Tips on How Parents Can Reduce Holiday Stress

Here are my fifteen favorite stress-reducing, connection-creating tips for the holidays.

Once you use these stress-reducing tips and experience relief, teach them to your kids so they can get relief, too. The holidays are meant to be joyful not judgey. 

We’re parents because our kids were born. We wouldn’t get this experience without them. 

1. When your kids make a mistake, say and feel the truth of this statement, “You matter more than the mistake.” Teach them that part two of Blessing Mistakes is to make the mistake right (apologize, clean it up, replace it, etc.).

2. To dissolve anger read the latest blog on my website "How To Deal With Anger". Here’s a quick recap: put a note in your pocket that says, I don’t need my angry story anymore and pull it out every time anger arises (a strategy from John de Ruiter). Put an imaginary dunce cap on your head when you feel your top about to blow (I use a real one). Like Eckhart Tolle says, when you focus on your breath you change your level of consciousness. Another way to remember this is: When I focus on my breath I smarten up. Try it and see. 

3. Have a private space for each person to go to for doing these self-regulating strategies. All parents need down-time especially during the holidays. Not punishing down-time, just time to re-balance which helps us better deal with stress during the holidays. 

4. Every time you feel upset with someone else, think of one thing you really love about them and hold that as your baseline if they’re acting out. This gives you some distance and can prevent you from joining in their crazies. 

5. Say this to yourself, all day long, "I’m not going to let anyone make me feel bad. It’s not in my nature to feel bad.” This is a commitment heard by the wise, intelligence inside of you.

6. When a child (or other adult) is acting out, put your full attention inside of yourself and focus fully on seeing where you’ve behaved in the same way. Yes, you have behaved in those ways. Look at see. It will set you free!

7. When a child says, I don’t want to do this or that, parents should invite them to turn the statement around to the opposite and see how that’s true. “I don’t want to go to Uncle’s for Christmas. I want to stay home.” Invite them to find three examples of why they do want to go. This discharges a lot of negative energy around activities. 

8.  Give everyone choices—everybody gets to choose a family activity for an hour.

9. When someone complains, invite them to find 3 things they’re grateful for. (Complaining is bad for us).

10. Remind yourself that life is fragile. We’re all still alive, Say thank you for that. It’s more important than spilled milk. 

11. Dissolve yourself to the other’s problems. This simple teaching by Guy Finley goes like this: notice the other’s problem (they’re cranky, ungrateful, complaining, sick, etc.), close your eyes and imagine dissolving yourself to their problem and then wish them the best. See how your feelings to them have changed.

12. Make lots of time for everyone to do something they like that’s not on the internet: draw, do hobbies, family puzzles, etc. One way to explain this to kids is to tell them that balance in every day activities helps make them feel good inside. We know, and they know, that too much screen time makes us feel off. 

13. Remind yourself that there are two lives being lived (Rumi), your child’s and yours. They alone will be, and are responsible for their actions. 

14. See with your heart through your eyes. Feel your heart and bring it up to your eyes when you speak with others. 

15. Bless yourself for any parenting mistake, “I matter more than this mistake,” and then make it right.