It's been MANY years since I have had a parent tell me they were taking the kids out for a week to go on a family vacation.

I've seen some three day and a few four day weekends to go to weddings or family vacations. I've seen some kids going to stay with grandparents or relatives while the parents take vacation and the parents spending a day or two on the front end of the vacation or back end of the vacation WITH their kids.

I've had a number of deals where the grandparents have come to town to care for the kid/s in their homes while the parents go on vacation but still bring the kid to day care every day.

Even with my two weeks off a year I'm not seeing parents use that time to actually go on vacation with thier kids. Most... not all... of my kids are being cared for by someone else while I'm on vacation. Some parents do a few of the days and then then the kid goes to a relative or another day care while I'm on vacation.

It would be interesting to hear from the travel industry to see the trends of tickets bought for under five year olds and "family" vacation packages that include under five year olds. I'll betcha a cyber buck that that has decreased DRAMATICALLY in the last five years.

I think the idea of a family vacation that is about doing stuff with your kids for your kids is becoming less and less a part of the cultural norm. Maybe not so much with school agers and up but for the under five crowd... I think that's really really declined.

I have a large provider network of friends here who have done day care for many years. We talk about this alot because it's very different than it used to be. When I did care in the 90's it was almost understood that each kid would be gone at least two weeks of the year. We sort of figured that into the deal. When looking at this current generation of parents none of us are seeing families actually go on vacation WITH their kids.. meaning for a week they have their kids with them doing stuff as a family every day. A few days here and there maybe but not a dedicated family vacation where all the family is together the whole time.

My friends and I am seeing a huge increase of parents taking actual VACATIONS without their kids. I'm not talking about a long weekend at for holidays but actual week long trips to far away .. have to fly there... destinations. Other than teachers kids, none of us can even tell you the last time we had a family take a full week of vacation together where they did something that was for the whole family and the whole family stayed together with the parents caring for the kids the whole time doing full family activities for a full week.....either in town or out of town for so long none of us even remember when it happened last.

I'm sure some of it is the economy. Some of my families don't have the funds to take a week off and some of them save their vacation paid days for sick days... which I do appreciate.

I don't give free weeks off for vacation but some of my friends do. What they are seeing is that when parents are using the free week off it is when they have free child care NOT when they are going on vacations. None of my friends are seeing parents take the for a full week to take vacations with their kids. Many of my friends who offer this don't even have the parents using it. The ones that require a full week at a time ... not you can have ten days here and there... but a scheduled full week where you don't have to pay... are having kids go years without the parents even using it. The ones that allow it to be done one day at a time are seeing kids gone for the ten days but it's not for vacation but rather days when the parent has someone else to care for the kid or long weekends when the family is going out of town.

So question to you ladies: Do you have parents who take their kids out of day care for one full week and go somewhere or do something as a family WITH their kids where the parents are caring for the kids wall to wall for a week straight?