Sharing Values With Your Children At The Holidays

by

John E. Swank, M.S.
Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor

Dealing with children's expectations at the holidays can increase stress for parents. But there are some ways to reduce the stress and teach values at the same time.

Many parents are frustrated with children's “gimme” attitude during the holidays. This focus on gift receiving is made worse by increased media marketing toward children. Much marketing is "bundled," so that children's movies are associated with mass marketing of associated products. There is almost nothing that they can watch in movies or TV that isn't associated with a product that they “should" have.

As a counselor, I believe that most children are overwhelmed with too many things. I am amazed at the staggering number of toys and gadgets that young children have. The holiday season exaggerates this tendency to overdo it for our children. Parents also get their feelings hurt when children aren't wildly excited about each and every present they receive.

As a parent you are not powerless. You can start by changing your approach. One shift is to encourage "doing" rather than "receiving". When you ask your children, “What do you want to do for Christmas?” you will get a different answer than when you ask, “What do you want for Christmas?" Planning holiday events may be more satisfying than just thinking of things to buy only to be stored somewhere. Even future events can be given as gift certificates at the holidays.

Another question to your children that can change the focus is "what do you want to give to others (or do for others) for Hanukkah?" It is my experience that gift giving is done by the adults, and children aren't very often involved in giving. Gifts do not have to be something purchased. Of course, items can be made. But gifts could be giving of time. There is no reason a child couldn't give a gift certificate to do the assigned chores for a day for a sibling--with a smile and no complaining! There are endless possibilities of gifts of labor. I use them for my wife, and I almost always get a big smile. Especially when you give as a gift to do something that your family knows you really don't like doing.

You could also ask you children, "How could we surprise someone and do something special for them without them know who did it? Anonymous gift giving can involve a great deal of discussion while figuring out what to do and how to pull off the surprise.

A number of years ago, my daughter decided that one of her acts of kindness would be to not be upset, angry, or frustrated when checking out at the registers at Christmas. She had observed how unpleasant people could be while doing their holiday shopping. She now has turned that into a year round philosophy of staying pleasant regardless of what goes wrong at the cash register or how slow the person is a head of you.

Obviously gift giving and receiving is a part of the holidays. Young children would do better with the 12 days of Christmas approach. Can a 3, 4, or 5 year old really handle 20 presents on Christmas day from parents and grandparents? Wouldn't you or your child appreciate it more with one gift a day spread out over several days? A few years we have used a countdown to Christmas approach using Advent gift giving. Small gifts can be given, saving the bigger ones for Christmas day itself.

Older children can be taught budget. I don't think parents need to apologize that there is a limit to how much they can spend. Children could learn to prioritize their requests, rather than really expect unlimited giving. Older children can be told about how much money you plan to spend, and they could make requests based on realistic expectations.

I suspect that children who have the most problems with unrealistic expectations at the holidays have parents who have unrealistic spending patterns themselves. If parents spend money they don't have, I suspect that the children likewise expect unlimited amounts. So part of the reduction of stress at the holidays may be to examine your own expectations. Many adults have wants beyond their budgets, and run up credit cards with little plans as to how to pay them off. They carry those same unrealistic expectations into the holidays, feeling guilty if they can not give their children everything they want.

As a parent you can not control the commercialization of the holidays, nor totally change your children’s attitudes. But you need not be powerless, either. You can shape and guide your children to have more meaningful experiences at the holidays, and to improve your family’s experiences of the season.