Parenting Over the Holidays
Can you manage the expectations AND the excitement?
Picture this: It’s Christmas morning. Cute kids in matching Christmas sweaters sit in front of the tree taking turns opening presents. No fussing, no crying.
HA!
If you’re like most people, the holiday season is filled less with peace, stillness, and cooperation and more with frantic, frustrating, confusing, and stressful situations and dynamics. Or at best, a mix of the two.
Christian and Andrew Neuenswander would agree with you. In the next installment of our holiday miniseries, Keeping Your Sanity Over the Holidays, Austin sits down with this busy couple – parents of 3 young ones – to hear their practical tips for staying sane over the holidays in 4 areas:
Personally
Relationally
With the help of others
Spiritually
Christian and Andrew in Their Own Words
We were high school sweethearts, which means we’ve known each other longer than we haven’t known each other. We’ve been married for just over nine years. We have three kiddos: Graham, who is six; Callahan, who is four; and Vaughn, who is nine months.
Andrew does sales training and operations for a distribution company here in Columbia, Missouri, and Christian has a podcast, Going There, with Samantha Miller, who has also been a guest on WYITW.
The way we would describe our household right now is tiring, intense, and fun. It is full of joy and other emotions. Sometimes we look at each other when we're doing bedtime or another routine around the house and say, “Are you overstimulated?” And then chuckle together. We have to laugh to keep from crying. We’re overstimulated in a hard way, but also in the best way too. Hard or difficult doesn’t mean bad. It’s just hard, and most things that are worth doing well are hard.
Staying Sane Over the Holidays
Personally:
The most important thing we’ve done personally is to set expectations for ourselves and decide what our priorities are. We think about what a successful holiday looks for each of us. We learned this the hard way by not doing this well in the beginning. We’ve gotten a lot better at it. It’s easy to focus on your spouse or kids and put yourself on a back burner. Then you’re exhausted and burnt out by the end of it, and you wish you had enjoyed it more.
Obviously we all know that kids do best on a schedule. But we recognized that our priority over the holidays is spending time with family. We want to hopefully be and look different than other people. We want to be Jesus to other people. And so what does that look like? That looks like being sacrificial about our own needs and caring about the needs of others.
The reality is our kids will miss some naps over the holidays and probably eat too many sweets when baking cookies with grandma. There is a time and place for strict boundaries, but we relax our standards a bit when we’re celebrating. That takes pressure off of us as well.
Relationally:
One of the best things we’ve done to ensure a smooth celebration for everyone is have group texts with family members. We’ll even ask each other, “What is everyone's expectation for the holiday?” It gives people a chance to have the autonomy and authority to decide priorities for their own families. When it comes to parenting, everyone does it a little differently. So texting about that beforehand gives us clarity on what each family wants their focus to be.
Another thing we do is not just communicate our wants and needs with each other, but overcommunicate. We clearly express when we feel overwhelmed taking care of the kids and ask the other for a break. We prioritize a bedtime routine with our kids. We always do that together. And most often, we go to bed at the same time and take a moment to check-in and ask each other how the day went. That way when we start the next day, we feel like a cohesive team.
With the Help of Others:
If you're a grandparent or the fun aunt or cool uncle who doesn’t have kids yet, it may help to know that parents of young children are tired, overwhelmed, maybe even weary. We feel angsty about the holidays. We encourage you to offer to make a meal or help with childcare. Even if we don’t need help right at that moment, because the offer is so sweet, it will help us feel less overwhelmed and alone.
It took a while for our parents to realize that we needed them to offer help. They thought we had it all together, and that because we parented differently than how they had parented, maybe we didn’t want their help. What happened then is that we were tired and weary. And we couldn’t relax and enjoy the holiday or get deep into conversation the way we wanted to. So when in doubt, offer help.
For parents, keep in mind that ‘help’ might mean that things aren’t done exactly the way you would do them. But kids have a way of bringing people closer. It feels great when you see your parents or adult brothers and sisters playing with your kids. And the same thing for us – there’s such a sweetness spending time with nieces and nephews, because you can see your siblings in them.
Spiritually:
We’re learning, over time, to become more like Jesus. Before the holidays, we identify our fears and weaknesses. We each think through something we might be tempted to be bitter or annoyed or frustrated about. By naming it out loud, we’re taking the power of it away. In addition, as spouses, we can help hold each other accountable.
The power of prayer is real. We pray that God will give us the power to have a soft heart and to speak kindly. In addition, we spend time by ourselves over the holidays. We’ll bring our Bibles and a book to read. We’ll go on walks alone or with each other. We keep our routine of Bible-reading and prayer. If we’re with family on a Sunday, we make church a priority so that our kids know that being with the community of believers is non-negotiable.
We make sure to put Jesus in the center of Christmas. We don’t shy away from reading the story of Jesus’ birth on Christmas morning. That said, it’s not our responsibility to make everyone believe the way we do. If we have a chance to have a conversation about our faith, we take it, but we don’t force it. We trust that God is working in their lives in many different ways.
Ultimately people are going to see Jesus in how you treat them, how you engage with their kids and how you remember details about their lives. Our parenting goal is to stay outwardly focused and to look up, look around, and be interested other people so that ultimately, people see Jesus in us, even imperfectly.
Our parenting goal is to stay outwardly focused and to look up, look around, and be interested other people so that ultimately, people see Jesus in us, even imperfectly.
If you are feeling burdened by the fact that you haven’t started any spiritual traditions, not only in your extended family, but even in your own family – guess what? It’s never too late. There are lots of great children’s books out there that focus on the real meaning of Christmas. Light an Advent candle each Sunday in December, throw a birthday party for Jesus, or set up a small Nativity scene.
Real Peace Comes Through Jesus
It’s really easy to forget the foundational event that the holidays are built upon - the birth of Jesus. Jesus chose, on purpose, to come into a messy, broken, stressful, hurried, chaotic world. Not simply to make our lives easier, but to bring healing and redemption and restoration.
While we know that the reality of holiday celebrations is often noisy and messy, there’s often still something within us that hopes that we might get the peaceful version if we try hard enough. What we may not realize is that the mix of stress and cherished moments can create a unique tapestry of unforgettable memories – it’s often the imperfections that make those occasions special.
His sacrifice is a reminder that, no matter what is currently threatening our sanity, things will be okay in the end. Are you facing challenging circumstances right now? Yes, you probably are. Is it ok to pray that things get easier? Absolutely. And remember, the reason we all can ultimately have ‘sanity’ in the end is because of what Jesus did, and is currently doing right now, for you and me.
Be sure to check out Christian’s podcast with Samantha Miller, and the interview we did with Samantha for our Stories in the Weeds series:
“It’s OK to Fall Apart” - with Samantha Miller