Advice for Single Parents on Dealing with Holiday Stress

Holidays can be stressful for most any family. Single Parent and Step Parent families however, may experience more emotional stress than normal due to changes in traditional celebrations, or familiar routines at holiday time. Some holiday traditions can cause children to remember times when mom and dad were together. Changes in the family landcape may mean that your children will be celebrating at several homes. Here are some ways to help your children cope with the special stresses of the holiday season.

• Keep in mind the different family members your child will be seeing and make holiday plans, gifts and decorations to include all your child's family members. Encourage your children and/or step children to talk about and share their various holiday plans.
• By talking with other children, teachers, neighbors, and friends about their holiday plans, your child may discover others have families like theirs. When your child discovers that there are other children with separated or blended families, they are more likely to relax and feel less alone.
• Continue to enforce normal rules, boundaries, and consequences. When things are stressful, children need to be able to rely on you to be stable for them, and they will feel comforted by sticking as closly to routines and schedules as possible.
• Listen to your kids. In times of stress, childen need to feel heard. Listening helps them feel calmer, insuring that that it matters and that you care about what they are going through. You don't need all the right answers, just listening is sometimes all you child needs.
• If your child gets upset, allow and encourage them to express their feelings. If your child expected a gift from a distant parent and shows anger or sadness because he or she received nothing, let the child know you care. Just let your child vent, and comfort them by validating their feelings (without trashing the other parent).
• If the parent called or sent a card point out that these are also ways people show they care about someone. Don't make excuses for the disappointment caused by the other parent, but if you can reinforce ways they have shown their love, that is best for your child's emotional well-being.
• If your child is old enough to verbally express feelings, encourage the child to talk to the other parent about his or her disappointment. Explain that the parent may not know that they are upset unless they say so.
• If your child is moody, distant, misbehaving unusually, or preoccupied and you don't know why, try getting them involved in a holiday craft or project and see if you can get them to open up about their feelings.
• Holidays create stress for all families. Being stressed can be a sign that you or you children are expecting too much from your holiday, or feel too much is being expected of you. Try to curb your enthusiasm if your child withdraws from normal activities, avoid having unrealistic goals during the holiday season. And remember that children manage change sometimes slower than parents do, it could take your child some time to adjust to the daily routines again following the holidays.
• Be realistic about what you can and cannot do. Remember that there are many aspects of the child's life over which you have little control. However, you can work to create a safe, happy, positive, predictable, and stable home environment. This will help everyone cope more easily with stress.
• Talk to other adults who are involved with your children to learn what kind of behavior they are observing. Teachers, care-givers, family and friends may see behaviors your child is not showing to you.
• Be sensitive to how any change in this year's holiday traditions, celebrations, locations, or other changes might affect you and your child and allow for things to take some coping to deal with effectively so that overall, you and your child will have a joyful, mostly stress-free holiday season.