Various day camps for our daughter, although we try to mix it up–maybe a sports camp for a couple of weeks, then art camp, then science camp. Her grandmother is in town now, so they are just hanging out for a few weeks. But as other posters have pointed out, day camp adds up, as it is typically a few hundred dollars a week where we are. But still cheaper than one of us quitting our jobs.
There’s also quite a few households that either have a teacher, a SAHP, a significantly older sibling, a work-at-home parent or a retired grandparent around to provide the kind of supervision school-age kids need in the summer. And while it’s true that a work-at-home situation doesn’t allow for the care of a small child, when kids are in that 8-12 range it’s a lot more feasible (although this also depends on the temperament of the children involved). Subtract out those kids, and you have a much smaller group of children that need somewhere to be everyday.
On top of that, that 5-12 range is period when kids tend to play/squabble/play really well together, and if you already have a couple at home, having their friends/cousins/neighbors over as well doesn’t add that much to the bother (though it can add a surprising amount to the grocery bill). As a friend of mine said: “It doesn’t lead to more fighting, just different fighting”. So I think you get a lot of reciprocal relationships where the family member that is a teacher or a SAHP takes the cousins for the summer in return for whatever. So that soaks up another set of kids.
We hire a college kid for the summer. She’s in charge of taking them to the pool and making sure they don’t kill each other. With two kids, camps are way too expensive.
Parent of a five year old in the Netherlands here.
Our son is in the first year of kindergarten. He has six weeks of summer vacation.
Two weeks are filled with the family going on a trip together.
We signed up for the (costly) full-daytime vacation program, provided by the same people who provide the after school care (from 3 o clock to 6 o clock). So the other four weeks he goes to that daycare on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. They usually take the kids to a playground or the woods.
On Friday, his dad is home. On Wednesday, I am home with him.
We try to arrange a lot of playdates on our Wednesdays and Fridays as well.
I’ve got a 7yr old daughter, and a son who will turn 4 next week.
I work full time, and my wife works part time. To fill the days she has to work, she has a network of other working parents (not all mums, but largely) who shift their kids around each other for the duration of the summer holidays. I’ve also got some time off in the middle, and during that week I’ll be having various other kids over.
Childcare is expensive.
My 7 year-old goes to his usual day care.
While during the school year it acts as a daily buffer (before/after school) where he gets a decent breakfast, bussed back and forth to his elementary school, and homework assistance afterwards.
For the summer it transitions into an all-day camp with breakfast/lunch and 2-3 weekly field trips to museums, zoos, parks, events, etc.
Minneapolis supposedly has one of the highest child-care costs in the country second only to New York. It runs ~$131/wk during school and ~$235/wk during summer. (that’s with a discount through my employer)
Other friends we know with multiple kids and less income rely heavily on grandma/grandpa.
We usually hired college age babysitters who were old enough to drive them places.
Mom worked for the school (lunch lady) when we were very young, so she was home with us all summer. But then she got promoted to a year-round position at the school so my brother and I spent a couple summers at the YMCA day camp.
It was awesome. Very low-rent. Our local YMCA was just an old leaky house with some games in the basement. There was a yard with a crummy playset. We had mud wars and went to a local “swimming hole” and probably a lot of other stuff I forget now.
After a couple years, my brother was old enough to stay home with me so we just spent the summers eating $5 Dominos pizzas and watching cable (we finally got cable!)
The Small One is in a day camp every week. It changes from week to week. Next week it’s an arts and crafts camp, for instance.
The only exceptions are the very last two weeks of summer, which are vacation.
Mom of an almost-2nd-grader and an almost-4th-grader here.
This is the first summer since my oldest was born that I’ve worked during the summer. Previously I taught part-time at the local university, and chose to have summers off. Several months ago I took a 30 hour/week office job, so now we are in the two-parents-who-work-all-year boat.
The kids are in day camps all summer: A combination of YMCA camp, gymnastics camp, art camp and Cub Scout camp. Yep, it’s pricey. I’m trying not to think about how much it’s costing. Although the Y camp is pretty affordable as camps go: the basic one is $115 for 5 days a week from 7am to 6pm. My kids are only there from 9am-4pm, but it still works out to only $3.30/hour/kid. It’s cheaper than hiring a babysitter.
There’s also one week of vacation bible school at a local church: 9a-2p each day, and only $20 per kid for the whole week! Sweet!
Must remember to get receipts for all the camps for tax purposes…and later this year, open up a child-care FSA for next year…
When I was growing up, initially my grandmother watched us. But when we moved to California and had both parents working, that wasn’t an option. They couldn’t afford day camp or daycare or babysitters. So, at age 11, I was the babysitter for my brothers 9 and 7. This continued until I was well into high school. It was…interesting. My brothers didn’t really view me as an authority figure and there was a LOT of fighting. Verbally and physically. But overall it was ok. We learned to entertain ourselves with the dozens and dozens of lemons from the lemon tree in the backyard.
This is one of the reasons my wife only works part-time, from home. What she doesn’t earn working a full-time job is saved by not having to pay for day care/summer camp/babysitting. And she likes it a lot better.
The school district offers 4 weeks of summer school (8am until noon) that is very inexpensive. My husband works 3rd shift, so he’s at the house sleeping just in case something major would happen. Otherwise my 13yo is in charge of her brothers, 7 and 1. There’s no way I could afford to send them to the YMCA camps. I have Wednesdays off, so I always try to make sure my daughter gets to do something fun with her friends on that day.
Video games, internet, iShit.
My daughter took 6 months off after her son was born. He started daycare at 6 months. She dropped him off at 9 and her husband picked him up before 6. This cost them 1round $1800/month. What irks them about this is that any businessman can deduct from taxes any expenditure he makes that’s necessary to earn his living. How is daycare not a necessity?
He started a public pre-K last fall and they paid a daycare service to pick him up at 3 and hold him till 6. Same drill. For the summer, they are back to a full day daycare or else pay a nanny to care for him. And my daughter can arrange to work from home a fair amount. And she and her husband save their vacation days for this. But it’s a real hassle. Also we help out during some vacations. The son is cheerful and happy-go-lucky and has thrived under this regime.
The parents of under-tens I know now generally do daycamps or babysitters, and the teenagers look after themselves. One lucky toddler I know is home with Daddy because he works from home.
And when my brother was little (beginning when he was six) I babysat him summers and other vacations. Before I was old enough to babysit, we went to a babysitter’s house.
People in this area will tell you that having kids is a choice so you shouldn’t get anything for it even though the newer generation has to come from somewhere. Workplaces will tell you you it is ‘not their problem’ even when you have absolutely no choice to leave to pick up your child on time so you have to choose between going to jail for abadoning your child or keeping your job in some cases.
I did the evening pickups for 6 years and I had a hard stop for work at 5:30 pm in order to get to day care by 6 pm. I don’t mean 5:31 or even 5:30.01 pm. I had to be out the door before 5:30 or I would get fined and bitched out by daycare and I usually made it with just seconds to spare.
My previous employer was particularly unsympathetic to anyone that wasn’t available 24/7 365 days a year. I had a groups of managers try to stop me at the front door one evening when I had to leave to do a pickup. I told them I had to go politely twice. They said we had to talk about something rather trivial that could wait. I said ‘No’ and just put up my forearm and checked a VP standing in way in the chest as I walked out the door. I fully expected to be fired the next morning but surprisingly, they didn’t say anything the next day.
The big blowup came a few weeks later when I was doing childcare solo on a Saturday morning because their mother was travelling. My manager called me out of the blue for a conference call for something I barely had anything to do with. I said sure but I had to drop my daughter off at a birthday party and I would be back in 15 minutes to join. The reply was quite unwelcome and unexpected. My manager screamed “We don’t pay you to worry about your kids, tell her that she has to skip the party (she was 5 at the time) and join the call now”. I said absolutely not and he told me to join or lose my job. I told him I that I wouldn’t work for a place that treated people with young children like that so have my termination papers waiting (involuntary) Monday morning. I didn’t get fired for it but we did have an epic blowup in a locked conference room. He quit or got fired a few weeks later for some unknown reason and the sad part is that he had young kids too. I think he was just transferring down his mistreatment from his managers to me.
It is a bitch to be a parent of young children if you don’t have much extended family around to pick up the slack. I have no idea what people do if they don’t have that plus little money to pay babysitters or camps. I love being a parent but I never want to go through that phase in my life again. Older kids or so much easier logistically.
Our YMCA camp is $265 a week. And that’s the cheap option. Last year the Mighty Mite went to a fancier camp (archery, boating, frisbee golf, tennis, etc.) that was $525 a week. Where are these $125/week camps?
You can’t straight deduct your child care expenses, but there is a child care tax credit. The maximum amount of the credit is tied to your income, but as I recall, our credit was something like a quarter of what we paid out, which is about what, in our tax bracket, we’d have saved if it was in fact a deduction.
My work offers FSA for medical and dependent care, which includes both child care and senior care, if you cared for elderly parents. So it can be tax deductible provided the caregiver is prepared to file it as income. (Legally, they are supposed to declare it, but many don’t and will be put out if you want to take the write off.)