Balancing Families during Holidays

Holidays can bring out much anxiety if we do not provide for pockets in our days to allow for excitable moments. For some, families and holidays are recipes for disasters. Here are a couple of tips to help you enjoy your holiday while providing balance for your family.

• Setting priorities to what is important to you and your family is a great first step to putting balance to your family's needs during the holidays. The juggling act of ensuring your family's needs are handled and errands are taken care of prior to holiday festivities start can become overwhelming. Writing a list of what you would like to see happen during your holiday is a method to prioritizing what is realistic and important for your festivity.
• Prior to the upcoming holiday, sit down with your family and discuss what you would like to do for the holiday. Some concerns you may have had could quickly dissipate when you learn your family is not interested in some of the ideas that may have seemed stressful to you. You may learn your family may want to stay at home instead of going out to visit family and friends for dinner this holiday.
• If you have toddlers and children requiring specific nap times, work around those schedules if at all possible. Coordinate schedules that will allow you to be home during your child's naptime or have the holiday activity at your home this year to accommodate multiple nap times. If you are not be able to stay at home this year, bring a portable bed with your child's favorite blankets and sleeping stuffed animals to bring him or her familiarity from home.
• Focus on the importance of the holiday and what the festivities mean to your family. We are all guilty of forgetting the significance of the actual holiday since we are too busy out and about shopping to make the holiday the most entertaining. Those errands can wear us all out and makes it difficult to focus on our balance between holiday activities and family time.
• Enjoy your holidays. With all the preparations for festivities, we forget what is enjoyable about the holidays for our families and ourselves. It may be prudent to step back, take a deep breath and rethink what tasks are necessary to do in the immediate moment and what can wait for another day.
• Recognize what is realistic to do during the holidays. With today's economy, maintaining a smaller budget may eliminate further stresses after the holidays are over and credit card bills start arriving in your mailbox.

Understanding the importance of your family's needs and the true importance of the holidays can help you establish a platform for balance in your life. Communicating what is important to you and your family before the holidays arrive can prevent many stressful situations. Enjoy wonderful holidays while maintaining balance for your family.