Welcome to The Realities of Motherhood!

Here we invite Mums to share their tales of parenthood, be it humorous stories from their hectic homes, helpful tips and advice or random thoughts from a busy parents – we want to hear them all!

This month we welcome back Joanna Cunningham. Joanna is a Mum of four and creator of the Smarts Education Ltd. 

We love Joanna’s hilarious account of her Christmas countdown – we all aim to be organised at Christmas, but does it every actually happen? Check out the Q & A,  where Joanna answers your Christmas queries too.

We hope you enjoy!

‘Only eleven more Saturdays until Christmas,’ my friend Liz said one October afternoon. She looked me straight in the eye with an expression of sobriety one might have reserved for announcing imminent war, death or even catastrophic news like, ‘someone unplugged the deep freeze four days ago and nobody noticed,’ or ‘I have just dropped my brand-new bottle of Jo Malone Cologne onto my tiled bathroom floor.’

‘What do you mean?’ I replied genuinely baffled and doing rapid mental calculations. I was still in a post-summer frame of mind and possibly even squeezing one last wear out of my platform Birkenstock sandals.

‘Only eleven more Saturdays until Christmas!’ she said again but his time betraying some incredulity that I wasn’t in a similar frame of mind. Liz, a woman for whose domestic skills she should be awarded an honorary doctorate, introduces Christmas incrementally with tiny hints; a smattering of tasteful but suggestive silver stars here and the merry but subtle placing of a reindeer bust there.

Liz and I occupy opposite poles on the organisational spectrum and while I will admit that I would prefer not to spend a quarter of the year preparing for and counting down to Christmas I do envy the order of her life. Her kitchen cupboards are spotless. They will never house an aged bottle of ketchup with a brownish crust in the grooves of the screw top, abandoned and forgotten at the back of the condiments shelf. She would regard it as criminal not to address a well-intentioned but never opened jar of pickled red cabbage which has rested out of sight in the fridge for two to three years. So, we just don’t talk about these things. There is a mutual understanding which I think of as a generous concession by Liz in her acceptance of my personality type when compared to hers.

We moved on from this exchange. I did not consider Christmas again for at least another five to six Saturdays, but I confess the seed of Liz’s prudent attitude to planning was planted. A picture of the new Christmas me began to travel through my visual cortex. I imagined gifts purchased and beautifully wrapped, ala Kirstie Allsopp, by no later than the last week of November; gravy and stuffing frozen by the 1^st of December; Kellogg’s mini variety pack cereal bought upon first sighting on the supermarket shelf and festive trinkets for decorating the house stockpiled and ready for distribution with dexterity bearing just a hint of military flair, by the first Sunday in advent.

Now that we are well into December I feel the pull of the big event and am reminded daily of the imminence of Christmas by my officious 6-year-old daughter, Ellen, who springs out of bed in the morning and project manages the opening of the minute, chocolate-filled doors of the ‘Allan Canderful’.

‘The what?’ her eldest sister Anna, aged 11, asks passively.

‘The Allan Canderful,’ Ellen replies impatiently raising her eyes. She climbs onto a kitchen chair and pulls it off the shelf of the dresser. She thrusts it at her sister and says again with a tone that suggests she should never consider a career in teaching, ‘the Allan Canderful! It’s your turn Anna.’

Anna complies obediently. She digs out the waxy chocolate supressing her knowing giggles and looks at me conspiratorially. So, now the countdown is gathering pace. The reminders are everywhere and are flavoured by each person’s unique position on the Christmas preparation spectrum.

This morning I bought my take away coffee from my reliable local barista, a mother of two, who it seems works seven days per week grinding, blending, flip-dripping and frothing for the local caffeine reliant workers. In a stream of consciousness way, she will occasionally off load her upper most thoughts. When this happens I happily engage in an exchange with this like-minded, working parent who, it seems, manages only just, to keep the balls of her life afloat.

I take my lovely, medicinal cup of coffee and turn to wave good bye.

‘Good bye!’ she says with just a flicker of the mad in her eye. Then she throws her arms above her head and shakes them manically, ‘eleven days,’ she cries out throwing her head back and closing her eyes in a sort of appeal to the gods of time management. Her eyes glisten with moisture which might reflect feelings of delight or terrified panic, it’s hard to tell.

Now that, I can relate to.

But seriously…..some questions from our loyal readers:

Sometimes I wonder if the need for such crazy Christmas spending is all in my head. My kids always seem so satisfied with the smallest things on Christmas day even though we have gone to such extremes to make huge gestures. I often ask myself is it for me or them that I do this… 

You are not alone. I believe that we parents invest disproportionate energy and expense in Christmas. The frenzy we get ourselves into eventually rubs off on our children who learn that it is normal to expect gifts of colossal expense. Very often kids start out with modest and balanced expectations (one of my kids once asked for a corn on the cob from Santa) and then it’s we, the parents, who question these requests and fuel the mountainous, material expectations.

The warmest, happiest memories children will cherish are the ones in which their parents were relaxed and happy. Santa might bring a toy that was second on the wish list. The goose fat the potatoes are roasted in might not be the one Marco Pierre White insisted upon. None of these things matter to children. They just want to be played with and talked to on Christmas Day (and every day). So, ironically, it’s by doing precisely the opposite of what we drive ourselves to do which will resonate much more powerfully with our kids.

A parent who is stressed out their mind to achieve what they believe is perfection misunderstands the needs of kids.  Christmas is a great time to give our children focused attention and, to paraphrase Ebenezer Scrooge (when all was merry and well at the end of his journey through time and he’d learned the value of friendship and kindness over wealth) the real challenge is to ‘keep Christmas the whole year round.’

What are the non-food based ingredients necessary for the perfect Christmas Day?

A colleague once described how she stayed up until 4am one Christmas Eve painting her kitchen so that Christmas Day would be perfect. Then, on Christmas Day, she could barely move with exhaustion and, while her family were grateful for her efforts, they were surprised by her fixation and a bit sad that it ruined her day in the end.

We Mum’s can fall into the trap of becoming over focused on things that we feel must be done before we can relax. We develop the habit, as part of our instinct to nest, of thinking the laundry basket must be emptied, the kitchen must be spotless, every room must be in order and every floor shining before we can put our feet up and enjoy our family. Ask yourself: ‘who am I doing this for? Do my children care about perfection? When I am in the throes of this frenzy am I being pleasant? If I allow my standards to drop slightly so that I have more time for my kids and give less energy to creating domestic faultlessness might the net effect be the very thing I am trying to create – a happy home?

We Mum’s could benefit from adjusting our focus so that the things we are doing to reach our goal of creating the perfect home is not, in fact, the thing that prevents us from achieving that outcome. So, this Christmas try the following:

From the 20^th to the 27^th of December play with each child 1:1 for 10 minutes every day; if this means choosing to do this over cleaning up a mess, hoovering or folding laundry, challenge yourself to pick play.  Playing with our children 1:1 is a habit we need to get into for their development, our wellbeing and our relationships. When you allocate time to it you will find that it feels good and improves the atmosphere in your home. Like exercise, making yourself do it is psychologically hard but once you’re doing it, it feels great and you wonder why you don’t do it more regularly! Christmas is the perfect time to re-think these kinds of habits.

I always allow my kids to eat whatever they like on Christmas Day, but I can’t help worrying if this is wise. Can you advise?

Take it easy on yourself and them. If we keep an eye on balanced nutrition all year around and then take our foot off the gas over Christmas, that’s ok. Like my attitude to nearly everything in life the key word is balance.

The great thing about kids is that if given some free rein they will find a happy balance themselves. If we hover around and control every decision they make, their natural inclination to know when they have had enough can be impinged. Let them gorge on chocolate Santa’s, tubes of fruit pastilles and Roses for a few days. If, after this they don’t say at least once, ‘I’ve had enough,’ I’ll eat my hat.

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Thank you to Joanna for this brilliantly funny account of the Christmas countdown and also for this helpful Q&A.

The SMARTS Education writes and builds educational programmes for schools and families. The school’s programmes use play and arts led teaching methods to support children with their behaviour skills. This programme is being implemented in 30 schools around Ireland. For more information visit www.thesmartseducation.com.