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When you negotiate make it part of our new job package. Figure out ahead of time how many days you need for childcare then add a week for vacation - Then add another week on top of that. That extra week is your negotiating room, they will negotiate down to where you want to be.

I'm don't know what your job is, but if you have a career I would expect the new job to offer similar vacation time to what you have previously built up.

I think we need some more detail about the job change situation to help you out more!

When I got an offer for the company I work for now, they would not budge on PTO either.

This happens to me after every maternity leave; I had to use up all my PTO first and after mat leave, I start over with nothing. It's been tough; but we have family around so we've made it work. I'm going to have my 3rd next year and I'm seriously going to try to figure out if there's anyway I can not loose all my PTO prior to going on mat leave.

You don’t get time off when you start a new job? Is that pretty standard? How long does it take you to build up time off? (Sorry, this isn’t helpful advice, I just can’t believe that’s the policy!)

I also have an elementary school aged kid and know all about the many school holidays.

In our area there are a ton of one day camps for the random minor school holidays - could you look into something like that? Its a lot of the same places that have summer day camps (gymnastics, karate, YMCA, rec center, science/coding activity centers, etc). We've also occasionally had babysitters come on school holidays or used grandparent care.

I had the same situation as @graceandjoy: where I was out of leave after maternity leave (in the negative actually because of an HR error)

Granted I already had clout with my managers, but I was able to negotiate a flexible schedule and opportunities to work from home.

Maybe talk to them up front to see if (with enough notice) you you can work longer days during the week to get one day off for planned teacher days/holidays, or if you can work from home those days

I've had two union jobs with strict leave rules (no taking leave in the first 6 months and no negotiations on leave amounts). For the first job I negotiated to get x number of days of leave without pay to use in the first 6 months (essentially being part time with full time benefits). With my second job I negotiated to borrowing leave and leave without pay for previously scheduled commitments. I've learned leave is always negotiable.