I’m annoyed. I’m trying to get over it because I only work part time. But I’m not getting over it because I have lots of friends who work full time, and even with my part time hours, it’s difficult to make it work.
Summer day camps are not for working parents. For example…
Day camp at the zoo. Start time is 9:00. End time is 3:00. This means that a working parent can get to work at maybe 9:30 and must leave at 2:30. That’s 5 hours. That is not a full-time working parent’s day at the office. If you want to be able to work a full day? You can pay an extra $60 for the week to be able to drop your kid off at 7:45 . . . which gives you 15 minutes to get to work. There is nowhere in this town that is 15 minutes from the zoo, especially at that time of the day. Then you also have to pay an extra $75 per kid to be able to pick them up at 5:15 . . . yes, 5:15. 15 minutes after the work day ends. Again, not possible in this town. So you end up paying an extra $135/kid for the privilege of packing their lunch every day and being 30 minutes late to work and having to leave 30 minutes early.
Day camp at the YMCA. Sure, you can go ahead and do the day camp where they don’t really do much but just hang out and do whatever . . . Bugs, Bugs, Bugs sounds great in the brochure! Slime time sounds awesome! In actuality, the kids spend about 1 hour on the actual theme and the rest of the day doing whatever they can find to do. The bonus is that you can drop them off at 6:30 and pick them up at 6:00 . . . works for working parents, but it’s totally boring for the kids (personal experience and testimonial from others we know well).
Sports camp at the YMCA. Yay - fun fun fun! Soccer camp! Cheerleading camp! Baseball camp! Flag football, frisbee - you name it, they’ve got it . . . from 9:00-2:00. And there is NO option to drop your kid off early or pick them up late. So here, you get to work a whoppin’ 4-hour day - HALF of a full time day.
I won’t even go into the rest of them we’ve checked into. We’ve been fortunate enough to have friends who are also doing camps and we’re splitting up the leaving work early for pick up stuff.
But still . . . what happened to fun all-day summer camps that actually work for the people who need them - working parents?
Rant over.
Thank you for listening.
AMEN!! Ashley has been in camp these past 3 weeks - two Girl Scout camps and one dance camp. Girl Scout camps go from 8:45-3:30. The latest I can be at work is 9:00am, so luckily my boss was cool with me being a little late each day. And more luckily, we found others going and carpooled with them, so my daughter actually went home with them.
With year round schools here, when Ashley tracks out, she goes to our gym for track out camp, which she loves, but same issue. I have to pay extra to drop her off prior to 9 and pick up after 4. And the Y has track out camp too, and my daughter HATED it.
I am sure you have encountered a lot of idiots during these processes, people who have no clue what working parents have to contend with–remember the old movie Kramer verus Kramer. The father became the full time parent and he lost his job because he had to go home to take care of his son, who was very sick. No mercy on behalf of the powers that be!!! Somethings never change.
There should be a service of pick up and delivery, by a responsible college student, to save the parents some of the expense. It sure would be worth or the time saved and less expensive than the fees being charged.
My worst experience was with the people, who dropped off children with the flu and expected me to deal with all the other cub scouts, plus deal with the sick child or feed the children because their parents didn’t provide any snack. The parent of the sick child went shopping while I was providing the child care. That was not the intention of my being the leader. That was thirty some years ago and I am still ticked.
Then I had the expense of hiring a carpet cleaner when the child did get sick.
And that (grumble, grumble) perfectly sums up why I & G are in the school’s summer program and very few cool camps this summer. if you find a fix, lemme know! They’re bored to tears and still have 4 weeks left.