Advice for parents on how to cope with children during the holidays

Juggling parenthood with work is an ongoing issue for many parents and parent coach and author of Raising Happy Children for Dummies, Sue Atkins, can relate to the problem personally and professionally from her days as a deputy head teacher.

So, what's the best way to juggle a family and working life? Atkins offers her top tips.

Deal with the guilt: Allowing yourself to feel good about your child care decisions is important. Parents should repeat mental affirmations. "Say, 'I'm grounded, positive, centred, relaxed and happy and I'm doing my best for my children' – it will have a massive impact."

Consider your options: Atkins believes that by taking some time to come up with the best solution, you'll have peace of mind by the time the holidays arrive.

While you might automatically think of enrolling the children with a nursery or paying for childcare there are cheaper options. One example is to share responsibility with friends who also have children.

"Ask the kid's grandparents if they're available to help out – kids often love spending time with them.

"There are also other options – for example local sports centres often run half-term clubs which aren't very expensive."

Try breaking down long summer holidays into bite size chunks so they don't feel like such a big hurdle.

"I've worked with people where the wife takes one week off and then the husband takes the next week."

Get organised: It may feel like the summer holidays are ages away but to help to avoid panic when July comes, it's worth spending time now to put a plan in place.

Atkins also believes that by staying organised throughout the school year you can achieve a happy work-family balance.

"If you get it on paper you get it out of your system and you won't lose so much sleep over it. Once everything is in a list you can put it into priority and realise that actually some of the issues you've been worrying about aren't that urgent and you're worrying about them unnecessarily.