My husband and I LOVE the Christmas season. The magical allure of the the whimsical along with one of the most important things we could possibly be celebrating as Christians.

 

Decorating for fall and Christmas is a must! Now that we have littles {lots of them}, its even more fun to watch the tinkle in their eyes as we deck the halls for Christ’s birthday typically a month a head.

I know this post may be a little late for this year but I wanted to talk a little about how we “tree train” our children so we don’t have to cage our tree and everyone can safely and happily enjoy the season. For reference, this year our littles are 6.5, 4, 3, and nearly 1-year-old.

Tips for Tree Training with Lots of Littles

Decorate with your littles

Letting your children help in the process of decorating will give them a sense of ownership. When they feel its just as much theirs as it is yours, they’ll want to help take care of it as well. This will also give you the opportunity to talk about breakable, non-breakable, sentimental, fun, history of, and to whom each ornament belongs. They will {ideally} be more gentle around the those that are breakable, endearing toward the sentimental, and fond of the stories attached to each treasure that was before just an object.

Strategic Ornament Placement

While decorating with your children and talking about each item, they will catch onto which things are okay for them to touch or avoid based on who was allowed to hang it. Typically, taller children will be older and therefore will be able to be more gentle with breakable items and place them higher up. The same would be for the younger, shorter children and the soft or non-breakable decorations that will be safer to be a little lower.

Be Consistent

This means deciding a head of time what is okay and not okay for them to touch, pull on, and place in their mouth. Then follow through with consistently reinforcing that. Children as young as 6 months old {crawling age} can understand what “no no” means so if they begin to cross the boundaries then tell them no and if they disobey, follow through with your choice of age-appropriate discipline {move them, swat hand, time out, etc}.

Breathe

When all else fails, BREATHE and place a cute box somewhere near your tree to put all those ornaments in that your little yanked off the tree when you’re not looking until you can redecorate the tree.

I challenge you to not let the joy of holiday decorating be stripped away by they stress of lots of littles. Do you have any fun suggestions for ‘tree training’ this time of year? 😀