How to juggle work plus childcare in the school holidays

This week I’m juggling both children as it’s the school Easter holidays here in Scotland, along with work commitments. I think it’s a topic that is of much interest to parents, especially new parents… how do we manage to “do it all”?

Firstly, I don’t think we can “do it all”. I used to believe it was possible, and certainly gave it my very best shot… but as a single parent, with no family nearby… it’s tough. And I think there needs to be an acknowledgement that it is difficult. And it’s ok to not do it all.

The season that I’m now in, where my children are teenagers (my daughter turns 13 this month!) it’s somewhat easier than when they were very little. However, they’re at that age where they still need me but they’re seemingly too old to go to kids clubs. For a while, probably aged 5 to 10, I was able to book them into kids clubs during the holidays and managed to continue working with relative ease. Then we had Covid-19 pandemic where it was extremely difficult to home-school whilst work, but I did have the benefit that both children went to their dad’s half the week so I was able to knuckle down part of the time.

Although we’re just in the Easter holidays right now, I believe we should be thinking ahead to the school summer holidays now!

Planning in advance

I think the key to managing the holidays is to plan in advance. I’ve written a post previously about planning for the school summer holidays, which I’ll link here, and below are some other thoughts -

Create your schedule for the holidays

As a single parent, I need to understand what my childcare rota is for the holidays before I can start my planning. This can hold up my planning sadly, as it’s not always easy to get this agreed. It used to frustrate me that I was unable to book holidays or holiday sports clubs in advance - and sometimes by the time I got the rota the clubs were fully booked. However, it’s somewhat out of my control and so I’ve been trying to get better at letting this go. At least now, with the kids being teens, I don’t have to get clubs booked.

Whatever your situation, you want to agree with your partner, co-parent or other family members perhaps, who is going to have the children and when. This will then allow you to book time off work if you’re employed, book any holiday clubs or activities and you’ll get a sense of what time you might have available to work and importantly what is achievable during this time.

I really like having a visual schedule and I start out pretty high level and having a 1-page lookahead is helpful (I use a wipeable monthly calendar that lives in my kitchen for this purpose, where there is one box for each day of the month).

Block out the school holidays in your calendar

It is helpful to note in your calendar when the school holidays are ahead of time. I tend to do this at the start of the school year, and will mark all the days off and holidays across the year. If I’m taking a holiday, I will block this out as far in advance as possible too.

This then means that when I’m accepting meetings or projects in advance, I can advise on availability around these holidays. I’m really mindful when accepting new clients, and the volume of work on my plate in the lead up to holiday season.

Blocking out time in advance is also helpful if you use tools such as Calendly, which will allow clients to book time in your calendar. You want to ensure that the time you are truly unavailable is reflected as such in your schedule.

Optimise the time you do have for work

As a time management coach, there are lots of strategies that I could suggest to optimise the time that you do have available for work. During holidays, the best time for me to work is by getting up a few hours before the kids (as they’re teens they like to sleep in during the holidays!), and doing some focussed work before then transitioning into ‘mum’ mode. For others, it might look like doing a few hours of work once your younger children have gone to bed… or perhaps whilst they nap during the day.

Get clear on the priorities

Planning ahead is a must - I think it’s important to know what are the priority tasks for this period of time, and we want to be realistic about what we can achieve in a day too. It’s really disheartening if you set out with a to-do list and then don’t manage to complete it.

Get ahead in advance

I also try to schedule in advance ahead of any holidays, for instance my blog posts, social media posts and newsletters can all be created and scheduled before the holidays.

What can you do now to take the pressure off during the holidays?

I vividly remember being whisked off to the hospital in an ambulance to deliver my son who had decided to arrive prematurely, whilst being on the phone to my work giving them instructions for a really important task that was due that week. Not a holiday by any means, but I perhaps hadn’t sufficiently planned in advance on this occasion!!

Communicate your plans

Let people know ahead of time, whether that’s team members, clients or vendors, when you’re going to be unavailable. This might look like updating your email auto-responder, sending out an email blast to your clients or popping a note into your email signature.

And communicate with your children too - let them know what your schedule is. Remember, they can’t see your beautiful colour-coded time-blocked Google calendar… so perhaps create a visual planner for them.

Integration

If you do find yourself having to integrate work and childcare at the same time, think ahead as to how this might work best. I found myself a few times having to chair project meetings whilst the kids were in the house, and thankfully they were usually fairly happy to sit with a snack and watch a TV show for 45 minutes whilst I did so.

Once I tried to keep the kids occupied with a sticker book, but the stickers were too tricky for them to peel off by themselves… so that was a fail. But a good lesson learned.

Delegation

Perhaps there are tasks you can delegate out to a colleague or team member. Again, planning ahead of time before a period of being ‘out of office’ means that you’ve got time to train people on the task you want them to execute in your absence. And it might be helpful to screen record you doing the task or writing an SOP (standard operating procedure) for them to refer to whilst you’re out to try to limit the amount of contact you might need to have.

Try to put yourself in the other persons shoes, and have a think about what they might need to know or want to ask to complete the task.

Ask for help

This is one that I struggle with. But I find that when I do ask for help, people are normally really open to doing what they can to assist.

My daughter doesn’t like getting left with babysitters, even if it’s someone we know, and she’s not at an age where she likes getting left on her own either. When they were younger, I used to hire a babysitter occasionally to allow me some time for myself - and I wish I had kept this practice up - because she’d likely be more open to it now if it had always been the way. With no family nearby it can make it more tricky.

Don’t forget to look after yourself

I think that we can get so caught up as parents looking after the needs of others, that we neglect our own self-care and needs.

I’ve written before about making time for self-care, which you can read here, and a lot of these suggestions stand true for during the holidays.

Be kind to yourself.

Hope this helps! Let me know in the comments if you have any other suggestions or thoughts.

And if you’d like some help with your time management, I do have space currently for 1-to-1 time coaching clients. I can help support you to make sustainable changes in your life, so you can go after your dreams and achieve your goals. Book an introductory chat here.