The Holidays in the REAL World

Holidays are too much for little bodies.... but it's okay.

There’s a picture I keep coming back to every December. It’s not framed, or staged.

It’s not even an actual photo at all, just a memory still-frame

My youngest is screaming on the den floor of a house we no longer live in, wearing a red sweater that “IS SO SO SO ITCHY.” The tree lights are half falling off the tree and just a little too bright. A discarded cookie crushed into the living room rug… there’s actually a bed in the corner because my wife and I were sleeping in that room over the holidays.

I honestly do not even remember how or why we were in this predicament. Were we trying to do a photoshoot (my wife is a photographer)? Was he trying on a Christmas Program costume?

I just remember the meltdown and feeling like a total failure. The feeling that I was somehow ruining Christmas.

The Holidays Are Too Big for Small People

It’s funny, the things we call “meltdowns.”So loud. So inconvenient. So terribly ill-timed.

But if you zoom in closely enough, they’re never really about the tantrum itself. They’re about the season.

Not the holiday season, the internal one.

We forget this, because adults are so good at pretending. We juggle the shopping and the schedules and the bright-colored expectations, telling ourselves it’s “magical.”

But for kids, especially the little ones with sensitive nervous systems, December is a sensory avalanche. the lights, the crowds, the sugar, the skipped naps, the cousins, the presents they can’t open yet, the parties where everything is too loud and they’re hopped up on sugar as they stay up too late after taking a short nap in the car on the way there.

Routines? What routines? This is TRADITION time; routines be damned.

Is there wonder, yes. But wonder too is overwhelming.

I think this was the first year where we told my son ahead of time what he was getting for Christmas. He was old enough to tell us even then that he really did NOT like surprises.

In fact, maybe the meltdown had to do with that?

That first “no-surprises” Christmas was pretty triggering to dad… aka me.

But what I didn’t know then was that this meltdown wasn’t disrespect.
It was his nervous system trying very hard to say, “This is too much.”

What I know now is that some of the strongest parenting work you’ll ever do is invisible.

It’s stepping outside the party with a sobbing toddler, counting their breaths and yours. It’s sitting on the kitchen floor with a child who’s screaming because their gingerbread man lost a leg. It’s realizing that even the most joyful chaos is still chaos, and their little bodies simply weren’t made for this much “special.”

Too often we imagine (or perhaps are told) holiday meltdowns are really signs of ungratefulness or misbehavior, but more often they’re just a tiny brain, overstimulated in a Santa hat.

Kids can’t pace themselves. They don’t know how… heck, I don’t even know how sometimes. So they crash. Hard.

And when they do, it’s not a sign that you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign that you’re paying attention.

Slowness Is a Form of Love

Every year since then I’ve tried — truly tried — to simplify: fewer gifts, fewer commitments, fewer expectations. And still the month has a way of swelling around us, like a tide that rises before you notice…

This year I’ve tried to reframe somewhat.

I’ve been thinking about the word “margin.” It’s a word from my business school days. Margin is what we leave tapped; what we protect from being consumed.

Kids, now I have four of them, need margin more than anyone. They need space to be off, to unravel a little, to return slowly to themselves.

So on the days when someone melts down over the wrong color cup or collapses in my arms because they didn’t get to pick the next Christmas song, I’m trying to see those moments not as interruptions but as invitations.

An invitation to slow down. To sit on the floor. To breathe.

To see these as opportunities to parent well, not evidence that I am failing.

You’re Not Failing. You’re Just Parenting in the Real World

So here is the good news. If your holidays look nothing like a commercials or the Instagram feeds; If it feels like someone is always crying, or overtired, or sticky with something you can’t identify… you’re not alone.

I’m here too.

You and I are living the real version of life . The one with fingerprints on unopened presents and broken ornaments, and cookie crumbs ground deep into the rug… and tiny humans whose emotions are still bigger than their bodies.

And there’s one more piece of good news... Your kids are going to selectively remember anyway.

When I ask my now 9 year old about that Christmas 6 years ago he does still remember it. He doesn’t remember the sweater or the other 50 times he threw epic tantrums that year. He does not remember my failure to whip out one of the innumerable brain-hacks I now have mastered… He doesn’t remember my grief being only a year removed from my own father’s death.

He remembers playing on our bed, sitting in that den, on Christmas morning with the handful of inexpensive dinosaur toys he opened (now long gone).

And if you press him a little, it’s actually not really the presents he remembers at all… it’s the presence of two parents who loved to play with him.

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