Christmas Preparations - Involve Your Children

You can involve children in trimming the tree by allowing them to place unbreakable ornaments near the bottom of the tree.  A broken ornament not only eliminates a nice Christmas ornament from your tree, but it becomes a hazard.  Stepping on broken glass can cause injury, especially if the ornament that was broken was glass. 

Assign the children a part of the tree they can easily reach, such as the bottom branches of the Christmas tree.  This can save you from bending over, and thus also involving the children with decorating lower branches benefits you.

One part of trimming the tree that is best done by children is crawling under the Christmas tree and adding the tree skirt.

If you have lights to add to low bushes, consider overseeing the activity to make certain the electrical plug is in a good place and allowing the children to take over.  Better is to use solar lights.  One side of the bush might end up with twice the lights as the other, but you should show appreciation and do not “fix” the problem. 

Other ground level decorations such as placing path markers can be assigned to children.

Baking Christmas cookies is a tradition in many homes.  Assisting with the cookie making, even if it is as simple as using cookie cutters, can be done by children.  And boys can also be of help with cookie making.

Finding twists on Zazzle products is possible.  Zazzle allows customizing, so changing wording on a product can better meet your needs.  Below is shown aprons, which come in several sizes, including kid’s size.  Notice using the word “assistant” or “helper” on the smaller apron can make a child feel like really being a part of the baking team.

If things do not come out perfect, you can do damage by complaining.  And if you think a child will not notice you hid that overused cookie cutter, or moved the decorations placed by a child, well just remember a child thinks.  Those things you perceive as improvements to the decorations the children perceive as rejection to their creativity, and a rejection to what they are expressing to you as what they want.  One simple rule is what they do is perfect.

When I was a child, I was given a branch cut from the bottom of the family Christmas tree that needed to be removed so the tree could fit into the stand.  Let the children decorate their own small tree in their own space.  With battery operated lights you could consider adding a few lights safely.  Do have a spare battery, since batteries seem to discharge at very bad times, like Christmas morning.

Have a sing along or at least play Christmas music while decorating.  Singing always lightens the mood.  The objective is making the children happy.

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