5 Ways to Help Kids Avoid “the Gimmees” at Christmas<\/p>\n
Christmas, the time of year when it feels like the world is telling us what we need to buy to make us happy. As rational, grown people we know things don\u2019t really <\/i>make us happy and yet it is so easy to get caught up in believing \u201cthe perfect Christmas\u201d is dependent on the perfect pile of gifts under the tree. Let\u2019s just all agree right now that is not the case.<\/p>\n
If it\u2019s difficult for adults to fight the \u201cI wants,\u201d it\u2019s even more difficult for our kids who don\u2019t have the filters or self-control to push back against the advertisers\u2019 messages. So how do we keep our kids, much less ourselves, from getting sucked into the Christmas frenzy? How do we help the little people in our charge fight the gimmees this season can quickly cultivate?<\/p>\n
Here are a few practices I do to help my kids – because I want Christmas to stay a little more sacred and a little less about stuff:<\/p>\n
The catalogs go straight from the mailbox to the trash. I don\u2019t even open them because I don\u2019t want to be tempted, and I certainly don\u2019t want my kids thumbing through to impact their ideas of what Christmas is \u201csupposed to be.\u201d When possible I do movies and On Demand shows that are commercial free. Marketers know our kids are crafting their Christmas lists, but we can be the buffer between marketers\u2019 messages and our children\u2019s eyes and ears.<\/p>\n
I admit I\u2019ve been known to pull out \u201cSanta is watching!\u201d in December to help curb my girls\u2019 naughtiness. Why not capitalize on the naughty versus nice motivation, right? Unless it\u2019s emphasizing the gift opening as the most important part of the Christmas experience. I limit my talk about money, wish lists, gifts and shopping in front of my children even though it may be on the forefront of my mind. I want to guide my children\u2019s hearts toward the true meaning of Christmas, and I don\u2019t want my own words to be a barrier.<\/p>\n
Our kids follow our lead. Whatever we\u2019re excited about, they\u2019ll get excited about too. Choose the memories apart from opening gifts you want your children to enjoy and remember. Is it decorating the Christmas tree? Attending a special concert at church? Hosting an ornament decorating party? Create traditions around Christmas that aren\u2019t about stuff, but about your family\u2019s values, and then get really excited about those!<\/p>\n
When kids are young it\u2019s helpful to have them give to people they know. So making Christmas cookies for neighbors and delivering them helps kids see the process of giving from beginning to end. They learn when I think of someone, put in some effort, and give, I add joy to another person\u2019s life. Siblings are a family\u2019s built-in opportunity to practice giving. Save some of your family\u2019s Christmas budget for sibling gifts. Take each child on a special shopping trip to pick out gifts for siblings, and then together wrap them up and hide them until the big morning.<\/p>\n
From plastic nativity sets to board books, there are many tools to introduce the story of Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus to our children. When we reinforce why<\/i> we celebrate Christmas, by telling the story,acting it out, or listening to Christmas carols, we are recalibrating our hearts away from the noise of the marketing machine to the Prince of Peace who came as a baby. This will not only help our children remember why we \u201cdo Christmas\u201d in the first place, it will remind our grown-up hearts too.<\/p>\n
Our kids will want all the things, but as the adults who set the tone in our families, we can make Christmas about so much more than stuff. Because it is!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
5 Ways to Help Kids Avoid “the Gimmees” at Christmas Christmas, the time of year when it feels like the world is telling us what we need to buy to make us happy. As rational, grown people we know things don\u2019t really make us happy and yet it is so easy to get caught up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":12948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,42,102,117],"tags":[24,26,106,181,114],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-lifestyle","category-relationships","category-wellness","tag-christmas","tag-family","tag-kid-friendly","tag-reality","tag-wisdom"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}