working that week, but have been putting him in a private day camp for the summer. (He’d otherwise spend the whole summer playing video games until his brains oozed out his ears.)
He’s also always gone for one week of overnight Cub Scout/Boy Scout camp in the summer. I’m a Scout leader, so I go as well.
Day care and day camp is pretty expensive, but you get a credit on your income taxes for children under 13 years of age if the care is to allow parents to work.
