I work in childcare. I take care of the children, both mine and those of other parents. Summer is very busy for me.

Ugh… My very tiny wallet took care of it when my kid was younger, in the form of daycare payments. Summer was hella expensive for me back then.

In my town, most of the summer camps fill up in March. Every dual-income family I know has a spreadsheet and keeps track of exactly when online registration opens. It’s a nightmare, and expensive too.

Mine are starting to get old enough that we are doing a mix of camps and WFH weeks. It’s not ideal but we’ve scraped enough together that it mostly works.

My wife has it figured out this year - she was laid off 2 weeks before her 20 year anniversary.

WFH, summer kid camps that did free or cheap activities during the day, friends who also had kids (returning the favor another day), relatives (mine were extremely unreliable), and all else fails paid child care.

My relatives were absolutely useless for childcare. Its fine if you don’t want to look after your own grand children, just say so. But under no circumstances repeatedly say you will have the grand children then back out on the last day, many many times.