Managing Christmas Dinner with the Kids

One of the best things about Christmas is Christmas dinner. Getting dressed up and spending time with the whole family while you all gorge yourself on delicious food? Is the best time for anybody exclamation points the only time it’s really stressful, is when children are involved. It can become a little bit manic when children are running around the house, and if you’re trying to get the children ready and together to be able to go to a relatives house, you’re going to have a bit more of a battle on your hands.

You can be picking up a cute boys Christmas suit or a cute girls Christmas dress, but none of that’s going to matter if you’re going to have poor memories of the experience. You want everybody to be able to enjoy a Christmas dinner with the whole family without the stressful moments, and while you can’t eliminate them all completely, you can certainly do what you can to minimize them. With this in mind, here are some tips for Christmas dinner with the whole family including the kids.

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• Don’t fight over food. There may be battles at the dinner table while you’re at home, but if you’re going somewhere else for Christmas dinner this is not the time to have a battle over whether your child eats Turkey. We could all be honest with the fact that no matter how Turkey is cooked or where you get it done, it can be a fairly dry meat to eat, which means that there’s every chance your children are going to reject eating it. Don’t worry! It’s OK for them to turn their noses up at the tradition that you have been indulging in your whole life. Some kids prefer to eat something different, so even if all they are eating is sausages and mashed potatoes, you can all still enjoy dinner at Christmas time. There doesn’t have to be trimmings involved.
• Make the male child friendly. Sausages wrapped in bacon for their Christmas dinner, and children usually are a fan of sausages of some kind. You can make Christmas dinner much more child friendly when you serve the children some sausages along with their vegetables and potatoes rather than serving them roast meat. There should always be an alternative that everybody can enjoy, because this will help to immediately minimize the stress.
• Add a colour in tablecloth to the children’s table. If you have the children seated away from the Grown Ups table of their own, then invest in a table cloth that they can colour in. Add a packet of crayons to each place setting, and the children can busy themselves with coloring in while they wait for their food and in between courses. Not only will this mean less stress for you, but you’ll be able to enjoy actually talking to the other grownups in the room because you know that your children will be safely occupied.
• Offer crackers but don’t assume. Not all children like the idea of Christmas crackers. The loud noise, the overwhelming chaos that ensues after the Christmas cracker has been pulled and even the cheering of everybody else can be overwhelming for a child. Give them the choice as to whether or not they’d like to be in the room when the crackers are pulled, and you’ll notice whether or not it’s a stressful experience. If you can avoid any undue stress on Christmas Day for dinner, you should.