Holidays: ‘How we coped with children’

Several parents take advantage of schools to keep their children busy while they attend to their careers. School vacations, therefore, present to some challenges of how to successfully combine that with the home front.

As schools are set to resume from the four-week-long vacation, some parents said they relied on their family and relatives for the care of their children because the vacation coincides with the festive period. So teachers that engage in extramural classes would also want to spend the season with their families.

“Teachers also would want to spend the holidays,” Mrs N. Modesty said. Modesty, whose husband operates evening classes for students in Lokogoma, Abuja, said, “I would want my husband to also spend time with the family.”

Another parent who simply identified herself as Alhaja Kuburat said she took her children to her home state, Kwara, to spend the yuletide with their grandparents.

“This is an opportunity for them to get to know their grandparents and also understand the local language. My siblings also brought home their children. It is more like integration. They got to see their cousins and share several stories while I also saw my siblings that I have not seen for some time,” she said.

Alhaja Kuburat, however, said because of her job, as a civil servant, she was unable to spend the entire holidays with the children but was able to join them in Ilorin before the New Year.

While Kuburat visited her home-state, Mr Joseph Bamigboye made plans to invite his parents to Abuja.

He said his sister and father would be coming over to spend the festive season as such his wife, a civil servant, needed not to worry about their children. He said his father would want to spend time with his grandchildren while his sister enjoyed the company of her nephews.

“By so doing, they would be babysitting the children while my wife and I attend to our office work. We return home together in the evening.

“During Christmas, we had fun going to Children Zoo, Millennium Park and other fun spots,” he said.

Mrs Mariam Afolayan, another civil servant, said she applied for her leave from the office as such had time to care for her children. She said her children were already of age and even with or without the vacation they are old enough to care for themselves.

“It is just two of my children that are in school. They are in secondary school so the elderly ones take care of them. I left them in Abuja while my husband and I travelled home,” she said.

She said with the leave that she applied for, they had the opportunity of travelling home to their hometown in Kwara State.