Stuff I had that my 3 year old doesn't

ninky_2

If you really want to go on a caravan holiday in term time, why not find someone with a drive who lives in an area that you'd like to visit? You could park there and use their water / electricity and bung them a few quid by way of thankyou.

Not saying you are doing this, but it could be an error to try to recreate the highlights of your own childhood for your kids. For a start, the world has moved on and there may well be better, and more suitable, things to do now. Further, our memories can play tricks on us. We often don't remember things that happened in childhood particularly accurately and would be disappointed if we could revisit the occasion for real, given our later experiences and modern world comforts.

grizzly1911

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Like what, exactly? What's wrong with going fishing, crabbing or going out to explore woodland?

Gets better as they get older - GoKarting, QuadBiking, Supercar days, white water kyaking, climbing.

notanewuser

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I fear the point is being missed here ISTL.

So lets just take Haven holidays as an example, in Wales., in October (term time) for 4 nights = £239.

Same place, same caravn, in Wales, in September (school holidays) for 4 nights = £719

This is why we used to go in term time (I guess!). If we didn't go in term time, we'd never have gone.

The kids go back to school at the start of September - so September isn't school holidays. It's just that Wales is dryer in September than October! :rotfl:

StevieJ

OffGridLiving wrote: »

This is a strange leap of logic, "kids don't go on holiday anymore because their parents aren't allowed to go outside term time"? It's reminiscent of the logic "my cat is deaf, my cat is black, all black cats are deaf".

To many people, the prevention of disrupting children's education for something as immaterial as a holiday would be seen as progress rather than a backward step. Do you have issues with other rules such as it being compulsory that children have to go to school in the first place? Perhaps you'd prefer them to be out in the workplace from age 12, "shock horror, like they did in the good old days"?

I guess it depends what they are doing, what about if the holiday is something like a Nile cruise

CLAPTON

Your child's education is your responsibility.

The state is secondary and you should be entitled to manage their education as you see fit.


However, the state thinks it is the master and you must simply obey.
They change their mind about education every couple of years or so they are always right even when they declare the past was always wrong.

Take your children out of school as you see fit; educate them as you see fit.

Up to 13 we decided we would have holidays when we say fit; once the eldest was 13 and starting GCSE preparation we decided that would would only go during school holidays; but that ws our decision.

olly300

Apart from tests taking your child away from school at primary level isn't going to harm them especially if it's at the end of term.

I know a lot of families who move at end of June/early July and their children don't get to go to school again until September.

In Secondary school all our end of year tests - which meant in some subjects the sets were decided for the next year - were done after the GCSEs. If you went on holiday at the end of June/beginning of July it could screw up your education as the teachers just guessed on their prejudices.

CLAPTON

olly300 wrote: »

Apart from tests taking your child away from school at primary level isn't going to harm them especially if it's at the end of term.

I know a lot of families who move at end of June/early July and their children don't get to go to school again until September.

In Secondary school all our end of year tests - which meant in some subjects the sets were decided for the next year - were done after the GCSEs. If you went on holiday at the end of June/beginning of July it could screw up your education as the teachers just guessed on their prejudices.

hopefully you inform the parents of this so they can choose their holiday breaks to fit into the school testing schedule.

LydiaJ

Some of our year 7s were disappointed that they lost marks in the end of year exam for questions to which they didn't know the answers. They seemed to think that the fact they hadn't been present in those lessons meant that it wasn't their fault they didn't know the material that had been covered, and that therefore they shouldn't be penalised in the exam.

Er, no. If you miss the lesson, you have to catch up what you missed, in your own time (with a bit of help if you take the initiative to ask for it). Otherwise, you will not only not know that bit, but (in a conceptual subject like mine) you'll find the rest of term more difficult as a result, because it'll keep building on ideas that you missed. Kids can catch up in this way if they miss a day or two for illness. A whole week gets a lot harder for them, unless they're really bright and also self-motivated and hard-working.

For most kids, it's just not fair to take them out, at least at secondary level. I can't speak about primary education because I've no experience of teaching primary age kids. For a child of three, it's ludicrous. Take your holidays in term time while you still can. There will be time enough to be restricted to school holidays when he's older.

When I was a kid we always had holidays, and they were never in term time. But until I was 13, we never paid for them. We stayed with my parents' friends, and my dad's sister, and we had friends and cousins to stay with us. It cost petrol money, and that was all, so it didn't make any difference to the cost what time of year it was. We got to go to other parts of the country, and keep up relationships with cousins who lived at a distance, and have our parents at home instead of out at work, so we built plenty of memories. After I turned 13 my parents' finances improved a bit, and we could afford a week in a holiday let cottage. It was quite fun, but we had to take a friend or two along to make up for not staying with people whose kids we could play with.

LydiaJ

Oh, and in answer to the original question, the major things I had that my kids aren't getting are:

A dad who stayed with my mum for life, and so was there for me when I was growing up all through the week, not just every other weekend.
A dad who stayed alive.

There are other things - a private education, among others - that I appreciate, but they're insignificant compared with those two. Sure, my kids have more "stuff", but I wouldn't swap my childhood for theirs, which hurts me every time I think about it. And while parents who die are probably less common now than when I was a kid, parents who split up are certainly more common.

(Please take this as a comment about society in general, and my late-nearly-ex-husband in particular, and not about any other poster, of either sex, who is separated from the other parent of their children. I don't know your circumstances, so I wouldn't want to judge.)

LittleMax

angrypirate wrote: »

I was never taken out of school for holidays as a child and when i have children in the near future, i would never dream of it. I believe in France you can be prosecuted for it.

I was never taken out of school either, and we, like many of the other kids in our class were further restricted to 2 weeks in which we could take our annual family holiday as it had to be factory fortnight. So there was no option for working class families to go away at cheaper times, holiday camps all put their prices sky high for factory holiday weeks. It was cheap camping holidays for us, which my parents put money away for each week.

A couple of kids were given permission to have time out to go to really far away places like Spain, and one boy even went to Sardinia - in the 70's that was a geography lesson right there when he came back