Joanna Fortune: I am reluctant to take out the Elf on the Shelf this Christmas

The Elf on the Shelf

Joanna Fortune

CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPIST

My five-year-old daughter was given a present of an ‘Elf on the Shelf’ before Christmas last year. We initially had great fun with it, but I noticed she quickly became anxious about upsetting the elf and kept checking its whereabouts. I explained it was just a toy but it didn’t make much difference to her. She has started to talk about the Elf again, asking if he's coming back. I'm not sure what to do.

The idea of something that exists to monitor bad behaviour and report back to Santa doesn’t sit well with me, nor does it align with the magical qualities of Christmas, which is not conditional or transactional as this Elf might make it. 

Further, I think the Elf is an opportunity for some parents to show how innovative they are on social media by uploading posts on the capers and shenanigans they create for their Elf each night. 

A showing off, telling tales Elf creating fear and anxiety ahead of Christmas? No thanks!

However, if you manage your Elf activity to ensure everyone is having fun and you enjoy it as a family tradition, then keep doing it. But this little one is showing you signs of feeling shamed and anxious about the Elf, so it is certainly not in the spirit of magic and wonderment for her.

Children are at the receiving end of countless multimedia messages and carefully crafted advertising campaigns designed to manipulate and direct their desires for products that fill their letters to Santa. Combine this with the fact that Christmas hype now starts before the Halloween pumpkins have hit the compost and our children face two long months of bright lights, repetitive seasonal songs and consumer market-driven hyper-stimulation that they cannot developmentally process. Our children tell us that it is all too much through their behaviour. They are not seeking to be challenging - they are seeking to communicate to us that they are experiencing a challenge.

Christmas is about children, it is about magic, it is about imagination and it is about kindness, or at least it ought to be. 

I’m not a fan of threatening to tell Santa when a child has misbehaved or threatening that Santa won’t bring gifts because it simply isn’t true. No matter what they do, Santa is bringing gifts and you only end up undermining yourself by issuing empty threats that further arouse anxiety in children.

Let’s try thinking about it from our children’s perspective. Christmas is a time of magic when Santa and his elves work together to ensure that every child gets a gift for Christmas. Then, all in one night, Santa magically ensures each gift arrives in children’s homes for Christmas morning. And all your child has to do is behave well and do kind things, so let’s focus on finding ways to reinforce kind behaviour, invest in magical thinking and access their imaginations to try to stretch this ever-narrowing window of childhood a little further.

Tip: Pick a single Christmas task each week of December to work on, such as:

Week 1 - make decorations and write a letter to Santa

Week 2 - decorate tree/house 

Week 3 - write cards

Week 4 - bake cookies for neighbours 

Focus on having fun and keeping your daughter calm and connected in the build-up to the Christmas season.

If you have a question for child psychotherapist Joanna Fortune, please send it to [e-mail]