I’ve seen many times on various social media outlets, videos of moms spewing their controversial opinions about parenting. The topics range from co-sleeping to breastfeeding; honestly, there’s no limit. As you can say about every social media trend. Remember the ice bucket challenge and how out of hand that got? Checkmate.
Anyway, I’d like to share my controversial parenting opinion with you today.
Here we go.
My kids get to open a present every day leading up to Christmas, and then on Christmas Day, they get to open up their actual presents.
That might be a bit misleading.
The trick here is, every day my kids will get a new Christmas book to read. I’m calling it a Christmas book advent calendar.
I cannot take credit for this idea, but I am very excited to experience it for the first time this year with my two little ones.
Imagine every night after the kids are bathed and into a clean pair of pajamas we go to the Christmas tree, which has 24 numbered gift bags under it. My four-year-old son can root around the gift bags until he finds the number of the day. He and his one-year-old sister can take turns opening the presents. Then we can read the books together, in the light of the Christmas tree and crackling fireplace, snuggled under a fluffy blanket on the couch, before getting them into their respective beds for a peaceful night’s sleep.
Sounds dreamy, right? It’s a shame it likely won’t go that way.
That is a joke but as most parents know, nothing ever goes as planned with kids.
A more realistic picture would be: me arguing with my four-year-old trying to get him to eat his dinner. When it gets to the one-hour mark of me trying to get him to eat, my one-year-old daughter will start to get fussy for a combination of reasons. The first is because she has been sitting in her high chair for an hour. After all, I always insist we eat dinner as a family. And second, by this point, it is almost her bedtime. So at this point, I will inevitably bail on the hopeless attempt at getting my son to eat a balanced dinner and turn our attention to the Christmas book advent calendar. My son will be so excited, so much so that he will refuse to put his pajamas on, not a huge deal because we don’t have any clean ones anyway because I am a solid year behind on laundry. He also won’t be able to sit still during the book, due to his excitement. Instead, he will likely be jumping on the couch while I read over my daughter’s whining and crying because it is definitely past her bedtime now. My two other children – our husky mix named Ghost, and shepherd mix Rosie – will be all excited by the commotion and may or may not knock the entire Christmas tree down while they are playfighting. Maybe, just maybe we will have a very short moment where we snuggle together and actually pay attention to the story at the climax of its plot. That very short moment, that we may or may not get to experience, will be worth it, I am sure.
I should add that I probably forgot to turn on the fireplace and there are probably a million toys littering the floor like landmines, waiting for me to step on something, and a sink full of dishes waiting for me after this stressful occurrence. That is definitely a more realistic atmosphere.
Regardless of the outcome, I cannot wait to start this tradition with my children.
As a writer, I love reading and I hope to pass that love on to my kids. I hope that this will make reading exciting for them.
I’m also excited to do this every year. I made sure to consider that when I was getting this together. I shopped at second-hand bookstores and library sales all year long to expand our personal Christmas book collection. I’m even using gift bags instead of wrapping paper in the hope of reusing them year-to-year alongside the books.
As you are reading this column, we are well into the first week of the month. However, I wrote this last week as I was assembling the advent calendar and speculating the outcome. However it goes, I’m excited about it and, as I have learned in other areas of parenting, my excitement usually rubs off on the kids.
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Kelsey Bent is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter with Midwestern Newspapers. Comments and feedback can be sent to kbent@midwesternnewspapers.com.
