{"id":22,"date":"2013-12-07T13:38:31","date_gmt":"2013-12-07T21:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zabedo.com\/?p=22"},"modified":"2014-05-14T22:22:52","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T05:22:52","slug":"avoid-the-pitfalls-of-gift-centered-holidays-empower-children-by-planning-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/littleblueprint.com\/avoid-the-pitfalls-of-gift-centered-holidays-empower-children-by-planning-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Huffington Post: Avoid the Pitfalls of Gift-Centered Holidays – Empower Children by Planning Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

When my oldest daughter was 3, she pointed to a mini-Christmas tree decoration at our local supermarket with excitement.<\/p>\n

“Can we get a tree?” she asked.<\/p>\n

“No, sweetie,” I explained, “we’re Jewish.”<\/p>\n

After further pleading failed to sway me, she wailed, somewhere around the cereal aisle, “I HAAAATE being Jewish!”<\/p>\n

I was mortified. I was upset. But most of all, at that moment, I wanted nothing more than for her to stop screaming those words in the supermarket. So, I grabbed a miniature tree and told her we were getting a Hanukkah Bush. On the drive home, I called my husband to warn him about what I was bringing home. I obviously had not thought through how to handle this incident and, as a result, committed one of many rookie mistakes of parenting: I simply reacted in the moment.<\/p>\n

What I realized that day, years before my daughter would ask me to re-tell the story of the supermarket scene, is that I needed to think through this holiday thing more intentionally. What did we want to teach our children about our heritage and our beliefs? I’ve never been a fan of “accidental” parenting (or accidental anything, for that matter), yet, here I was with an opportunity to teach my daughter something special about the meaning of a holiday beyond a “Hanukkah Bush,” and I had not thought through the lesson plan. If we didn’t have a plan, then we were teaching by omission.<\/p>\n

Regardless of each family’s beliefs, holidays provide a unique opportunity to teach our children about our individual and shared family values and traditions. (Sometimes I forget this in my self-inflicted panic over the eight nights of Hanukkah.) Going through the process of making a family holiday plan is a simple step towards making a celebration more meaningful.<\/p>\n

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Image credit: 2013, little BLUEPRINT<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

\nAs with any good plan, empowering others by making them a part of creating the plan is critical. Most importantly, children need to play an important role in creating a family holiday plan. By teaching children about holidays and brainstorming ideas for a plan together, the celebration evolves from accidental to intentional. It is not about making a logistical plan for who buys which presents for whom (although that can be useful, too). A family holiday plan is about intentionally making meaningful memories. It can be creative. It can be altruistic. It can be playful. It might include, among the endless possibilities:<\/p>\n