Lace tablecloths, cranky children, gaily wrapped gifts, spills, and bickering relatives. It’s holiday time and you’re expected to be in too many places, more often than not feeling torn between parents and in-laws, step-relatives and other extended family. The pressure to complete holiday preparations and to please everyone saps your energy and enthusiasm. There are solutions for being spread too thin, for reducing your stress and raising your enjoyment level—solutions that improve the most important connections in your life way beyond the holiday season.
What adult children often don’t realize is that as adults they can be in charge and initiate change in matters that affect them, their partners, and their children. This checklist adapted from Nobody's Baby Now: Reinventing Your Adult Relationship with Your Mother and Father will help you ease the tension and guilt that escalate when trying to meet everyone else’s demands particularly around the holidays.
Holiday Survival Checklist*
- Exercise your rights to protect your marriage and your children – holiday stress usually comes from trying to fulfill obligations and hopes of others. You have every right to put your health and the comfort of your spouse and children at the top of your list by not accepting added responsibilities.
- Alternate holidays with different branches of the family – you can’t be in two places at once, so charting out what days will be spent where should save you some grief from those vying for your limited time.
- Change a long-held tradition if need be – spend the day before or after a holiday with one set of relatives so the time will be more relaxed and you won’t be packing up just when everyone seems to have settled in.
- Be flexible in how you celebrate – try, new neutral locations, begin new rituals and let go of old ones especially if they remind you of a parent’s death or divorce.
- Explain the arrangements you plan to follow clearly and early to everyone involved – devise a schedule, inform your relatives, and stick to it.
- Take breaks with your children or spouse when visiting family or having guests over – the holiday should include special time for just your little group as well. Decline some invitations if you can’t fit everything in or shorten the length of a visit.
- Lower your expectations particularly if you are hosting the festivities – the purpose is to be together and have fun; the holiday is not a Martha Stewart entertaining contest.
- Spell out “do and don’t rules” for your children and ask relatives to follow them – this will eliminate much unpleasantness and frustration for you.
- Remind grandparents calmly that you are the one left to undo the problems they create – you shouldn’t have to deal with toddlers on a sugar rush before bed because Grandpa sneaked them sweets.
- Divide available time between sets of grandparents as fairly as possible – often one set will get to spend more holiday time with your family, but you can do other things to make them feel connected and loved: talk to your kids about less-seen grandparents, keep a picture of them in your child’s room, help them establish email accounts for quick and easy access to relatives who can’t be with you on holidays.
- Tell family members ahead of time what children might like as holiday gifts – this way you can avoid both child and giver disappointment.
- Caution: Children easily become over stimulated by the holiday rush – they act on your stress. Remind people so they don’t plan too many or too-late evening activities.
*Complied from Nobody's Baby Now: Reinventing Your Adult Relationship with Your Mother and Father (Walker and Company)
Following the Holiday Survival Checklist will go a long way in eliminating hurt feelings, family conflict, and disappointment. As the ‘crunch time’ of the holidays approaches don’t be afraid to enforce the plans you made to protect yourself, your marriage and your children. The rewards for lessening stress in your life and the lives of your partner and children will be happier holidays for everyone and a better balanced relationship with your parents and family throughout the year because you’ve set realistic and comfortable parameters for yourself.
Social psychologist Susan Newman, Ph.D. teaches at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Little Things Long Remembered: Making Your Children Feel Special Every Day, Parenting an Only Child: The Joys and Challenges of Raising Your One and Only, Never Say Yes to a Stranger: What Your Child Must Know to Stay Safe and most recently Nobody's Baby Now: Reinventing Your Adult Relationship with Your Mother and Father. She is a member of the American Psychological Association and available for workshops on parenting and family relations issues. For more information on Susan and her work visit her website at www.susannewmanphd.com
