School holidays for separated parents: how to share the weeks and plan childcare

Six weeks of summer holidays, one to two weeks of autumn holidays depending on the Bundesland (federal state), a few bridge days in between: for most parents that is already a logistical exercise. If your children live between two homes, or both parents work full time, a second layer comes on top. Who has leave when, who covers the weeks without leave, and how does the child actually get from A to B if one of you is travelling? This article goes through it in order, from the question of when to start planning, through splitting the holiday weeks, to the holiday suitcase. How a contact schedule is built in general is covered in detail in the article Writing a contact schedule. This one is about the holidays in particular.

A note on place: school holidays in Germany are set by each Bundesland, not nationally, and the dates differ from state to state. Austria and Switzerland have their own systems too (in Switzerland even by canton). The method below works anywhere. Check your own state's or canton's dates.

When do you start planning?

The honest answer: as soon as the holiday dates are fixed. The German states usually publish their holiday dates several years ahead, because the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (Kultusministerkonferenz) coordinates the summer holidays between them over the long term. In practice, that means you could in theory plan next year's or the year after's summer holidays today. Concrete organisation only makes sense with about six months' notice, for two reasons.

First, holiday camps, activity weeks and popular holiday care are often fully booked months ahead. For municipal offers, registration often opens shortly after the previous holidays and closes after a few weeks. Second, an employer needs notice for leave requests, especially if several colleagues want the same time. If you only ask four weeks ahead, you often no longer get the weeks you need.

A rhythm that has worked in practice: once a year, many families use January for this, sit down with the holiday calendar of the coming school year and plan all the holidays at once, not block by block across the year. That spares you the situation where the autumn holidays are still open while one of you has already booked the summer holiday.

How do you split six weeks of summer holidays?

No rule suits every family, but three methods have caught on in practice, mostly in combination.

Halves with a fixed changeover day. The simplest solution: the six weeks are split in the middle, with a fixed handover day. Who gets the first or second half changes every year. Otherwise one parent never has the start of the holidays and the other never the end.

Count holiday weeks, not holiday days. Count in whole weeks, not days. A week from Monday to Sunday can be combined with Kita (the German nursery for children under six), holiday camps or care offers that run by the week anyway. Broken-up weeks with single days here and there, by contrast, create new handovers all the time and are harder to combine with a camp place.

A choice right that alternates each year. For the fine tuning, meaning who gets which specific week when both have wishes, an alternating first choice helps. In even years parent A chooses first, in odd years parent B. That stops whoever has the louder diary from grabbing first every year.

For shorter holidays (autumn, Easter, Whitsun) splitting in half often isn't worth it, because one week is hard to divide by two. Here it has worked well to assign whole holiday blocks by alternating years: this year the autumn holidays with parent A and the Easter holidays with parent B, next year the other way round.

Who takes which leave?

Once the holiday weeks are divided, the second question follows. Who actually has time off in their weeks, and who places the children in the remaining weeks?

In practice this means: once your holiday weeks are fixed, the next step is to put your annual leave in exactly those weeks. Don't request leave first and then see whether it fits the holidays. If you are often under time pressure because your employer confirms leave late, say so openly. "I need the first week of August for certain, because I have the children then" is a different argument from an arbitrary leave wish, and some employers are more willing to go along with it.

For the weeks when neither of you has leave, you need childcare, and that is the point where many families plan too late.

Finding holiday camps and childcare in time

Holiday childcare comes in several forms, with very different registration deadlines:

• Municipal holiday care (often organised through Horte, schools or youth offices). A Hort is after-school care for primary-age children, run by the school or the municipality. Registration is usually weeks to a few months ahead, sometimes with waiting lists for working parents who can show proof.
• Holiday camps and activity weeks run by clubs, churches or commercial providers. Look early here: popular summer dates are often fully booked by spring.
• Sports clubs and music schools often offer their own holiday courses, reserved for members or discounted. One more reason to ask early at clubs you already belong to, rather than looking externally only shortly beforehand.
• Grandparents and extended family. Not an official offer, but in practice often the most reliable gap-filler. Important: ask early, not as a last option shortly before.

A practical process: once the holiday weeks are settled between you, write down for each still-open week who looks after the children: a parent, leave, grandparents or a childcare offer. Any gaps left are exactly the weeks for which you must actively look for a place, and the earlier you do, the bigger the choice.

Handover when one of you travels

As soon as a parent goes away in their holiday week, the usual handover changes. There is no familiar place like school or Kita, but often a station, an airport or a journey of several hours. Three points make it noticeably easier:

Share travel dates early. The other parent should know the departure and return dates as soon as they are fixed, not only a week before. This also covers the case where the return is delayed: a missed flight on the last day of the holidays mustn't lead to nobody knowing when the child will actually be back.

Being reachable during the trip. A fixed, short contact is usually enough, such as a call or message every few days, especially with younger children or trips abroad. That isn't control. It takes the uncertainty away for both sides.

Plan the handover on the return day generously. Train delays, traffic jams, a rescheduled flight: the return day is the least reliable day in the whole holiday plan. Don't put any important appointments directly after it, for the child or for the collecting parent.

What goes in the holiday suitcase

Besides clothes and swimming things, a short list that is always the same is worthwhile for documents, precisely because they are the most likely to be forgotten in the rush before departure:

• Vaccination record (Impfpass) and health insurance card, on every trip, not only abroad. A doctor's visit on holiday without the vaccination record is needlessly complicated.
• Contact details of the other parent to hand, in case the accompanying parent can't be reached.
• Important medical notes in writing: allergies, regular medication, dosage. Don't only pass them on by word of mouth, but as a note that a stand-in or a local doctor can read too.
• For trips abroad with only one parent: at the border, a declaration of consent from the other parent may be asked for, sometimes also a copy of their ID. Whether and in what form you need it depends on the destination and on custody. That is something to clarify in good time before booking, if in doubt with a short consultation, not at the check-in desk.

The easiest way is a fixed template that looks the same for every longer trip: one list, one fixed place for the documents, no hunting around on the morning of departure.

When one parent's leave falls in the other's time

It happens, especially when leave requests are confirmed late. One parent gets leave approved that partly falls in a week that actually belongs to the other. Two approaches have worked, depending on how far ahead the clash is noticed.

Spotted early: swap instead of negotiate. If both holiday plans are on the table in good time (see above, hence the annual overview in January), you can usually find another week to swap in return. A swap is rarely a loss if it is documented and balanced.

Spotted late: priority for the trip booked firmly first. Some families agree a simple rule in advance for exactly this case. Whoever booked a trip firmly first, not whoever asked first, gets priority in the clash week, and the other looks for an alternative week. A clear rule in advance spares you a negotiation in a dispute where money for flights or accommodation is already at stake.

What helps in both cases: don't book binding leave for a week that isn't yet marked as "my week" in the shared calendar. That is the point where most clashes arise in the first place, not through bad intent, but because two calendars never talked to each other.

Everything in one place instead of two calendars

The real reason holiday planning is harder for separated parents than for a family under one roof is rarely willingness. It is the missing shared overview. One calendar shows your own leave days, another those of your ex-partner, a third note the camp week, and none of the three knows the other two. In patchio you enter holiday weeks, leave days and childcare gaps in the same shared calendar that both households see. Clashes like those in the last section show up before a trip is booked, not after. How to build the rhythm for the rest of the year so that the holiday weeks are not an island but fit your existing contact schedule is covered in the article Writing a contact schedule.