THEY say it’s only when your children have flown the nest that you can truly reflect on what is important at Christmas time.
When you’re in the thick of it with young children, stress levels can get amplified as you aim to pull off the most spectacular Christmas celebration of all time. The current age of social media and the over-sharing of carefully edited, glossy online content only adds to this pressure.
We need to take a step back and reevaluate the situation. We need to breathe. Dare I say it, we need to cop ourselves on a bit!
The kids don’t care if the tree could be doing with another set of lights or if the decorations are past their best. In fact, children tend to have tackier Christmas tree preferences than we do. It’s us who insist on a whole new set of matching baubles – they’d be happy to clatter the tree in homemade creations, if we’d only let them.
If traditions feel heavy instead of joyful, you’re allowed to loosen your grip on them. Christmas shouldn’t tear strips off you to be magical and meaningful. The big spread we whip up in the kitchen with all the trimmings – sprouts, parsnips and cranberry sauce? The kids probably won’t let any of that past their lips anyway.
Sometimes, it only adds to the stress levels when you go to great lengths to prepare a meal and they refuse to eat it: keep that in mind when you’re deciding whether or not it’s worth attempting to peel that leather-clad turnip.
Dessert doesn’t have to be homemade. It can be a swiss roll with some smarties dotted on top for good measure.
Again, if I went to the bother of preparing an elaborate fruit trifle, no one would eat it anyway. It’s the parents who feel the need to produce something fancy for the day that’s in it, but deep down, we all know that the kids just want a
free pass to gorge on a selection box.
As for the toys that Santa brings, it’s always the small, silly surprises that are best received and longest remembered. Santa never brings all the things that my kids ask for, even though they are always on the nice list – and it doesn’t take a fizz out of them on Christmas morning!
No one feels hard done by. If we think back to our own childhood, are we really that sore about the things we asked for and didn’t get? Surely not! And our kids will be the same.
Feeling loved and safe at Christmas time is a blessing for any child. Unfortunately, during the festive period, calls to Childline and other family and child welfare services increase dramatically. It’s a heartbreaking reality that Christmas is a scary and vulnerable time for lots of children.
All children deserve the gift of love and security; those who have it in abundance really have everything they need.
So, be kind to yourself this Christmas. Let some things be undone. Let expectations soften. Let this be a season where you extend the same care to yourself that you so readily give to others.
