Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to start thinking about…the holidays. 

Next year.

How do you want to do it differently? What didn’t work? What do you WANT your holidays to look like from here on out?

These are the things many of the young parents in my practice and in my parenting groups are talking about.

The first topic was presents. So many of the parents felt that their way of doing presents wasn’t working. Their children were disappointed, or overwhelmed or both. One mother described it this way: “everybody opened everything all at once. It was chaos…and I had a headache.”

The second topic was relatives: when they came, how long they stayed and how many presents they gave. One mother with three small children had tried to control the overwhelm by having everyone come to her house instead of having to travel. That too was chaos.

So what’s a parent to do?

Perhaps now is the time to sit down with your partner and talk about how you want the holidays to look next year – and to start to prepare family members for any changes you intend to make.

One mother in our group who has older children said she wanted Christmas Eve and Christmas morning just for her own nuclear family. But she was afraid to tell her parents and her in-laws for fear of causing hurt feelings. 

Another mother talked about how “bratty” her children were around gifts. She had not wanted them to expect a gift every night of Hannuka, but when there was a night without gifts, her kids whined and complained. 

The discussions we had around these issues were really fruitful. The mother with three children told everyone that after numerous years of overwhelming holidays, she finally told her relatives that her family would celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas morning on their own and that she would then have an open house on Christmas afternoon….and to her surprise, everyone was fine with it. 

And as for presents? We discussed how important it is to tell children ahead of time what to expect in regard to presents. If you decide you are just going to give each of your children one big gift for the holidays and you are going to let the relatives give the other gifts, tell your children well in advance. If you are going to give a gift every other night of Hannuka, tell your children ahead of time and let them know which nights will be the present nights. You may also want to talk about other things, for example, the meaning of the holiday, and for that matter, the meaning of gifts. You might want to emphasize the good feeling derived from giving, the importance of generosity, the importance of the children giving as well as receiving, and the importance of graciousness when receiving a gift. Your children may not be able to quell their disappointment when they don’t get what they want or when they don’t get as much as they want, but the topics of meaning, gratitude, generosity and graciousness can be discussed repeatedly over the years.

And as for the other disappointments of the holidays? Well, one mother told us her solution: radical acceptance. She said she assumes there will be some disappointment around presents and she also assumes someone – or several people – will get sick over the holidays….and she just accepts it.