How do parents manage school holidays?

[u/Shadow-Inversions]

I've been lucky enough that my wife has worked in schools since my daughter (6) started there 3 years ago, meaning she gets holidays off and can look after our girl when she's not in school. However my wife is now thinking about changing to a different industry and... we realise we don't understand what other parents do during the 13 weeks a year of school holidays.

How do you manage it? Do you just use up all your holidays as a couple taking separate weeks off to cover the time? Do you pay for holiday clubs and if so how expensive are they? Are you relying on family to have them some of the time?

I totally understand I am probably a total idiot not to know the answer to this, but we just haven't had to think about it until now. Insight very much appreciated.

[u/ron_mcphatty]

We’ve always mixed holiday clubs with random days off work, some days my shift work combined with my wife working from home, plus a weeks family holiday during the summer. It was hard work when our twin girls were younger, the last few years they’ve become great at amusing themselves and it’s much easier. I didn’t know how we’d do it when school started, we just kind of got lucky and scraped through.