christmas

Holiday Re-Do

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

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.

Coming Home to New Traditions

~ Thoughtful Parenting ~ Leave a comment

By Victoria Cano

I was never a cooking kid. Despite the many invitations into their separate kitchens I always refused my parents offers to help cook. I never made paprikash csirke with my mom or baked ziti with my dad. The kitchen and all its mysteries was the domain of parents. Except on Christmas. Because on Christmas we didn’t cook. We baked. 

Cooking, to me, was the Wild West. Full of strange ingredients, relying on instinct and secret troves of knowledge. Baking was different. There were a key set of players that could be rearranged into a thousand different delicious things. There were steps, there was order, there was control. And as a kid, in that, I found magic. 

For the past seven years I have missed those baking Christmases. I wasn’t with EITHER parent – both because I lived abroad and because of the pandemic. 

For many people, like me, this will literally be the first holiday season they have together with family in years.

And while that is so so wonderful. It presents a challenge many of us weren’t expecting. In the absence of our routines, in a world turned topsy turvey, traditions were rearranged. Adapted. Transformed. As were relationships and rituals. 

Right before the pandemic my mother had gone on a few dates with a guy, I barely remembered his name. Now I know him as Peter, my stepfather, and the man who made her feel loved enough she decided to move in with him after twenty years living on her own. The era of going to my grandmother’s house for the holiday too has ended (she’s moving in with my mom.) And my father, who, over the 25 years of their divorce only ever lived down the road, is moving the day after Christmas to Albany, 3.5 hours away.

There is a part of me that just wants to yell ‘Stop! Hang on a second! Let me catch up.”

At first, I felt like that little kid being invited back into my parents kitchen to cook.I don’t understand. Where is everything as I left it? Where is it all going? 

I’m a thirty year old kid and having these questions, these before bedtime fears. So too may many of your little ones. Routine and ritual can be so beneficial and comforting to a child. 

Kids love baking. 

So how do we talk to our children, both little and big, about life, the holidays as they now are, about a world where traditions sometimes have to change and rearrange?

Every year as I was growing up, my mother and I celebrated advent (the entire December month long lead up to Christmas.) Since I was 18 and moved away, we haven’t had much of a chance to spend that time together. I haven’t gotten to read to her her favorite Christmas Story (A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.) 

This year I have. And when I sit on the couch to do so, my grandmother is there too. And before we begin, Peter lights the Chanukah candles and sings Maoz Tzur. Later tonight I’ll help my father finish packing, moving for the first time to a place that is his and no one else’s. As I sit and read, I can see the advent candles flickering side by side with our menorah. 

It is indeed a strange new world. And that can scare kids and their grownups (and grownup kids) alike. But in the strangeness, new beauty and new wonders can be found. And as I sit and read, looking at the glowing world around me, I am reassured that everything is going to be fine, that the kids are going to be alright. Because they’ll learn that old traditions mesh with new ones, and you can make something together, in which everyone is involved. And, from where I’m sitting, that’s a wonderful thing. 

After I finish reading, I’ll watch the candles go out, wrap my dad his presents to open in his new house, and later I’ll help with the cooking (and the baking!)