Dear Santa Claus, this year I decided to write you too. They are the Dad of two children 4 years and 10 months. I would like to tell you some things about mine and our Christmas. An adult party that run and chase unreliable goals, tire and exhaust themselves between work and commitments and perhaps sometimes forget what is really important.
I assure you that I do my bestbut I am not sure it is enough and at the mere thought of having to agree the grandparents, manage the requests of the godfathers and godmothers, make up and down from the stairs at two in the morning to put under the tree the gifts that you kindly hidden in the cellar to save the imagination of the little ones, I tire a little. But let’s try to go by order.
The role of Christmas in parents and children relationships
I start to tell you what I would like to be Christmas. A moment to slow down, dirty your hands of ginger dough, go to the woods to collect the moss for the crib, as I did with my dad who is no longer there. I would like renew this tradition also with my children.
I would like to slow down and get off the crazy carousel of everyday life to be with the people I care about. I would be happy to do something for those who have the least living with the family values like the kindnesstheauthenticity and the gratitude. Leave me a little from the bulimia of the cards torn from small demons in the gift frenzy, so stimulated and enhanced that they do not even realize what they receive.
I would like to tell them about when the great -grandparents found a mandarin to be contended under the pillow or a child Jesus of sugar.
The psychological implications of being parents at Christmas
Dear Santa, I don’t know how you make you turn so much. If I enter another shop to ask for that particular type of magical marker unobtainable, I’m afraid of being nauseous. On the other hand, I finished the places to hide packages.
I don’t think I’m denied if I speak of stress for this period. There are expectations to be paidaccounts to make ends meet. I even have to enter that red costume with a fake beard that makes my face itch for hours after taking it off. How do you enter the same costume every year? Go to the gym?
I am so full of commitments that I can no longer go there. If I think of the races of the last few days, the haste of those who attach the shops, to general nervousness, anxiety comes to me. It is not surprising to me that many people find themselves in difficulty in living with Christmas serenely and that more and more often we speak of Christmas melancholy.
If then I think about what other parents can organize with Hollywood disguises, I finish for Don’t feel up to it. Almost almost as a gift for me I ask you for a nice path of psychological support!
However, if I think of my two children with the red hat that wallow among plastic pine needles and attract the figurines jealously handed down by their grandparents, I also run away a thread of joy. Moreover, with all this effort, being able to enjoy some small moment is fundamental.
At Christmas you can … hear pressures that you never hear
A day that is expected for a whole year and then slips away between lentils, dates, uncomfortable questions On various boyfriends to teenage cousins by aunts with dusted suits for the occasion by a naphthable lethargy, bingo games, competitions with my brother -in -law to those who manage to mount more new toys. I am denied for manual works, but I can’t pull back.
Normally I am accused, even rightly, of Do not spend time with the family. Christmas day can be the panacea to all evils, so better than I enter me with screwdriver, key and instructions strictly in English. What Else?
As committee as it can put us, I will always forget a bolt and my construction will have to be dismantled and reassembled to the speaker of a father -in -law and brother -in -law. Game over. Not only are you not able to pass the Time with your childrenbut not even to assemble a game to recover, I understand in the sparkling wine bubble that sizzles me in the throat to insinuate existential doubts.
Freud said that that of the parent is a difficult job, he wasn’t wrong.
The grandparents, immemorial of a past with less opportunities, make the race to make their grandchildren happy. Anything to satisfy them.
Had we said to limit what is superfluous, out of respect for those who have less chance and not to have to pay the IMU on the house of Peppa Pig who also has the swimming pool with whirlpool and appears to me as extra luxury?
In this race we parents too. We feel compelled to respond to expectations of children and parents on gifts or holidays. If I do not pause the job I will be criticized, but it is not so simple. However, they are right about the fact that I finish working late and that I spend a short time with them. Could I give them the dog to whom they care so much of making me forgive?
Dear Santa Claus, what can I do?
Even at Christmas it is appropriate to say no
I think it is important to demonstrate assertiveness. Put limits and say no. We cannot allow children so small to dictate law on gifts and desires.
Undermined soil. How do you make mistakes. Grandparents, a black vices belt, are ready to judge you. If you make a superfluous gift, they accuse you of not knowing how to say no. When they arrive with a remote controlled helicopter that lands in the living room forcing the expulsion of the sofa, everything is fine.
Educate adults and children a confront a refusal It is a fundamental step. If mom and dad believe that a gift is not suitable or superfluous, they have the right to speak with Santa Claus so that it does not arrive.
The parenting couple can assert its line and strengthen the boundaries even in front of the attacks of grandparents, uncles and relatives. If the concepts are explained with words suitable for age, children are able to understand. Perhaps they will remain disappointed in the face of a gift that does not arrive, but this feeling can become an opportunity for reflection, dialogue and comparison.
How do you feel? Was the gift really something you cared about? Was it something necessary and fundamental? Can you work in something to return to ask and receive it next year? Can we all be destined for the money saved? Maybe we can buy something more useful?
Perhaps while working, it is not really possible to spend a lot of money on a toy, there is no failure to feel for this. I have to do my best for spend time with themnot to impress with special effects.
The present is a gift
Educate make and receive gifts It would be very nice. Sometimes we call them thoughts. Perhaps because it does not matter what and how much, but the fact of dedicating a space of our mind to that person.
However, dear Santa Claus, if I turn on television this reasoning does not keep. They show me the latest phone model, the remote controlled track, the console with those video games so beautiful. Can I give my time? I knew how much it would do well to limit the job to devote time to the family.
In Kung Fu Panda The Master says that the present is a gift. Maybe really live a moment together could be, far from void rhetoric, a nice gift? Think that joy to be able to unhook from the thought of having to make a gift. What is the sense of giving something out of duty? How can I keep you authentically in mind if you become one of the many tasks to do, a sort of further work?
I should start from asking myself what I want, what it means to make and receive a gift for me. In this it can help us the reflection promoted by the psychology of the gift. The objects are pleased, but does it make sense to live all this like yet another race, yet another performance, yet another context in which I have to overdo it to avoid feeling inadequate?
There is no mobile phone that holds, if they are not present the gift of time will be irreparably lost. There will be no objects capable of compensating moments.
Short survival manual for parents at Christmas
Dear Santa Claus I decided to try to do the following:
- Avoid doing what I don’t feel likeas unnecessary runs for gifts, queues, superfluous expenses, attendance for the duty of relatives who normally do not see each other, also because the family with which Christmas is celebrated is changing (SPS study of psychosociology, 2024)
- focus on what amuses methat is, spending time with my children dedicating myself to decorations, cuisine, game and traditions that allow us to return children
- be assertive If I believe that a gift is superfluous or not suitable for economic or other reasons. Let’s talk to the elves and block it!
- play, read stories, listen to Christmas songs, if I have the opportunity to organize one small trip on the snow
- do not feel inadequate. If I do my best it will be a nice Christmas. We are not organizing the wing, we are preparing a moment of celebration. Let’s try to slow down and resize
- Enjoy my children, their smiles, their expressions, even when they clean the cheek at the kiss of the eighteenth aunt or when they break the glass of the grandmother’s service
- Rediscover, beyond fatigue, the joy to be parents.
At Christmas we are all better
Dear Santa Claus, I ask you to bring me the courage to make simple choices. Elaborate the working hours, stay more with the family, appreciate the efforts that I do daily to be a sufficiently good parent (bring me coal if I can’t).
I am aware that there are families who live complex situations due to economic separations or difficulties. I can only imagine how difficult it is to live a party like Christmas in situations where calendars and alternation must be respected, or carefully calculate resources for gifts and dinners.
I like to think about a Common suggestion for all parents. Let’s be guided by our children’s smile. They will suggest solutions that allow us to experience even the most delicate moments and to help us compared to our defects.
PS If you venture to bring everything that the children asked, I move to you to Lapland because we are no longer there here!
