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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 …

  1. Let go of the fantasy.

    Don’t buy into the highly-glossed ideas of the way things ‘should’ be. Perfection comes bound together with squabbles and tantrums and hits and misses. It comes in moments. Precious, perfect moments, in between the glorious, ridiculous, chaotic mess that is real life. And those moments happen every day.

  2. Decide what’s important – and let the rest go.

    When it all starts to feel too important, too necessary and too ‘un-let-go-able’, be guided by the bigger truth, which is that more than anything, kids will remember how they felt – as in how happy they were, how loved they were, how noticed they were. They won’t care about the instagram-worthy meals on the table, the cleanliness of the floors, how many relatives they visited, or how impressed other grown-ups were with their clean faces and darling smiles. It’s easy to forget sometimes, that what matters most at Christmas isn’t the tasks, but the people – the ones who would give up pretty much anything just to have the day with you.

  3. There are 365 days in the year. Not everything has to happen over Christmas.

    There are plenty of days in the year for visits, parties, and making a good impression. Decide what’s important for you and your family and let that guide you. If it’s going to stretch the emotional or time resources of your family, rethink it. Not everything has to happen over Christmas. You can love your important people just as hard in the weeks before and after Christmas. Or in January. There’s always January.

  4. When you’re writing your to-do list …

    Don’t forget about you. Once you’re depleted, everything will become harder. But you already knew that.

Read more: The Silly Season with Kids – How to Reduce Stress During the Holidays (For You and For Them)