Guest Blogger

This is the final of four guest posts over the month of December by Erica Wells and Lorraine Regel, authors of The Survival Guide for Rookie Moms.

On Christmas morning last year, I sat there with my coffee in hand, staring at the mounding pile of gifts under the tree, and thought to myself, ”Do a five-year-old and a two-year-old REALLY need all of this stuff?”

Don’t get me wrong, it was super fun to buy all of the goodies for my two little ones. But, am I setting a wrong precedent with my children right out of the gate, that at Christmas time they can expect to receive everything and anything they ever wanted?

I know as parents we want to give our children all that we didn’t get as kids. However, with all of the waste and with the economy right now, is that the right thing to do?

What really made me think about this was when my five-year-old asked me if Santa was going to bring her a laptop and iPod — seriously? I asked her what she was planning to do with the laptop if she got one and she responded by saying she was going to surf www.webkins.com as she was sure that Santa was going to bring her a new Webkins as well. Gosh, when does it end?

I spoke to my friend and fellow mom about my guilty feelings and she felt the same way. She has a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old. However, she decided to take action this year. She told her kids that they could choose one present from Santa (with a dollar limit I might add) and she set expectations early in the month that Mommy and Daddy would be buying them two additional presents each and that was it. When I spoke to her after Christmas, to find out how it went, she said that her kids were a tiny bit disappointed at the decreased amount of presents….but, by noon they were over it and quite happy with what they did receive.

Now that my friend essentially did the preverbal “rip off of the Band-Aid” this year with decreasing the present amount, she is good to go with setting reasonable expectations for the holidays in the future.

What I learned through all of this is that it’s inherent in our kids to want ALL that they can have; however, it is our jobs as parents to teach them restraint and to set reasonable expectations on what they will receive BEFORE Christmas morning to avoid any disappointment on the big day.

OK parents….maybe it’s a little too late to accomplish our task this year, but we have 52 weeks to work on it for next year. Good luck!

Fed up with parenting resources that only provided basic information on what Baby should be doing, Vancouver moms Erica Wells and Lorraine Regel created The Survival Guide for Rookie Moms — an honest, humorous and helpful guide to surviving that first incredible year of motherhood.

COMMENT TO WIN! Leave Lorraine and Erica a comment (on any of their posts over the month of December) for the chance to win one of three copies of their book, The Survival Guide for Rookie Moms. (Read the full rules.)