What a steal. Probably won’t add too much above and beyond the existing costs for music lessons, sports, field trips, museum visits, etc. from the rest of the year.
Heh heh, yep. I remember getting a year end statement from daycare showing we paid ~$11,000. Our tax credit was something like $500.
I have an 11yo and a 7yo. We have done camps in the past for the older kid, when the younger was in full time daycare, but now that they’re both school age we hire sitters for the summer. We pay $15/hour for 40 hours a week. That makes it about the same cost and less logistically-challenging than the full time summer camps around here. However, 40 hours/week means that we have no child care one day a week, so I work at home that day and the kids live without much attention.
Summer is hard on the budget.
My daughter’s after school program is open all day during the summer. It has all the certifications of a day care and although it’s ran independently, it occupies a couple portables right next to the school (it may be on school property, I’ve never really figured that out). Since I work M-F, she goes there after school during the year and all day during the summer. I pay babysitters to pick her up and take her to the movies or swimming or whatever so she doesn’t get burnt out on it.
That’s real bitch. My daughter, fortunately, is the chief copy-editor and, essentially, office manager for a group of scientific journals. So long as they get published on time, no one is going to look over her shoulder. Her husband, also an editor for a book publisher, is not in quite the same position, but they just know that he leaves at 5 and that’s that. Again, so long as the work gets done, they don’t bug him.
A friend of mine is a single parent, working for the UK civil service. She is effectively a part timer as she works full time hours during termtime and takes the school holidays off. Of course there is more holiday time given in the UK and (I think) more bank holidays than the US so this also figures into the weeks she has off.
My nephews have two grandmas, one Auntie Nava, one Uncle Navabro (the other uncle never gets recruited for childsitting, plus he’s having his own first baby any day now), summer camp at the pool (think “country club”), summer camp at school (immersion English).
Sometimes I wonder whether they’re children or postal packages, the way they get shuffled around.
Depending on where you live, and depending on how much the second spouse makes, a nanny can be cheaper than daycare. The cost benefit analysis can be tricky though.
I have a 7 year old and a 3 year old. My son goes to Y camps during the summer and my daughter stays in preschool. It’s a huge pain in the ass planning for my son over the summer. I have to set up the calendar and map out all the available camps (most camps only go for a week), then decide what series, along with his input, he’ll be going to.
It doesn’t interrupt my work much, but I kind of hate it because I have to be so freaking careful not to inconvenience my work while simultaneously figuring out all the logistics of who picks up who. And getting my son signed up for the Y is a pain in the ass because here the Y camps only go from 9-4. You have to sign them up separately for before care, then separately for aftercare. And of course, before care is extra and aftercare is yet another charge on top of that.
God forbid if work schedules extra meetings for me or JAR sessions like we have next week for 10 hours a day - sometimes taking conference calls in the car is an absolute necessity, and that few minutes in my car is the only time I have free every day usually.
The sprog goes to YMCA day camp five days a week. It’s $126 a week but it’s money that’s well-spent because it keeps him off the sofa and us at work.
On some level, though, it’s less about finding someone to watch the kids and more about the socialization and fun of trying new things that he can’t do at home. The sprog, for example, loves canoeing, which we can’t do easily or cheaply. He’s made new friends that he’ll be able to hang out with at school, and he’s gotten more confidence. All this is cheap at twice the price.
When I was very young there was day camp. My sister is older than me by four years. When she was old enough to be in charge that tapered off. We mostly stayed home and read a lot of books and watched a lot of TV.
My son went to day camp for a couple of summers. His father and I split up when he was tiny. His summer trips to Dad’s have varied in length anywhere from one week to eleven weeks.
He turns sixteen in the fall and this summer he has been working nearly full time. He’ll spend the last month before school starts with his dad (who lives in another state) and then his grandmother.
My oldest is 23 now, she has been responsible for keeping an eye on her younger siblings (4 of them) since she was about 13 or so. I only have three kids still at home now, the oldest is 15 and he is responsible for keeping an eye on his 11 and 8 year old sisters.
When my oldest was not yet old enough to be a babysitter, my wife and I just arranged our work schedules so that one of us was always home (we both worked for convenience stores so there were 3 shifts to choose from.) On the rare occasion we couldn’t get that to work, we would get a babysitter or other family member to help out.