Spending Time With Your Children During The Holidays

Posted on December 23, 2013 by About The Children LLC — Leave a comment

Maximizing Time With Your Kids

Well it’s the holiday’s folks and you know what that means: lots of food, relatives you may only seen once or twice a year and that tornado of wrapping paper left in the wake of presents being unwrapped while parents desperately cling to their coffee cups. For some however, the holidays can be a stressful time if you’re not getting the time you need with your children. The holidays are about coming together; spending time with loved ones can take on a whole new meaning if you’re cut off from them. For parents that are split up it’s even harder to juggle who gets to be with who on Christmas day. If you’re finding yourself stressing about how much time you’ll get to spend with your kids this holiday season, here are some tips to help maximize the time you spend together.

Make The Most Of The Time You Have. Not every situation is going to be ideal and it’s important to be able to adapt to things are they come your way. Holidays are always difficult for divorced or separated parents because the children can’t be at both houses at once. Speaking from experience, sometimes you just have to choose, and that choice should really be in the best interests of your child not necessarily yourself. Making a plan for these kinds of special occasions is a great way to reduce the stress involved in the decision making process. Make a plan where one year you get the kids Christmas day and the other parent gets them Christmas Eve and switch off every year. This way everyone is included and nobody is really left out.
Plan Something Fun. If you’re one of the many Americans that travel a lot for work or have to commute through a state or two for your job and you have limited visitation time with your children, make sure when you do get them to yourself that it’s a fun thing. Nobody’s asking you to break your back here but having some kind of activity planned, especially during the holidays, can really make the whole experience more important for the children. Going to get a tree and decorating it together or having a holiday dinner that you all pitched in on create long lasting memories that your kids will reflect on when they have children of their own.

Getting caught up in the maelstrom of the season can take it out of you and take away from the time you have with your kids. This is especially true if you’re in the middle of a divorce or custody dispute with the other parent. It’s not going to be an easy time but the more you can alleviate the stress and help your kids enjoy the holidays even more, the better things will be all around, including for yourself.

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