Joanna Fortune: How can I manage my child's Christmas excitement?

"Remember, children never seek to be difficult - instead, they want to communicate they are having difficulty."

Christmas can be a trying time, as excitement and expectation can sometimes derail daily life

Tue, 29 Nov, 2022 - 02:05

Child psychotherapist Joanna Fortune

I love Christmas and all that comes with it but every year my children get excited to the point they find it difficult to sleep. How can I manage their excitement without spoiling the fun?

I feel for children at Christmas, which seems to be starting earlier and earlier each year. We barely have our pumpkins in the compost pile and the bells start to jingle, and the result is a prolonged period of heightened stimulation that many kids find overwhelming.

Young children lack the emotional fluency to articulate this overwhelm other than behaviorally, leading to flashes of emotional meltdown and behavioural regression. Remember, children never seek to be difficult - instead, they want to communicate they are having difficulty. They need us, their safe, caring adults, to help them stay in a zone of optimal arousal, which is not easy at this time of year as you compete with advertisers and marketers driving the hype.

Acknowledge their behaviour by explaining what lies underneath it: 'I know you are getting super excited about Christmas and sometimes that makes your feelings loud/physical'. Next, frame this explanation within a boundary: 'It is not OK to throw toys around the room' (for example). And reassure your child that you know a safe way to release those feelings: 'The next time you feel like throwing something, come find me and we can have a cotton ball snowball fight and throw cotton balls at each other'. These steps will help them to make sense of their feelings and to feel understood and not judged or shamed for simply not knowing how else to release that mounting tension of over-stimulation.

Lead by positive example and get a calendar (make one out of poster card by drawing out the 30 days of December grouped into weeks one to four). Write something small to do each day and something significant to do each week. For example, on week one, 'each day find one book/toy I no longer need to put into the donation box' and 'write and post our letters to Santa'. Week two might be to work on making decorations during the week and decorating the house at the end of the week, and so on. By breaking the season down into manageable yet playful and fun bite-size pieces, you are helping to prevent the build-up of overwhelm in your children.

Christmas is a time for magic, imagination and kindness - and it is about children. Try to gently yet firmly shift the focus from the commercialisation (I want, I want) to the magical aspects (I can do, feel, share, show). Let’s use this Christmas season to find ways to reinforce our children’s kind behaviour, invest in magical thinking and access their imaginations to stretch this ever-narrowing window of childhood out a little further.