Is the Holiday Spirit Getting Your Family Down?

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As the holidays approach, I see many "survival guides" for parents.

Despite our best intentions, the holidays often become stressful and full of tension and chaos.

We are busy decorating, baking, preparing Christmas dinner (or whatever holiday celebration it may be), and finding the perfect gifts, while also having to go to Christmas parties and school performances, having travel plans or family stay with us, and dealing with the (challenging) family dynamics this often brings.

In the midst of this, our children have a meltdown over the gift that they did or didn’t get or the food they don’t like, they are more agitated than usual, and, in general, get upset more quickly.

But here is the truth:

Children’s meltdowns over a gift or food, or whatever else may be bothering them, is not actually about the gift or food, it is about disconnection.

They feel disconnected from us, and this disconnection stresses them, and they express their stress by becoming upset or whatever it is that bothers them in the moment.

They don’t become upset because they dislike the gift.

They dislike the gift because they are upset.

And the reason they feel stressed and are upset is because we are stressed.

We may stress over making the perfect dinner, over making sure our home is clean, over wrapping all the gifts, over making the holidays a special time where (perhaps) we make up for the rest of the year when we don’t get to spend as much time together. We may rush from one event to the next.

If we feel on edge and are in our heads about all these things or if we dread the holidays, our nervous system is stressed. It releases stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. And this stress response leads our nervous system to prepare for fight or flight.

Emotions Are Contagious

Our children pick up on that. They are like sponges that are acutely aware of our inner state (much more so than we ourselves are). They have to be because they are dependent on us to stay safe.

And so, when we are stressed—which really means that we don’t feel safe—they become scared. After all, what could be more frightening than the person whom you depend on to stay alive signaling to you they are scared? This becomes especially stressful for children when they sense this stress over the course of several days or weeks.

Children cannot understand that our stress comes from our long list of tasks or the fact that we haven’t gathered all the gifts yet or whatever it is we may feel stress about; nor can they understand that neither of these is dangerous to them.

All they understand (and feel at a basic physiological level) is that their parent is stressed, and that, in itself, means they should be stressed as well.

Over the course of our evolutionary history, when parents were stressed, it was because there was a real danger present such as a predator lurking in the bushes or an extended drought that made drinking water scarce. And these situations were dangerous to both parents and children.

A stressed parent, for most of our evolutionary history, really meant that the child (too), was potentially at risk.

And so it makes perfect sense for children to be extremely sensitive to their parents’ emotional state.

It's not just the holiday spirit that’s contagious; it’s also emotions.

So the stress (usually) begins with us.

We are (usually) just not aware of it.

Which, in my opinion, is good news. Because it means we also have the power to change things.

Tuning In and Letting Go

So what can we do?

As a first step, if we notice that our child is stressed, that is a call to s l o w d o w n and figure out what’s going on in us.

Tune in to yourself. How are you feeling? Do you feel stressed? Agitated? Overwhelmed? Frustrated? What body sensations do you notice? For example, is your throat constricted? Is your jaw clenched? Are your shoulders tense? Is your stomach cramped?

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Then notice what beliefs you hold around the holidays. What do you expect from yourself and others? How filled is your calendar with events, and how many points are on your to-do list (or in your head)? And how do you feel about it all? Are you excited about it? Or does it feel like an inevitable burden?

And then we can ask ourselves: Do I really want all of those things? Or am I just doing them because of other people’s real or imagined expectations? If we really want to do all these things, then we can ask ourselves why. Is there something we want to compensate for? What would it mean if we didn’t do all these things?

When asking these questions, it is important to be curious and compassionate with ourselves, not judgmental. That is the only way in which we can actually get real insights and see what is true for us.

And, finally, we can challenge ourselves to let go of some of these things. Perhaps not all gifts get wrapped. Perhaps your house isn’t perfectly clean. Perhaps you don’t bake this year. Perhaps your dinner doesn’t have as many sides. Or it’s even take-out.

And, instead, we focus more on what really matters: Slowing down, being in the moment, and connecting together.