As much as we love the holidays with our kiddos, there are way too many ‘opportunities’ to practice every trick/ bribe/ desperate parenting maneuver clever parenting strategy we know, in order to smooth the edges and make everything, you know, magical. This can bring more than a reasonable amount of stress during the silly season.
As well as the regular routine, new things get added to the ‘to-do’ list. There’s that magic-making thing to attend to, different routines to work around, expectations to manage, and the mammoth effort needed to avoid arguments and sugar-induced, or exhaustion-induced meltdowns. And then there are the meltdowns from our kids.
Things can get hectic. Happy, but hectic. If only we could box up the presents, the food, the stress, the queues at the checkout, the gladiatorial battles for car parks, and the military level of organisation needed for the silly season, and sprinkle it more evenly throughout the year so the other eleven months can take their share of the load. But we can’t do that, because then the silly season wouldn’t be the silly season. There wouldn’t be the looks on their faces, the squeals of pure joy, the countdowns, the excitement when the magic comes together, the stories when it doesn’t, and the ‘Santa’s watching’threats reminders that supercharge our parenting toolkit for a while. What would be perfect, is if we could keep the good and take the stress back down to small enough. Here are some ways to do that …
Read more…
http://www.heysigmund.com/the-silly-season-with-kids/
