I find the holidays to be a tough time to be a good parent. Mostly because I try to walk this fine line between awing my kids with the magic of the season (Hanukkah presents, Christmas lights, chocolate gelt, gingerbread houses, etc.) while also making them appreciate how lucky they are for getting all that they do.
Being grateful as opposed to greedy appears to be tricky for my children to understand, and I admit, I have a hard time explaining it. Particularly since people throw presents at them left and right.
Mazzy got a ton of gifts both for Hanukkah and her birthday, which happened to be during Hanukkah this year. Let me tell you— having a kid on a major gift-giving holiday is not ideal. The amount of gifts she received bordered on obscene, making it impossible to stick to the “one present a night” Hanukkah rule. And the fact that my mother-in-law always buys Mazzy and Harlow eight gifts each (one for each night of Hanukah), which I forget every year until she hands them over. If my memory were in tact, I wouldn’t buy Mazzy and Harlow any Hanukkah gifts and just use the gifts from Grandma Toby, but I had already put time and thought into their gifts and it was too late.
Harlow got upset when she didn’t have as many gifts as Mazzy, which is annoying but understandable behavior from a three-year-old. What made me really lose it was when Mazzy got upset because she already owned one of her gifts.
“Mazzy, you have SO MUCH. You don’t need to love every gift. Just move on to the next one!”
After what I deemed an “unacceptable exchange,” I ended up taking away all her presents that night and said we would open them another night when her behavior improved.
You can imagine the meltdown that happened after that. She told me I ruined Hanukkah and her birthday which I guess I did. I think I would have taken away her presents entirely except I needed to open them to send out Thank You cards (which I still have not done).
When we had the family over on Mazzy’s actual birthday, Mike came down on the grandmas for giving our kids too many presents. He brought out the garbage bags full of still unopened gifts and said, “Everyone has to stop with the presents. They don’t appreciate any of it.” This made him sound like The Grinch, as opposed to what he is— a good dad trying really hard to instill some positive values in his kids.
This year, I planned to dedicate time to shopping with the girls for presents for the family so I could demonstrate the spirit of giving (as opposed to just getting), but life is busy and buying online after the kids went to bed or stopping somewhere on the way home from work was really the only way to fit in holiday shopping. So, unfortunately, the message got a little lost.
A few days into Hanukkah, I had this big talk with Mazzy about how she should appreciate her gifts and say “thank you” regardless of whether she liked them or not. Instead of being upset when she doesn’t like a present, I told her to be happy that we can add that to the pile of presents we’ll donate to kids who don’t get as many toys.
She understood and was on board.
Cut to later that evening, when we are opening gifts at our family Hanukkah party at my sister’s place (with more presents, mind you). Mazzy opened a gift from her great aunt and turned to me with this huge smile on her face. She then screamed proudly in front of everyone (including her aunt), “MOM! THIS WILL BE ONE OF THE GIFTS THAT WE DONATE!”
Well… it seemed like a good idea at the time. It’s a good thing her aunt has a good sense of humor.
We ended up donating a lot of gifts to Toys for Tots this year, including a bunch of gifts I had bought that just seemed like overkill. Whether my kids understood the meaning of dropping off wrapped toys in boxes at the front of their school (something that required very little effort on their part) I have no idea.
On top of the gift windfall, this year we decided to go on a family trip to Jamaica over Christmas break. We’re here now actually.
On the plane ride there, Mazzy started talking about what she what she would be getting for Christmas this year. We don’t usually celebrate Christmas but we did last year because we spent it with my dad and my stepmom (who is Catholic) at their house in Rhode Island.
It hadn’t occurred to me that Mazzy would expect to celebrate it again, because to me, that was an anomaly last year. But of course, to a six-year-old with a short term memory, this was just what people do on Christmas.
Why wouldn’t Santa visit when he visited last year?
So on my way to Jamaica (the biggest gift Mike and I could possibly give the kids), I found myself breaking the news to a distraught Mazzy that she would not be getting additional presents on Christmas. I felt both foolish that I didn’t think to explain this earlier and annoyed that Mazzy was now ungrateful for the trip.
I don’t have the answers, but I do know from talking to friends that I am not the only one struggling to teach my kids gratitude.
I will say that once we arrived, all thoughts of Santa and presents dissipated and everyone seems thrilled to be here.
Is it magical? Not entirely. We are staying in a house with friends (Little Miss Party’s family) and something was wrong with the place we booked so they gave us an upgrade to a pretty sizable villa.
It’s AMAZING, but it’s far from child proofed and the kids are slipping on tile and getting their fingers stuck in doors every time we turn our heads. Every kid has bloody burning feet from the bottom of the pool. There are stairs to worry about (Luke fell down twice) and an indoor/outdoor layout that makes vigilance a much larger theme to our trip than relaxation. We were in the ocean for two seconds before Gavin got bit by a jellyfish. Harlow is eating next to nothing and screaming her head off at night when it’s time to go to bed which is making it hard for the other kids to fall asleep. After Harlow finally passed out the first night, Mazzy came downstairs to complain about all the noise and it took me a few minutes to figure out that my city kid was referring to the crickets.
Meanwhile, the adults are all laughing about how in the world we ever imagined the trip might be anything resembling “vacation”.
We’re on day three and things have gotten a lot more under control as everyone gets acclimated to the space (and wears their pool shoes at all times).
I’m happy to say, we’re now having a great time (especially after ditching the kids at the Kid’s Club yesterday afternoon) and appreciating how lucky we are to be here.
More importantly, we’re hoping the kids take home fond memories. That they are grateful. That we’re not screwing them up by giving them things we didn’t have ourselves growing up. We’re trying to feel grateful ourselves.
Parenting is hard. Bringing up good people is even harder. Living up to the expectations of the holidays is impossible.
I hope we are doing an okay job.
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I’m writing this post as part of the #doingood campaign sponsored by Minute Maid, which acknowledges the self doubt many parents experience and lets us all know we are probably doing better than we think. As some one who experiences a healthy amount of self-doubt, I hope that’s true!
Giveaway: $250 Visa Gift Card from Minute Maid
Share a story of parental self-doubt in the comments below for a chance to win a $250 Visa gift card from Minute Maid. I’d love to hear how you struggle or manage the balance between giving and getting over the holidays.
You must be a Mommy Shorts subscriber to enter. I’ll pick one winner at random on January 4th!
Winner Update:
Congrats to Rachell Smith Bridwell!
And please check out this video from Minute Maid’s #DoinGood campaign:
I too struggle with the balance of giving versus getting during the holiday season. I have a 6-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son. My husband and I are not on the same page on this, and we have not been consistent with the number of gifts we have given our daughter each year. Now that we have our son, the number of gifts/toys we have coming into our house has doubled. I definitely think we need to agree on a set number of gifts for next year. My husband and I did make time to take our daughter shopping for gifts for each other for the first time this year, and she picked one out for her brother too. I think that picking out old toys to donate to balance out the new toys they receive is something we should start doing in order to cut down on the number of toys in the house. That is easier said than done though, my daughter is very reluctant to give up her things (I even have a hard time with it myself). There’s always another chance to do better next year though.
I always start out with a great plan and budget of gifts. A big one for each boy from Santa and some stocking stuffers. Then a few presents from us (the parents). I know they are going to get a lot of gifts from extended family. Then as Christmas approaches I panic that they won’t have enough gifts to open on Christmas morning because I hear about the extravagance that other families do. I just have to remember that I teaching them that it’s not all about gifts but being with family and celebrating the real reason for the season.
This year we planned to do “want, need, wear & read” themed gifts only for Christmas. I wanted to keep it small because our almost 2 1/2 year old has so much already. She has always been great at sharing her toys when little ones come over to play. Well… We kept on finding gifts and the amount of presents under the tree snowballed. We had a beautiful Christmas, and my daughter was so excited about the whole thing. Then she received even more gifts from family and friends. The next day, she started using a 4 letter word we are not a fan of… “Mine”. I questioned everything about how we celebrated the holiday because of the emphasis on gifts. I feel like we shoved her into focusing on the idea of ownership, and she has been a different child when it comes to material possessions since Christmas. Then I thought we could teach her to share by finding two local families who needed help… We went through toys we did not need and even home goods… Blankets to keep warm, clothes, kitchen items, food, etc. We also went shopping for some of their bigger needs that we couldn’t meet from thinning out our belongings. I tried to explain to her why we were helping these families, but on the day we dropped everything out, she cried for half and hour saying “oh no, mine.”… And she has been a little “mine-o-saur” (gotta love that book) ever since. It could have very well just been time for her to hit the phase, but I feel like we did everything wrong. Oh well… There is still time to work with her. I hopefully haven’t ruined her yet. ????
My story is your story almost! We celebrate Hanukkah (me), Christmas (my husband) and my sons birthday is Dec 27 so December is an extremely overwhelming month. This month I tried to de-stress but when you get kids two presents each for each 8 nights plus Christmas presents from us, plus presents from Santa, plus stocking stuffers, plus birthday gifts, it gets crazy! And yes, I could do less but it’s not their fault that all of that is at once. So like Mazzy, my recently turned 7 year old gets OVERLOADED on gifts and every month he gets crazy-he’s off the wall, he’s usually a little rude, he’s unappreciative. So during he month, to help with the unappreciative-ness (that’s a word) we packed up a ton of home goods and toys and brought them to our local women’s shelter. One night earlier in December, my husband asked me what was wrong while I was waiting for a friend for a much needed moms night out. And I broke down. I was overwhelmed and crying and listing off all of the things I need to do. Happily and wonderfully, when I got home my husband had wrapped all of the presents in either Hanukkah, Christmas (Santa and us) or birthday paper and labeled them and even put what was in what package on the computer with a little number he wrote down! I was thrilled and surprised. Good for me, bad for him, I realized I need to give him more to do because he’s willing and capable and I don’t need to do everything. It did actually end up being less stressful than usual and I really credit my husband for that.
We watched a play “Frosty the Snowman” before Christmas, my 5.5 yr old almost cried because the lead boy did not wish for any gifts, he just wanted a home and family for christmas, she told me after the play that what she wishes for is for her baby brother to get well and that is her christmas wish. I almost cried. Of course relatives and friends still sent gifts so i still gave it to her:) but i’m glad that even for a few minutes she understood it’s not all about toys and new clothes
Oh gosh, can I just say every day is a new struggle! The holidays weren’t bad this year because he’s 2.5, so we didn’t really get him a whole lot because we knew other family members would be getting him some larger gifts. We stuck to practical things, and a few new puzzles/books. I’m guessing next year might not be so easy.
biggest issue for us and parental doubt has been if putting them into daycare/school while we both work……. tremendously guilt ridden not knowing if we are doing the best by opting to work and not raising our own during business hours 🙁
I doubt myself daily on how I am doing balancing being a mom, teaching my son, and following through with his therapy. Then I get a sweet response – unsolicited – from a therapist that has not seen my son for over a year. A great compliment on how he’s doing, how he’s progressed, etc. It made me see that all my effort IS paying off!
My 4 year old is a saint but my 2 year old is a holy terror. He can be the sweetest kid ever one second then turn around and scream his head off the next. Trying to teach discipline to a toddler is definitely no fun!! I still have not found an effective way to get him to realize when he has done something wrong. One time in their lives when I hope for a little bit of aging.
I try to limit what we give our daughters and have talks with my 5 year old about being appreciative of the gifts we get.
Plneisag to find someone who can think like that