Hi I’m Skye and I wanted to share how we managed the first Christmas with our two adopted children. 

Christmas is already a busy, exhausting, and emotional day but this intensifies massively when it’s your first as a new family.   

We were so excited for our first holiday as a family of 4, but we were also very apprehensive.

Our kiddies were only 3 months in and had just started to settle.

We were quite frankly dreading the inevitable meltdowns. So we took all the advice we could get, planned the 2 weeks like a military operation, and hoped for the best (lots of fingers crossed)!  

We knew clear boundaries, structure and routine were vital for our little ones (aged 2 and 4), so we set out to prepare and plan as much as possible.

We booked in family catch-ups and any other events as early as possible and started talking to our little ones about it weeks in advance.

Despite all the planning, we could see the anxiety in our eldest increasing. 

We realised it was just all too unclear and this made her feel unsettled.

So one night daddy sat down and drew her a calendar covering everything we would do over the period e.g. see nanny, go to the park, open presents etc. 

They loved it. Our eldest looked at it every morning and it was amazing to see the anxiety settle down. 

Within 2 days she’d remembered it all and going over it started to become a little game.  

Looking back we think a few other key things helped us over the period;

We kept the food routine the same. This did mean no extra Christmas treats, although they did get more sweet treats during the standard snack times.   

We made sure we kept as close to possible to the standard nap routine (even when we visited people). 

And finally, we kept a pretty tight hold on any presents they were getting. I’m sure some raised their eyebrows when they received our long texts about not giving any sweets unless agreed, or specifying nap times.

But then we’d learnt the hard way that it’s easier to face raised eyebrows than toddler meltdowns.  

We were probably most concerned about how our little ones would react to all the social gatherings.

They had already met most close family members, but Christmas is always busier, louder, and generally more intense.

We could just picture the hysterics. So we decided to break up visits to 1, or 2 families at a time and we made sure everyone was aware of how to react to known challenging behaviour.

At points it did feel like over kill, but then it did also seem to work.

The visits were problem free and the kids LOVED seeing family.

We were less on edge and everyone had a great time.

In the end the only issue was encouraging the kids back home. I take that as a win.   

Present buying was another big operation.

Every one wanted to get things for the little ones, especially as it was our first Christmas as a family. But we didn’t want it to become overly expensive and overwhelming.

Our little girl has no portion control so we were also keen to avoid any food related presents.

In the end we wrote a big list of the things they needed and shared it with everyone.

We knew it was always going to be a lot of gifts but knowing what was coming helped us to prepare.

An unexpected benefit was that we could then think about how each gift could be used day to day e.g. these clothes are for Christmas day, this book is for bed times, this toy is for playing in your room etc.

This really helped our little girl take it all in. She spent a good hour or so on Christmas day ordering her presents and putting them away.  

After all the fun we knew we needed to prepare for life post Christmas.

We included an image for taking down decorations on daddies home made calendar and we just tried to make it fun.

We put on music, played with the ball balls and said goodbye to the presents as they were tucked away in the garage.

We then focused on the future and made sure we had some family visits and holidays booked in.  

In the end it went really well but it was also a massive operation.

I’m a big planner, but even for me it was almost too much. But it was totally worth it.

But then ask me that again next year!

Best wishes, Skye 

If you want more support on managing Christmas, read our Managing the build up to Christmas blog.

Don’t forget!  YAA’s friendly team are always here for advice and guidance when you need it.

Give us a call or drop us an email.