Can working parents make summer swim happen?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our team offers 7:30 am, M-F and 5:00 pm M,T,Th practices. Most team members have working parents but I’ve seen a variety of:

-attending only evening practices
-attending morning practice and going straight to camp/work
- kids ride bike or walk to pool with older sibling or neighbor
-carpooling with another family
-parents work remotely
-grandparents help
-sitter/nanny brings the kids

It is not showing privilege to do any of these options. Some would consider working a 9-5 job is a privilege (or even 8-6!) We have parents in the medical field that work 4 ten-hour days/ week and they make it work. We have parents who work labor jobs with non traditional hours that make it work.

But like everything else in the world, if it doesn’t work for your family, nbd. There’s no requirement to participate! No one will judge you if your kids don’t join the swim team.

I think the point is that many kids WANT to participate but their parents have a hard time making the practice schedule work. But FWIW 730am and 5pm practice times are pretty friendly for working parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We both work full time. We just hire a college aged sitter for the first 5 weeks of summer. It’s worked well for us. I prefer it to jumping around and managing camp sign ups anyway. A couple camps in some areas of interest after swim is done, a vacation and that is summer for us.

When it works we’ve split the sitter with another family and that’s been great. But with two kids, paying for a summer sitter is the same if not less than paying for two different camps every week so it has always seemed like a reasonable option to me. But yes, a barrier if you aren’t UMC which is very problematic. But it’s mostly my UMC friends paying for camp for 2-3 kids saying they can’t do it, that part is confusing for me.

It is just a worth it thing that we prioritize, i do get why others might not - it’s a lot of work too. But I feel like the benefits outweigh that for us.

Hiring a sitter, especially if you need one with a car, always feels like more of a wild card for me, particularly when you have to sign up for camps in January. Do they plan activities and stuff or is that on you as a parent to come up with? But yeah, we’ll probably try to go that route once my younger kid is out of daycare next year.

[Anonymous]

We struggle to make summer swim work as a Dual working family. My DH is in the office 5 days with no remote. He can sometimes go in early. We have to have our kids in camp. I'm remote but childcare is required unless the kid is sick. We are lucky that our pool does have evening practice, but its only three days and head coach isn't always there. Definitely less instruction and team building, but its something. We are only able to make it work because I work remote and can race to camp to grab in time. I've drug my laptop to the pool many times in the evening, I can't work at the pool for morning practices as morning is my busy time and the youngers practice 9 to 10 am and camp field trips leave by 9:30. I think my oldest my quit next year as she's not improving at 11 and most of her friends quit. My youngest has swum A meets this year but she's older in her age group and is legal in one of the harder strokes. She probably won't be an A swimmer next year as young in the age group.

[Anonymous]

For working parent that make it work, I am wondering when your child's day camp start or end if you go for morning practice or/and evening practice? Won't your kids be exhausted after attending swim practices? My kid either get bused to day camps aroubd 8:15am or dropped off at 9am and I always pay for extended after cares. If I don't pay for extended cares, the camp ends maybe 3pm or 4pm (with busing). They stay outdoor full day. Someone in the family must have flexible schedules to do the drop off/pick up and transportation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have three kids and my husband and I have always worked full time.

We found that hiring a summer babysitter was cheaper than three kids at day camps.

Our set up for summer has been:
Weeks 1-6: summer babysitter and swim team
Week 7: week at grandparents
Week 8: day camps or sleep away camps
Week 9: family vacation
Week 10: day camps

We do a very similar set up. It's not that hard to juggle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We struggle to make summer swim work as a Dual working family. My DH is in the office 5 days with no remote. He can sometimes go in early. We have to have our kids in camp. I'm remote but childcare is required unless the kid is sick. We are lucky that our pool does have evening practice, but its only three days and head coach isn't always there. Definitely less instruction and team building, but its something. We are only able to make it work because I work remote and can race to camp to grab in time. I've drug my laptop to the pool many times in the evening, I can't work at the pool for morning practices as morning is my busy time and the youngers practice 9 to 10 am and camp field trips leave by 9:30. I think my oldest my quit next year as she's not improving at 11 and most of her friends quit. My youngest has swum A meets this year but she's older in her age group and is legal in one of the harder strokes. She probably won't be an A swimmer next year as young in the age group.

You could get a summer babysitter. Plenty of people do it. At our pool there are at least 8-10 high school/college aged kids picking up younger kids from practice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At our pool, the kids who can’t come to morning practice are pretty much locked into a situation where it’s impossible to improve.

There are three lanes for evening practice, 7-8 kids/lane of mixed age groups, and often an indifferent assistant coach who doesn’t want to coach a second practice a day, and little to no instruction.

It’s a real shame but summer swim seems to be really difficult unless you have one stay at home (or remote working) parent or a full time nanny.

Interesting. This must be why swim team parents come up with so many stupid volunteer activities like countless events and concessions stands - the SAHMS are looking for ways to make themselves feel useful while shaming the working parents for not volunteering enough. I say this as a non swim team parent at a pool - I observe this dynamic. There is so much useless volunteer work that seems like make-work. And the moms do jobs the teen swimmers should be doing, like setting out chairs the night before.

This is interesting to me, because at our pool there are several SAHMs who don't volunteer for anything. They use their younger children as an excuse while those of us with full time jobs manage to keep the team running.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I started an evening swim program at our pool 8 years ago. It’s going well - but this is the time of thing that parents who want need to start and do the work to run the program.

This is a good idea. We are thinking of creative ways to become more inclusive.

Won't happen at most pools. Takes up too much pool time for non-swim team members. Morning practices are before the pool opens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have three kids and my husband and I have always worked full time.

We found that hiring a summer babysitter was cheaper than three kids at day camps.

Our set up for summer has been:
Weeks 1-6: summer babysitter and swim team
Week 7: week at grandparents
Week 8: day camps or sleep away camps
Week 9: family vacation
Week 10: day camps

We do a very similar set up. It's not that hard to juggle.

Have you run into any issues finding a summer sitter who will do only the first ~6 weeks or so? I'm posted upthread and am considering something like this for next summer, wondering if there are students/sitters interested in only doing a half-summer so that we can still do some camps and trips.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have three kids and my husband and I have always worked full time.

We found that hiring a summer babysitter was cheaper than three kids at day camps.

Our set up for summer has been:
Weeks 1-6: summer babysitter and swim team
Week 7: week at grandparents
Week 8: day camps or sleep away camps
Week 9: family vacation
Week 10: day camps

We do a very similar set up. It's not that hard to juggle.

Have you run into any issues finding a summer sitter who will do only the first ~6 weeks or so? I'm posted upthread and am considering something like this for next summer, wondering if there are students/sitters interested in only doing a half-summer so that we can still do some camps and trips.

Many kids start back in August for college or HS sports and still want a couple of weeks to travel with family. It doesn't seem that hard a schedule to fill.

[Anonymous]

Swim clubs have never been interested in "being accessible". They literally closed all the public pools in this area instead of integrating them.

[Anonymous]

We got a summer nanny and that worked out really well for us. Kids hated camps. I know you all are saying privilege, but it's a similar price to two day camps for kids.

The part about swim team that drives us insane is that they don't want parents staying for swim (I get it- probably a lot of confusion/excess people hanging at the pool when there are hundreds of swimmers), but my kids all don't have the same times. One has 7:30-8:30, the other 9:30-10:30. It's a lot of back and forth.

There's also a lot of volunteers needed. We have a 1 year old as well and that limits our volunteering. I have thought that surely there's some gadget that could count laps instead of a human standing there counting?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have three kids and my husband and I have always worked full time.

We found that hiring a summer babysitter was cheaper than three kids at day camps.

Our set up for summer has been:
Weeks 1-6: summer babysitter and swim team
Week 7: week at grandparents
Week 8: day camps or sleep away camps
Week 9: family vacation
Week 10: day camps

We do a very similar set up. It's not that hard to juggle.

Have you run into any issues finding a summer sitter who will do only the first ~6 weeks or so? I'm posted upthread and am considering something like this for next summer, wondering if there are students/sitters interested in only doing a half-summer so that we can still do some camps and trips.

Many kids start back in August for college or HS sports and still want a couple of weeks to travel with family. It doesn't seem that hard a schedule to fill.

Plenty of teens/college kids just want an easy part summer job and don't want to spend their ENTIRE summer working. Plus, they usually go on family vacations as well in August. Ours spend half the day at the pool with the kids. There's other college kids they hang out with and they have a great tan. It's not a bad job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We both work full time. We just hire a college aged sitter for the first 5 weeks of summer. It’s worked well for us. I prefer it to jumping around and managing camp sign ups anyway. A couple camps in some areas of interest after swim is done, a vacation and that is summer for us.

When it works we’ve split the sitter with another family and that’s been great. But with two kids, paying for a summer sitter is the same if not less than paying for two different camps every week so it has always seemed like a reasonable option to me. But yes, a barrier if you aren’t UMC which is very problematic. But it’s mostly my UMC friends paying for camp for 2-3 kids saying they can’t do it, that part is confusing for me.

It is just a worth it thing that we prioritize, i do get why others might not - it’s a lot of work too. But I feel like the benefits outweigh that for us.

Hiring a sitter, especially if you need one with a car, always feels like more of a wild card for me, particularly when you have to sign up for camps in January. Do they plan activities and stuff or is that on you as a parent to come up with? But yeah, we’ll probably try to go that route once my younger kid is out of daycare next year.

NP- these are local pools. No car needed. Most of the summer nannies I see walk with the kids or ride bikes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At our pool, the kids who can’t come to morning practice are pretty much locked into a situation where it’s impossible to improve.

There are three lanes for evening practice, 7-8 kids/lane of mixed age groups, and often an indifferent assistant coach who doesn’t want to coach a second practice a day, and little to no instruction.

It’s a real shame but summer swim seems to be really difficult unless you have one stay at home (or remote working) parent or a full time nanny.

Interesting. This must be why swim team parents come up with so many stupid volunteer activities like countless events and concessions stands - the SAHMS are looking for ways to make themselves feel useful while shaming the working parents for not volunteering enough. I say this as a non swim team parent at a pool - I observe this dynamic. There is so much useless volunteer work that seems like make-work. And the moms do jobs the teen swimmers should be doing, like setting out chairs the night before.

She's right, though.