Holiday Heaven - How to shift from stress to success with your kids this holiday

1. Have a Plan – Prioritising and planning your family time together, even if it’s during just one week, will help make sure it happens. Investing energy in setting priorities saves precious time, keeps us on track and reduces family hotspots. It’s hard to stay calmly in charge when we’re reacting as things happen around.  Getting everyone involved in the planning is key as it’s respectful, always results in more fun ideas and helps ensure buy in while teaching cooperation, collaboration and compromise. 

 

Planning and preparation include anticipating the hotspots. Knowing or expecting that you might get the cry of “there’s nothing to do in this house (that isn’t on a screen!)” or “you’re always working” or "there’s no good food in the fridge” helps us stay cool and calm as we’re ready and can plan ahead!  

A few ideas:  put a schedule on the wall to talk through and remind everyone of your work commitments. Set up an accessible family cupboard designated for ‘stuff to do’ full of glue, paper, cork, paint, stencils, paint etc. that you have set up together. Your kids can write a list of ‘stuff to do” when they have some time to themselves.  Come up with a family meal plan for the week and share out the prep or cooking.   Have a wish list of fun things to work on together. 

Restorative, relationship building family fun time doesn’t always just happen, we need to set up for a successful time together by taking the time to plan, collaborate and to communicate. 

2. Manage your expectations: Part of planning is managing expectations.  Frustration and emotion can arise when our expectations and reality are out of synch. When we let go of unhelpful expectations, we’re more likely to embrace and enjoy the moment. It’s said that expectations are disappointments waiting to happen. When our expectations aren’t met (why can’t they just get along? Why was I not more organised with the food? Why can’t they get off their screens? Why can’t they just amuse themselves for half an hour so I can finish this work?) we don’t feel good.  

When we feel let down, anxious or cross, when we get emotional, we flip our lids and end up in fight, flight, freeze mode – our fuse is shorter, our reasoning less clear and we are certainly less likely to respond calmly and compassionately to our kids. When we feel this happening, and we know the signs - perhaps our heart beats a little faster, our shoulders tense or our wrists clench up a little - if we can pause and take a long slow breath we give ourselves time to choose a response. We engage our rational thoughts rather than reacting from an emotional stance. 

We can still have high expectations for our children but we need to incorporate a strong dose of reality into the mix and be proactive. For example, some of the push back we get from our kids is because they have a different agenda to ours. It’s normal for an 8-year-old to prefer to play Lego than immediately jump up when we ask and get ready go to the shops. To expect our child, who may find transitions challenging, to down tools and jump to it to fit into our agenda is unrealistic. When instead we take the time to prepare him up in advance (“We’re off at 10. That’s in 30 minutes”), calmly empathise that it is tough (“I know you’d rather and finish that car”) and respectfully see things from his point of view (“I bet you wish you could stay here on your own”), he’s more likely to cooperate. It may take a longer but a little dose of reality may be all we need to remain calm, helpful and compassionate. 

3. Be present - In a world where we are over scheduled and attached to screens, being fully present for our kids becomes more challenging but more important. Holiday time is a great moment to practice. Our family is going to feel calmer and more connected when we know what makes our kids tick. How are we going to understand the inner workings of their world unless we take it upon ourselves to be present for them? Without presence, how can we ensure that we are curious, interested and fully engaged in their lives?

We know that presence and connection are vital for the wellbeing of our children and research continues to underscore the importance of our presence in their healthy development.  

Dan Siegel and Tanya Bryson’ s book: The Power of Showing Up draws on the field of attachment research and reveals that parental presence - how a parent is open to and focused on the inner life of the child - is the best predictor of how emotionally and socially resilient a child will be as they develop into young adults. They describe how this parent-child relationship helps foster a secure attachment by providing the four S’s of being seen, soothed, and safe to cultivate security.

All the research shows that children who have secure attachments are more likely to develop this resilience that is vital to our children’s health, happiness and success. 

It is empowering to know that showing up for our kids has such an impact. If we are rushing from pillar to post during the holiday, when we have the greatest chance of being together, we are missing an opportunity to be present. 

When we say present, we mean fully present and showing curiosity about what makes our children tick. No multitasking allowed! Scientists have demonstrated that our brains cannot do two things simultaneously, rather it switches from one task to the next. This switching takes time, energy and comes at the cost of our focus. Saying that we are fully focused and present on the conversation that we are having with our son whilst we are checking our text is an impossibility! 

Fully present means slowing down, fully engaging and treasuring the moment. We build the connection with our kids and deepen the relationship when we send the message that there is nothing else we would rather be doing this holiday than spending time with them. 

4. Sort the sibling struggles – More time together means more sibling spats. All siblings fight and argue. It’s a normal and even healthy part of growing up. We can expect that a week together may provide plenty of opportunities for sibling outbursts.   

It's great to know that it’s not our job to fix, shut down or mediate every sibling disagreement. That should already help us relax a little!  Our job is to be the non-judgmental objective coach rather than the referee and as much as we can, let our kids figure it out. 

Clearly we need to intervene if things escalate, but when we ignore the low-level bickering and focus on helping our kids learn rather than giving out the yellow card, they’ll take on board that we have faith in their ability to find compromise and solve the problem. 

‘I see two kids who want to watch two different films on the same night. I’m in charge of the popcorn. Let me know what you decide before we leave for the park this morning. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need my help.”

I used to jump in and accuse my young son of starting almost every altercation - he was more physical and more reactive than his younger sisters. Years later they all let on that most of the time the girls had wound him up – they knew exactly how to set him off and I reacted unhelpfully to his outbursts. If I had taken a deep breath, remained neutral and responded calmly, I could have helped to deescalate and calm the situation rather than contributing to the heightened emotions and negative feelings. 

The best way to handle sibling squabbles is to lessen the chances of them happening in the first place. If we focus our energy on making the most of this precious holiday time we have together, fully present, calm and connected, it is much less likely that our kids will need to seek attention and have their needs met through heated sibling struggles. 

For more on helping siblings get along and building stronger sibling relationships read our article. 

5. It is not about perfection - There is no such thing as a perfect holiday, the perfect parent or perfect kids. It’s about good enough, being ourselves and remembering that we are all human. Our kids don’t want perfection they want us.

Being realistic, planning and putting the joy of the moment at the forefront while being present for our kids is a great start. There will always be low parenting moments. When things don’t go to plan, when we lose it with our kids or perhaps when something else we just must do gets in the way, we can be honest. 

“I’m just exhausted. I am sorry that I haven’t been there for you today. I am going to get up and finish my work early tomorrow morning. What would you like to do later?” “Wow I didn’t mean to shout at you. I let my worries get the better of me and I am so sorry.” “I can see that you’re upset. We should have set out clearly what we needed to get done and agreed it well in advance so that you could manage your computer time. Let’s make sure that we talk through our weekend plans together” 

When we show vulnerability, we are teaching our kids that it’s ok to make mistakes and that we can repair, problem solve and move on. We are after all doing the best we can with what we’re working with in the moment. 

Finally, when we are realistic and proactively seek joy in the moment with presence we are all much more likely to end the holiday feeling calm, recharged and reconnected. Enjoy your holiday!!