Here are a few tips to survive the school holidays

In hindsight, the great equaliser of parenting, I wonder why I ever felt this way.

School holidays are the best. I only realise that now I'm facing the prospect of no more school holidays.

Our hard-working little lifestyle team here were scheduling our holidays, these two weeks came up quicker than we realised, and then there's the black hole that is summer.

A couple of us have school-aged children, some no children at all. It's a juggle all workplace teams have to deal with. We manage.

And, as I was putting my hand up for a few days here and there it hit me that perhaps my children aren't even school-aged, indeed one of them is no longer at school.

And the one that is has less than a year to go.

These Term 3 holidays are my last ever. And Term 3 holidays are the worst. It's late in the year, everyone is exhausted, two weeks is never long enough, the weather is playing all sorts of tricks.

Throw in a little pandemic and we have to ask ourselves if there is much to be looking forward to.

I guess we can get to Queensland now but I'm almost on the side of the (mainly NSW) people calling for a boycott of the sunshine state in protest of the continued border closures.

Or there's always the option of taking in the sights of regional NSW, I know a few people avoiding the big cities and heading bush.

Even though the fires seem a lifetime ago, the idea of filling an empty esky is still ticking around in a lot of people's minds. If you can do it, safely, then do it.

Me? I've come to the realisation that my days of family school holidays are over. We peaked a couple of years ago when we choofed off to Thailand, the three of us, and had the perfect holiday, meeting the perfect people, enjoying a perfect place. We kind of knew then that was it.

There are only so many days the kids want to hang around their mother. This resort was the ideal place for them to wander off and do activities and hang with new friends. I didn't have to keep an eye on them at all.

Sometimes they even had trouble finding me as I hid myself away in the adult-only pool area with a good book and a cocktail.

My boy is occasionally up for a road trip, particularly if it involves the beach and his surfboard taking up the most room in the back. In the past few years we've bunked in pubs or eaten dinner on the beach and watched the sun go down.

But he's not long off getting his own car and he's already talking about his own road trips.

Part of me longs for those holidays where the kids just wanted to be home.

Where we'd build forts with cushions off the lounge, or cities out of Lego that would stay in place for weeks. Where we'd bake and go on picnics or head off to the movies. Where all the kids in the neighbourhood would flow in and out of all the houses and you'd feed them and chat to them and keep an eye on them because you knew tomorrow some other lovely mum would do the same for yours.

But those days are long gone. I realise that now and will hereby forgo any hold I have on asking for leave during school holidays.

(That said, I will hold onto January for as long as I can because we all need a break when the sand is hot.)

I will also give up looking for holiday places that are more suitable for a big family. Sleeps 12. Not for me. Although days away with a big group of people are good fun.

All I need is a deck with afternoon sun and a lounge for me to kick back on with a book, a barbecue, walking distance to the beach is good too, right on the beachfront is the dream - somewhere like the house in the 1988 film Beaches where Bette Midler takes Barbara Hershey to die, not so much a place in Narrabeen about to fall into the sea. Has to be a good fish and chip shop nearby, some nice walks.

I'm kind of easily pleased.

I think this summer I'll try such a place. I might let the kids know where I'll be. Or maybe I won't.