What memories do you treasure from the holidays of your youth?
Here I sit trying to remember the cool gifts I received and the spectacularly entertaining things we did as a family. I don’t remember much about the stuff, or the entertainment. I do remember the people.
I vividly remember Christmas when I was four. Grandma Marie was there. By the following year, cancer had taken her away. How thankful I am that we had time together, sweet time where we were quiet and still and just enjoyed being with each other. Isn’t it sad that it sometimes requires a great illness for us to still ourselves and truly connect with the people we love?
Be with the people you love… not just under the same roof.
The greatest holiday gifts we can give our kids are healthy limits—especially limits on ourselves and the other adults in our lives.
The limits we set with ourselves mostly involve curbing the natural inclination to do the impossible, such as doing our best to make the holidays a perfect experience for everyone. We all know what happens when we attempt to make everyone happy.
The limits that we set with other adults in our lives should involve taking good care of ourselves and our kids. Caution! Some of these may cause severe shock:
We can’t wait to see you guys. We’ll need to leave by six so we can spend some quiet time with the kids before bedtime.
We love you and want to spend time with you. We are trying to help the kids be more relaxed and rested, so we’ll need to do this on another day.
We want to spend relaxed time with everyone, so we’ll be ordering pizza.
This holiday season comes at the end of a tumultuous year. Spending quiet time with your kids is a gift that they will remember for the rest of their lives. The Love and Logic team wishes you and your family a peaceful holiday season.
Thanks for reading!