Winter break can be hard for us and our kids. What often happens is we sort of just start going into the holiday season and winter break without a plan or being prepared. 

You’ll Learn:

• How to get through winter break without feeling exhausted and sick by the end
• Ways to support your kids and decrease meltdowns
• What to do when your kid is disappointed by a change in plans or something not going the way they hoped
• How to find more “sparkle” and delight this winter break

In today’s encore episode, I’ll give you 4 winter break tips for you and 4 tips for your kids. You’ll learn strategies to take better care of yourself, feel less overwhelmed, be compassionate with your kids and reduce meltdowns. 

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Today, I hope you’ll feel empowered to put the brakes on if you need to so that you can actually enjoy this time with your kids and have fun doing the things you want to do this holiday season.

Get What You Want Out of Winter Break

In order to have the experience you want this winter break, you have to know what that is. What do you want?

Before any sort of winter break, holiday, summer experience, vacation, birthday party, or anything like that, I spend a few minutes making my own personal bucket list of what I want to do or experience and how I want to feel during that experience. 

I’m a big fan of chasing the feelings we want. What feelings do you want to chase during this break? Maybe you want to feel connected, calm, or joyful. When you know how you want to feel (and what kinds of things make you feel that way), it’s easier to make a plan. 

Decide in advance what you want to feel, and then make a plan to create opportunities for it. Look at your calendar and figure out what you want to do and when you will do it. For example, if you want to create intentional one-on-one time with each kid, decide when it’s going to happen, put it on the calendar and communicate the plan to your family. 

And as you look at what’s already on the schedule, ask yourself why you are doing it and if it aligns with how you want to feel. Remember, you don’t have to do it all.

Winter Break Tips

When you are overwhelmed and you have no time or energy to take care of yourself, it's gonna take away from enjoying the season with your kids. These four strategies will help you to be more calm and present this winter break.

Tip #1: Be realistic about your schedule and to-do list.

Before you jump into a bunch of activities, take a moment to ask yourself, “What can I actually handle right now? What’s been going on for my kids, and how are they doing?” Think about how much time, energy and mental capacity you have. 

If you’re really depleted (or if you just know it’s always a disaster when you go out to eat in a restaurant) I want you to opt out and say no. Change your plans rather than push yourself. 

Tip #2: Stop people-pleasing.

Similar to the first tip, this is about not doing things that are outside of what you want to do or what you can handle. 

When you try to please others by going outside of what you have capacity for, you end up feeling like crap. You don’t enjoy the thing or you feel resentful or you get home and dump all your overwhelm and feelings on your kids. 

It is okay for you to disappoint people, change your plans or decline invitations. Friends or family might feel a little sting when you say no, but that negative feeling will likely pass quickly.

Tip #3: Ask for help.

This is a hard one for moms. We feel like it’s our job to do all the holiday stuff, but sometimes there are people in our lives who actually want to help and be involved in the holiday preparations. 

When we do it all ourselves, we usually end up really tired and sometimes resentful (again). It’s okay to invite your partner into it if you have one. It’s okay to ask guests to bring something to the dinner or take your neighbor up on their offer to watch your kids. 

Your people want to help you. So let them. 

Tip #4: Decrease the noise.

This is something I’ve really been trying to practice in my own life. It might look like keeping clutter down around the house, turning off some notifications on your phone, reading less news or taking a break from social media.

Hearing our phones ding all the time actually upsets the nervous system and activates cortisol.

When we spend less time listening to and responding to these other things, it opens up time and space to connect with yourself, your kids or in nature. Maybe you’re laughing, playing games or going for a walk as a family.

The goal with all of these tips is that you feel better and more calm this holiday season. Not frantic, rushed, too busy or overwhelmed. I want you to enjoy it and remember the feelings. 

How To Support Your Kids This Winter Break

These strategies will help you be more attuned to where your kids are (mentally and emotionally) this winter break, how to support them and how to create better scenarios that decrease misbehavior and meltdowns. 

Tip #1: Know that kids are feeling stressed, too.

Believe it or not, winter break can be pretty stressful for our kids. Their routines are disrupted and they’re more easily dysregulated. They get bored and are spending more time than usual with siblings, if they have them. Adults are often distracted or busy doing other things, so kids might feel left out. There’s also a little bit of a letdown when Christmas and all of the anticipation is over. 

You might see your kid’s complaining and dysregulation as them being selfish or spoiled. I want to offer the idea that your kid is not an entitled, indulgent brat. They’re having an emotion.

What they really need is compassion. You can think things like, “They had something in mind that didn’t work out,” or “Wow, they’re not used to staying up this late,” or “This is a really different kind of day.”

Tip #2: Let your kids know what’s going on.

When routines are disrupted, kids don’t know what to expect. One fun way to include them is to create a calendar where you/they can write down or draw pictures of activities that are coming up. Knowing what’s happening helps us feel more safe. 

Sometimes, people don’t like to tell their kids what’s going on because they’re afraid they’ll be disappointed if plans change. I disagree. Yes, there might be a meltdown and you need to be able to handle that. But in general, it's better to prepare your children and teach them how to handle disappointment than to protect them from ever feeling disappointed. 

Tip #3: Preview challenging situations.

We often tell kids where we’re going, what we’ll be doing there, that we’re leaving in five minutes, etc. But we don’t often talk about what situations might be challenging for our kids. 

There’s an opportunity here to pre-problem-solve. What might come up? Maybe you’re getting ready to open some gifts, and they might get something they don’t like or a duplicate. Talk to them in advance about how they could handle that situation. 

You can even give them specific language to use. How should they respond when someone gives them a gift? What should they do when they want to leave the table? What if they don't want to hug a family member? 

Tip #4: Keep it simple.

During winter break, some days will be exhale days (when you have a lot of activity and it takes a lot of energy) and inhale days (when you rest and recharge). The goal is to balance play and rest. 

Many families have a lot of breathe-out days in a row. There are lots of activities and events, and you might start to see more misbehavior. 

This is a good clue that you need a rest day. It’s almost like a sick day, but without being sick. Your breathing day might look like staying in pajamas, eating soup and snuggling up to watch movies. 

It is also helpful to stick to your routines as much as possible (eating the foods they normally eat, sleeping when they normally sleep). Of course, you’ll be less strict during the holidays. Kids will stay up late, eat more sweets, etc., but too many days in a row of this can throw off your kid’s nervous system and lead to more meltdowns. 

When kids know what to expect with schedules, activities and challenges that may arise, they’ll feel safer and more prepared…especially when they know that you’re on their side.

Mama, you don't have to do it all. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to say yes to everything. You can say no to extra noise, extra activities, stress and overwhelm. You can take really good care of yourself. And when you do, you’ll be more present for your kids and it will be easier for them to manage their emotions during the break. 

I promise, slowing down to take care of yourself and connect with your kids will be worth it. 

Free Resources:

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Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host, I'm Darlyn Childress. And

on today's podcast, I'm actually doing a replay of a

podcast episode that I released last year called winter break tips

for moms. It's because I was like, oh, I should do a winter

break episode. And then I realized I already had, and then I relistened to it.

And I was like, these are such helpful tips. I want to share them again

with you. Even if you already listened to this episode, you

probably would like to hear it again because here we are back at winter

break. One thing that I didn't really talk about in this episode

is setting an intention for what you wanna create over your

winter break. So I wanted to talk about that just for a minute. What I

like to do before any sort of summer experience,

vacation, winter break, birthday party, holiday,

anything like that, is I spend a few minutes sort of making

my own personal bucket list of what I wanna do or

what I wanna experience and how I want to feel

during that experience. So as I look into heading into my

winter break with my kids, they actually have a 5 week break because

of the way their semester system works at their college. And so one of

them will be home for most of that 5 weeks, and the other will be

in and out because he has an apartment about an hour and a half from

our house. So he's gonna kinda probably be back and forth. But for the most

part, we're gonna be together for the 1st 3 weeks at least, and we're taking

a little vacation in the middle of that time. So I really started to think

about, well, what do I wanna do? I wanna have dinner once a week with

them. I wanna have a game night. I want to have

individual time with each one, kind of thinking about those activities.

What kind of holiday do I want it to look like? What are my expectations?

We celebrate Christmas. So what are my expectations for Christmas morning, for

Christmas Eve, for Christmas dinner, for New Year's?

What are the rules during this break? So I'm kind of anticipating

and thinking through what it is that I wanna create.

I'm also thinking through what I wanna feel. So I'm a big

proponent of chasing the feelings. So what do I wanna feel

during winter break? I wanna feel connected to my kids.

That's sort of an always wanting that feeling. But I was

thinking really about this particular time, and

my feelings that I'm chasing are being

present and feeling intentional. What I wanna do

is when I am spending time with my kids or doing

an activity or doing something that I want it to have meaning, and

I want to be intentional about it and not just go through

the motions of life, but actually create

something meaningful. Why am I doing whatever I'm doing with my

kids? And what is my intention? And how can I be more

present in that experience? That's what I'm doing this

holiday season. You may need to relax. You might wanna feel

calm. You might wanna feel joyful, have fun. You

wanna create maybe create peace. Whatever it is that you're

chasing, decide in advance what you want to

feel while you're doing the things you wanna do, and then make a

plan to create opportunities for those. So I like to sit with a calendar

and actually look and figure out what it is that I wanna do. When were

we doing it? Why are we doing it? This time, I'm asking myself why.

When are we doing it? And getting really specific so that I

can create that game night that I want. Those those weekly dinners,

the intentional time with each kid. I wanna actually have those on my

calendar, so I can communicate them to my kids and my family

and actually make the thing that I want happen. Alright. The

rest of this episode is really great. Tons of amazing tips

on how to manage winter break for yourself and what you wanna be

priming your kids with so that they are prepared for a winter break and

they don't drive you crazy during it. So enjoy this

episode, winter break tips for moms.

Today, I'm going to help you navigate winter break. I'm gonna

give you a few tips. I'm gonna give you 4 tips for you and 4

tips for your kids. So we're going to kinda walk you I'm gonna

walk you through some strategies and some ways to, like,

prepare your brain and also some practical tools so

that you don't feel so overwhelmed during winter break because it is

it can be a long haul, especially if you're like my

kids where, you know, all of the holiday festivities,

Christmas and New Year's happen in the beginning, and then there's

a whole week where there's nothing to anticipate. So that can be, you

know, really, like, boring for kids and also hard for

us. Okay. So how

can you take care of yourself during this winter break, and

what are some strategies? So in the holiday guide, I don't know if you

have got a copy of that yet. You can still get that on my website.

But I have, you know, 4 strategies in

the column for the holiday guide called make your life work

for you. And, essentially, these are little tips that you just need

to keep in mind as the holidays go forward and as the winter break, you

know, gets underway of what are you supposed to do

to take care of yourself? Because what happens to moms a lot of times

is that we sort of just start going.

Like, it's like a runaway train. Like, it just like chugga chugga chugga chugga. And

the next thing you know, you are just catapulted or burst out

of a cannon. Look at me just, you know, creating so many different

analogies. But anything that, like, projects forward

without control, that is a little bit what it can feel like this

holiday season. So I wanna help you feel like you are

empowered to put the brakes on. Because when

you are overwhelmed and you have no time and you have no energy

to take care of yourself, it's gonna take away from being present and

enjoying the season with your kids. So that's

my hope for you is that you actually enjoy this time with your kids

and that you're able to, you know, be creative and

play and come up with ideas to do with them. And, you know, all those

fun little Pinterest and Instagram videos of, like, things to do with your

kids that you you wanna do. I want you to have energy to do

that. So how do you do that? The

first is just not over scheduling

yourself, not over to do listing yourself.

Right? Really analyzing and thinking about, okay,

where am I right now? What can I actually handle? What where are my

kids? What's been going on for them? What, you know,

is it a disaster to go to restaurants? Then don't go to restaurants.

Is going to, you know, different people's

houses, is that really difficult for you? Maybe you wanna make that

really minimized how much how often you go to play dates or

you go to, you know, little gingerbread parties and things

like that. So check-in with yourself, check-in

with your kids and think about how much time and

energy and mental capacity do I have. And if

you're really depleted and you're really low, then I want you to

just opt out. I want you to stop and say no,

change of plans. We're not gonna do that. Do not

push yourself because what I see happen to moms a

lot is that they kind of push themselves and they get through,

like, maybe you make it all the way to New Year's or maybe you just

make it to mama day holiday, which is the day after Christmas.

It's the official mama day break

day, and that is on December 26th. Maybe you make

it that far, but what I see is that because you're been running

yourself ragged, you end up being sick or your kids end up being

sick. And you spend the break ill,

which is actually not a problem in in many ways because then

you're, you know, connecting and, you know, watching movies and

snuggling and all of those things. But what if you just planned

to snuggle and watch movies and eat popcorn,

and you took care of yourself so that when you were doing those things, you

enjoyed them? Wouldn't that be nice?

So, actually, moving

in this winter break in this holiday season with the energy that

you have, with the mental capacity that you have not pushing yourself. So

that's tip number 1. Don't push yourself.

The next one is similar. Right? It's not it's not

people pleasing. It's not doing things that are outside of what

you want to do or can handle. And it's

okay for you to disappoint people. It's okay for you to,

you know, change your plans to say yes and then say no,

or someone invites you to something and just be like, no, it's not gonna work

for us. I have some people in my life that do this.

They have really strong boundaries and they take really good care of themselves. And

sometimes I feel a little sting when they say no or they say, oh,

we can't go after all because so and so has a cold or we're not

feeling up for it or today's, you know, been difficult. And

then they'll take care of themselves by setting boundaries. And I

always feel a bit like, well, that hurts. Like, come on.

Suck it up. Come do my come play with me. And but

I also can you look at what they're doing and look at that as permission

that it's okay for me to change my mind. It's okay for me to say

no. So when I go

outside of what I have capacity for, and I people

please, I end up,

feeling like crap. To be honest, you know, I end up not enjoying the

thing or being resentful or going and doing the thing I don't wanna do and

getting home and dumping it on the kids. So you

can just say no. Right? Try

it out. Just say, hey, friend. I changed

my mind. It's not gonna work. And and and just see what

happens. Most of the time, the person has their

negative feeling and then it passes just like all feelings.

Doesn't usually, you know, create long term damage

if you just take care of yourself. So

being don't push yourself, be honest about what you can handle.

Ask for help. Now this is a difficult one a lot of

times for for moms, especially because we kinda feel like it's our

job to do all the holiday stuff and to handle

all the parts. And I have learned this the

hard way that my partner, my husband, he

really does wanna participate in our life. He wants

to, you know, be part of it. Like he

wants to know what we're giving everybody for Christmas or he wants to, you

know, be in on in on it. But I

have kind of over been over productive

over the years and forgot to ask. Just invite him in.

I've been forgot to invite my family members in when I host

events or, you know, and say, hey, can you bring this or that? I just

end up doing it all. And and then I get really, really

tired and sometimes resentful. So

it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to take your neighbor

up on something that they said, hey, you know, we'd love to watch your kids

or we'd love to take your walk your dog or whatever they've said. And

it's like, oh, no, I could never. I could never. It's like, no.

Let let your people help you. They want to. Right? If your

best friend says, oh, my gosh, you know, you just seem so overwhelmed. Let me

take the kids. Let me I've I've got it. Let

her take them. Let your people love

you. Let them, you know, show up for you. It

actually feels really good to help somebody.

You love it, right? You're probably a helper, so you can take advantage

of it when someone offers to you.

The 4th tip. So we've got, remember, don't push yourself.

Say no to some things. It's okay to say no. Ask for

help. And then decreasing the noise.

So I've been really trying to practice this in my life,

by not having so many inputs on

my phone or even in my life in general.

So just kinda keeping things simple, keeping clutter

down, you know, not having a lot of stuff around, but

mostly like cleaning up the noise in my social media world,

cleaning up the noise from my phone essentially.

And, like over the winter break, I've decided I'm

gonna take social media off my phone completely. I'm gonna really check

out and not not be on it. I don't even know what I'm doing on

there half the time. I'm just looking for, like, just scrolling

or or checking, checking, checking. And so I'm just gonna take

that week off and not check, and I'm really excited about

it. Another thing is I don't have a lot of notifications on my

phone. I've been with other friends and their phone is ding donging the whole

time. And that is actually upsets your

nervous system. It activates your cortisol. It can

activate your dopamine too, but too much dopamine without

any production. Like, if you have dopamine and then you do something

with it, that feels really good. But if you just pump yourself with dopamine and

it doesn't go anywhere, that feels not good. So

you can read less news. You can leave toxic

Facebook groups. You can end friendships that hurt

you. You can don't reply to text messages that bug

you. You can turn off notifications on your phone. You can

decrease the noise in your life. So

those are my tips. Now, what are you gonna do with this

extra time? What are you gonna do this extra space?

What are you gonna do? You're gonna connect with your kids. You're gonna connect with

yourself. You're gonna spend time

laughing, hopefully playing games with them, spending

time in nature, breathing, exhaling,

actually going right,

connecting with your body in the holiday guide. There are all those

different parasympathetic nervous system resets. If you don't have a copy of

this, you need to get it because we did these in the holiday

party and everybody said they walked away feeling

so much better. They came to the holiday

party feeling stressed and I only did like 2 or 3 of these

reset strategies and everyone was like, oh, I feel so much

better. And so get doing 1 or 2

of these a day is going to help you reset your nervous

system. The goal for you,

I'm sure, is that you feel calm this holiday

season, that you don't feel frantic, that you don't feel rushed, that you

don't feel like you're just going from one activity to another.

As if you are in that space and it's busy and overwhelming,

you aren't going to enjoy it. You're not gonna remember the

feelings. Sometimes I talk about like chasing

sparkles, like we're gonna chase these little

moments of time, like, vignettes. My friend has this,

Instagram site called everyday vignettes of of joy. I think it's

what it's called. And she just kind of pauses in

her day and notices things. She just goes like, you know, like a little

snapshot in her mind when she takes a photo. And then she

captures these little tiny moments and she

stores them up. And I think of those as sparkles,

like where do I find the sparkle in my life?

And how can I be present in my

holiday experiences in my winter break and take

take notice and take take almost like a little snapshot in

my heart and go, oh, I wanna remember this? I don't remember the way this

feels. I don't remember the way that it smelled in this room. I wanna remember

if my smile, the cut, the smile on my kid's face. You

can actually take an actual photo too. That works. But

you, I want you to be chasing sort of these very,

very special sweet moments, and you will you

will only experience those if you are present and

calm. That's the bummer. So when we rush around, we end

up getting sick, we end up getting burned out, and we end up missing our

own life. So you get to pick how you want

your season to go. You have power. Power to say no.

Power to, not push yourself.

Power to ask for help. And power to decrease the noise

in your life, which is really cool. I love it. Okay.

Let's move on to your children. This is a parenting podcast in

case we forgot. It's not just a life coaching podcast.

It's not just about self care. It's also about parenting.

Right? So let's let me give you some tips for

understanding or, like, you know, being

attuned to where your kids are during winter break and

how to support them and how to create, you know, better

scenarios like decreased misbehavior, decreased meltdowns, all of

that. So the first thing I want you to

understand is that for your kids,

the holiday season and then particularly winter

break, it's pretty stressful for them

too. We don't think of it this way. We think, oh my

God, they're children, and they're just, like, you know, living their best life and

having, you know, magic all the time or whatever. But

it's actually stressful when routines are

disrupted. That's just true for kids. It doesn't

mean you have to be consistent all the time and might be perfect about your

routine. I just want you to be aware that if you

have a big day of like a big exhale day and a lot going

on, the next day you might want an inhale day.

You might want to have a day where you set right back to your routines

because your kids, their nervous system is more sensitive than yours,

believe it or not. And so they're dysregulated

easier than you. And one of the things that causes dysregulation

is when the routine changes, especially when they're

littler. But even older kids, like, you know, they need

downtime. They need to have a pace of life

that fits with their, their nervous system. So okay. So kids

your kids are actually feeling a little bit stressed. Their routines are changing.

And then also there's like a letdown

for kids. There's this anticipation

disappointment cycle that kinda happens over winter break. And you've might have

seen this with birthday parties in the past or holidays in the past.

There's almost like I remember this when I was a kid. I would

have the idea that I was go I don't know

why I thought this because it didn't ever happen, but I thought I was going

to get everything on my wish list.

You know, like like all the cabbage patch dolls

and, you know, an Etch A Sketch and a Lite Brite and,

you know, a cabbage patch I mean, a rainbow bright, whatever. I had,

like, in my head, all the things that I was gonna get a bike and

also, like, you know, whatever. And then

I remember feeling this way. Like, I would open up all the presents, and I

would always feel a bit like, and I realized it's my

mindset was like, I'm gonna get everything, and then I would feel disappointed.

So kids do this all the time. They build it up in their head of

what the holiday is gonna be like, what winter break is gonna be like,

how it's gonna be amazing. And then they're just like, oh, wait. No.

I'm just my regular self living my regular life. And it can

feel a little bit disappointing. So your kids are going through

a lot of emotion throughout the holiday season,

especially if they think they're going to have a lot of fun or they're

gonna go on a play date, or they're gonna go you guys are planning to

go to Disneyland or something like that. And then everyone people get sick and you

have to change plans. Like, those are feelings that come up for kids. Kids

get bored. Kids get, frustrated. There's a lot of sibling

time. So all that is All that to say is

that you might want to grow a little bit of, like, in your

compassion towards your kids. But the tendency during this

period of time is to view your children's

complaining or, you know, their dysregulation and

see it as if they're selfish or spoiled.

So I wanna offer to you that it's not that your kids are like

big, big brats that they're entitled and,

like, indulgent. You know, you you know, whatever. You don't have to think of it

that way. You can just think, okay, they're having emotion. They had something in

mind. It's not working out. Or, wow, this is a really different

kind of day. They're not used to staying up this late.

The other reason why the winter break and holiday

season is stressful is because the adults

are often very distracted

because maybe we have guests or we're packing

or we're, you know, prepping prepping for extra

baking or even like gingerbread decor or house decorating

whatever, or cookie decorating or, you know, you're hosting

some some sort of event. You're busy while you're getting ready for

it. Then you have people over. And all that

time, you're doing it for your kid, but they're not experiencing

you. They're not getting eyeballs. They're not getting

connection. They're not feeling a part of it at all.

And so they're over there getting dysregulated while you're trying to get it

together. And then you come to do the thing and your kid

freaks out or has like a meltdown. And you're just like, what is wrong with

you? I'm doing all this for you That they don't want the

they don't want the things. They want

connection. They want to feel joy and peace and fun and

play and and run around.

Right? And so they don't care about, like, getting the

photo of them this year with the cookie that's

not on their agenda and it's on ours. So we

have competing agendas at the time. So the more compassion

you can bring, the more kind of awareness like, okay, this isn't where they're

at. This is hard. Or they're feeling disappointed. Bringing

some, some awareness will go a long

way. It's not like you're gonna like not set boundaries or not set

limits you are. But at the same time, having

compassion helps when you set those limits, your kid is much more

likely to comply. Okay.

So that's your tip for number 1 for kids is that your kids are feeling

stressed too. The number 2

and number 3 are similar. The second one

is letting your kids know what's going on. So,

you know, we talked about like the routines being disrupted. For

your kids, it can be really confusing. Like, when are we going on that trip?

When do we see grandma? What's happening? So one tip if

they're younger is you can, like, create a little calendar or on like, not

a little one, like, a big piece of paper, you know, construction paper, and

you can write write if they can read or draw little pictures

of, like, today is this day. Today is this day, and you kind of put

what the activities are. If it's an airplane day, you put an airplane. If

it's a, you know, long travel day, you put a car.

If it's, you know, a day they're gonna open presents, you know, you put a

present. And so that way, they can kinda see visually

what's happening, and they know what's hap they know what's going on.

When we don't know what's happening or, like, we don't it makes

us not feel safe. That's how come you love having a calendar

and you like getting data and you like getting information because it's like, okay. I

know what's going on. I can handle it. That's a mindset.

And so you wanna help your kids. Let them know what's going on.

Now I know that sometimes people don't like to tell their kids what's going on

because in case plans change, they don't wanna deal with the meltdown.

I actually disagree with that philosophy. I think it's I mean, of course, you

need to be able to handle that meltdown. But in general, it's

better for your children to learn how to handle

disappointment than to avoid feeling disappointed.

And so letting them experience all the

emotions is very healthy, especially when

they're in childhood and they have an adult, a loving adult who can help coach

them through their feelings. You said we were

going to so and so's house. What happened?

Yes. I know. It's really hard to feel disappointed.

Your feeling makes total sense. Of course, you're upset.

Now, some kids don't like it when we say that stuff aloud. No problem. You

can just think it. Hold, hold, hold their feelings

in your own heart. Right? In your own mind,

knowing they're struggling. So don't avoid telling

them the truth. Don't avoid telling them to just to in order to

protect them from disappointment. It's like

disappointment happens. I'd rather instead of protect

my kids, I'd rather prepare them, you know, teach

them how to handle all the feelings. That's the whole point

of my work is to, you know, calm you and help you deal with your

feelings so that you can emotionally coach your kids through

theirs. That's the root of emotional health.

Right? Okay. So along the same

lines, this is actually a really good tip, and I want you

to think about this concept of previewing.

So we often will tell kids, like, okay. We're gonna

leave in 5 minutes, or don't forget, like, today, we're going to someone's

house. And we tell them what's going to happen, like,

what the event is, which is good. Right? Just said to do that.

But what we don't do is we don't preview with them

how those those situations might be challenging

or pre problem solve what might

come up. So I'd love for you to start thinking

about, you know, okay, we're they're going to open presents

or going to someone's house. They're not gonna, you know,

they might get stuff they don't like. They might open up socks or whatever they,

you know, or they might get a duplicate. So let's talk to them about

it in advance of how they could handle that.

So you can say, ask them, like, before

before you get somewhere, you can be like, hey, what are you gonna say

when, you know, auntie Tammy gives you a present? What do you say when

someone gives you a gift? Oh, I don't know. You say, well,

you say thank you. Thank you. You

look them in the eye and you say thank you. I appreciate this.

What happens if you don't like your present?

And you can tell your kids, you might want to say, I already got

this. I have 2 of them. I don't like this. This is the

wrong color. You might want to say that. You can

think that. You can talk to me about that. But in the moment, I

want you to say, thank you. I appreciate

your present. Thank you. Right? So

we're going to preview with them, we're going to problem solve, like, what, what do

you do when you want to leave the table? How do you ask? May I

be excused? Right. So you're

giving them the language, and you're giving them the sentences in

advance, so that when the situation comes up, well, are they gonna be

perfect? No. But when you correct them, you say:

remember they go: Oh, yes. Thank you for the present.

Or nope. Come back. Come back. Sit down. How do you

ask? Can I be excused? Yes. So

we're just training and helping them learn how to be polite.

Right? If if they don't want to hug a family member, if

they don't want to, like, give their aunt a kiss or whatever, and they could

I don't want to hug right now, but I'm

happy to wave at you. So So you can teach them how to set

boundaries with other adults. What if they don't like what's being

served at the table? I don't like this. This looks ugly. This

is terrible. Why is it purple? Why is it green? Whatever.

Instead of saying that, then you say, okay, what can you say

instead? Just you can just not eat. You can take a role. You don't need

to give your opinion about the food. You're not you're not a

guest at, you know, on a on a cooking show. Okay?

This isn't the Great British Baking Show where you're the guest and the host and

the, you know, the the with the judge. Right?

Okay. So that that tip

is really helpful in all of life. Right? Like,

before we go to this birthday party, there's going to be a lot of

sweets, and I'm sure you're gonna want to eat many of them. But

remember, you can have one piece of cake or you can have whatever your boundary

is. So if someone offers you another one, what do

you say? No, thank you. Right?

That is a really helpful tool.

Just, you know, previewing challenging situations.

Alright, so the first tip compassion with your kids,

understanding holidays are hard, so they're just having that compassionate

lens. Second thing letting kids know what's going on.

3rd, previewing challenging situations. And then the 4th

tip, and this is the one I'm gonna leave you with, is keeping

it simple. I kind of already alluded to this is

that when we have our,

like, big, big exhale days, right, that take a lot of

energy, we're out, we're not home for a long period of time, or there's

just a lot going on, a lot of people, something like that.

Then you want to maybe have a day after as

a buffer day, or a rest day,

a breathe in day. So if you can think of this

concept of like some days are breathe out days, and some days are breathe in

days. And if you've noticed that you guys have had a lot of breathe out

days in a row, a lot of activity, a lot of events,

and you start seeing your kids misbehave, that's a really good clue.

Like, they might need a breathing day.

Almost like a sick day, but you're not sick. Right? Those are

the best those are the best kind of sick days. When you act like you're

sick and you stay home and you just, you know, eat soup and stay in

your pajamas all day, those are the best days, especially if you don't feel

bad. So avoiding this is also a strategy to not

get sick is to balance, play and

rest. Balance x, you know, outside

days and, like outward, you know, exhale days like a lot of energy

days with low energy days. And then

keeping your routines to

your, like, rhythm as much as possible. I do

not want you to be strict about this. It is okay for kids to

stay up late. My, my

brothers married a family whose tradition is to stay

up. They used to they don't do this anymore, but they would stay up until

Christmas Eve at midnight, and they would open all of the presents.

And they did with my niece. They kept her up. You know, she's, like, 2

years old staying up till midnight. If, you know, I could never even as a

little kid, I went to bed early. But, you know, she would stay awake. And

then funny enough, she'd show up at the Christmas day, the next

day with our family, and she'd be super sleepy and,

like, wouldn't really be participating, which was fine.

So you you can do it. You can change up the

schedule. Your kids will adjust. But there might be a couple

little extra meltdowns and things like that. No problem. You can handle

that. But then you don't wanna have too many

days like that in a row because then your

kid's nervous system and what, you know, their physiological

being starts to really struggle because their brain is like, I

guess we have to keep up on all this cortisol because I don't know. Things

are really different around here. We gotta stay vigilant. So their nervous system is gonna

be on hyper alert, hypervigilant, and hard to

regulate itself. So that's why we keep our

routines as close to close to normal as possible. You

know, eating the food that they normally eat, sleeping

when they normally sleep, you know, having,

your nap time. If you have a nap time keeping to it as much as

you can on days that it works. So that way

you can have some flexibility and your kids can reset pretty quick.

So those are the tips for you and the tips for your

kids. And, you know, just for for

you just realizing that you don't have to do it all. You don't have to

be perfect. You don't have to say yes to everything. You can say no. You

can say no to extra noise. You can say no to extra activities.

You can say no to, you can say no to

stress and overwhelm, really, and take really good care

of yourself. And then for your kids, just the

more that you are calm and present, the easier it will be for

them to manage their emotions during the break.

Alright. If you are struggling during this winter

break and you are like, oh, my God. That was a terrible,

like, situation. I need help. I am here for you. You

can book a complimentary consultation with me. You can

go to my website, calmmama coaching.com,

and get a link to the consultation, and we can

talk it out. I can help you decide if you wanna join my,

my coaching program, the 6 week emotionally healthy kids or emotionally

healthy teens class, or maybe work privately with me. That's

also possible. So I'm here for you. You don't have to

struggle alone. I know so many of you are getting a lot out of the

podcast and I love that and I am so thrilled.

But if you want more, if you just or you just wanna meet me, talk

to me, book a session and I'd love to chat with you.

Hopefully, there'll be an opening whenever you get on there.

Alright, mamas. I am wishing you just the absolute

best winter break. We still have one more episode before the

holidays. So that will be episode

100. So I'm planning a fun episode for

that. And so this is episode 99. Can you believe

it? And we're gonna have episode 100 next week.

But in the meantime, really, you know, slow your

pace, take really good care of yourself,

connect with your kids. It will be worth it. I

promise. Alright, mama. I will talk to you next

week.