Holiday Survival Guide for Parents: Tips for Less Stress and More Joy
Can anyone relate?
While it may very well be the “most wonderful time of the year,” I personally find parenting around the holidays a bit more challenging than other months. Stress levels and expectations are high, free time is minimal and there never seems to be a shortage of things to take care of. Fa la la!
There are holiday parties for work, our neighborhood, school and friends. On top of all that, my daughter and my mom have birthdays in December, so we always have plans for those. Every event feels like it needs to be the most fun we’ve ever had and when it doesn’t always happen, it can lead to meltdowns (for me and the kids!). Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years that make the holidays a bit better for us. Hopefully, you can find a thing or two in here that works for your family.
Treat Budgets: Starting off strong with an idea that is basically the pinnacle of my parenting so far. The kids get sugar everywhere. It seems like every day at school it’s someone’s birthday or Flag Day and we celebrate with donuts. It leads to a lot of big emotions and also a pattern of not eating enough “real food.” So my kids get a certain number of treats in their budget every month and when they’re gone, they’re gone. It’s been fun to watch them look ahead at the calendar to see what holidays or events we have coming up and decide how they want to “spend” their treats. This is especially key during the holiday season and I think it helps everyone moderate a little bit.
Spread the gifts around: around the other months of the year, I mean. Our kids get a lot of gifts from other people and it can be overwhelming to accumulate that much new stuff at once. We try to limit gifts on Christmas and birthday itself, leave that gifting to others and find other special occasions throughout the year. For instance, this summer, I took my daughter to see The Lion King on “Broadway” for her birthday present. We found a go kart on Craig’s list and since we couldn’t hide it ‘til the holidays, we told the kids it was an early present and not to expect too much from us on 12/25. They have some joy at other times of year and don’t feel so much pressure to enjoy 1M new things on Christmas Day (just .75M new things, haha!).
Relaxing traditions: Since we know our calendar is always jam packed at this time of year, I make sure some of the time blocked off is for holiday family movie nights. We have a bunch of favorites we watch each year (Home Alone, The Grinch, Elf) and we love to curl up by our fireplace, pop some popcorn and veg out. Plans, but make ‘em chill. I actually put these movie nights on the calendar so we cannot move them or schedule over them. We take turns picking names of movies out of a hat (and btw, if you do extra chores, you get to put an extra movie choice in the hat!).
Lackadaisical decorating: I know some people have stringent decorating rules. Placement, timing, color schemes. My Pinterest-y soul would L-O-V-E that but, honestly, it’s more relaxing to let the kids help, have them express their creativity and just chuckle if things don’t look quite right (like the year only the bottom half of the tree got decorated). It’s not picture-perfect, but it’s more fun and gives me fewer heart attacks than giving an eff.
Outdoor traditions: I don’t know about you, but for me and mine, we feel a huge rush of relief when we get to spend time outdoors. Luckily, the weather in North Carolina is mild (duh, that’s why we moved here?) so we can do this ALL the time, even in the throes of December. We try to ice skate outside or go see outdoor light displays, but two traditions we’ve kept up each year? A hike on Christmas Eve and a hike on New Year’s Eve. It grounds our plans with something we know will chill us out and cuts through the chaos of food, drink and gifts.
Napping mandate: Christmas Day is always the most. People get up too early, maybe stayed up too late the night before. There’s special breakfasts and yelling and ripping wrapping paper and then after all the gifts are opened, there’s kind of this fog that sifts in while everyone thinks about what’s next (Christmas Dinner, usually). It’s the best time for a nap, and we mandate one for everyone in the house, no matter what age. It started when the kids were little, of course, but it turned out to be so useful in keeping us all sane on Christmas Day, that we’ve kept up. Now that the kids are older, they can draw, sleep, read or play quietly in their rooms, but they must have quiet, alone time in the middle of Christmas Day to re-center.
The napping mandate is genius