What To Do…
I feel like it’s so important to keep a child’s life simple. They shouldn’t have ANY of the stresses that adults have. There should be no question about who is in charge, and who is going to take care of who.
For a child who is adopted, especially at an older age, a child who has experienced great stress and trauma, it is even more important. It is important that they are protected even more. For someone who has experienced significant trauma and loss, there is already a very low tolerance for stress. Any amount of stress for these little ones can be so hard to recover from.
The holidays are upon us…this is my favorite time of the year, and we have lots of fun things planned, and we are looking forward to celebrating with our little girl.
Holidays are also stressful.
Holidays can be stressful for a little one who’s completely healthy. Add past trauma to the mix, and without careful planning and consideration, it can be a recipe for disaster.
I love this little one so much, and her health and happiness are so very important to me. We will be buckling down to keep her world as small as we can, and having lots of family and cuddle time. Any other advice would be greatly appreciated!
You are a wise Mama!We too are only do a few activities. Because our focus for Christmas is Christ's birth we first looked at our church's calendar and chose one event-the Christmas Eve candle light service. Then we decided to choose only one or two extra activities. One of the activities is a living nativity that we will be attending this weekend. Then in a week or two we are looking into another activity. We also wanted to keep our activities from compounding upon one another.We do have lots of fun ideas for the season for some at home fun. These are fairly normal activities anyway but now they have a fun Christmas twist-books, crafts, etc.We refused to be stressed and want to truly focus on Christmas and our family.Merry Christmas to your precious family!
Don't have much advice, except keep the routine as normal as possible. I also put very strict limits on gift giving. My mom gets to give one nice gift, and my MIL gets to give two (she loves to buy!) sometimes the gifts are the most overwhelming part. we also do NOTHING Christmas day, so that we can just stay in our jammies, watch movies, and meander through the new toys. i also try and make the days special by spreading out the events – decorations one weekend, tree/fire/hot chocolate the following weekend, gingerbread houses with cousins the last weekend. then the christmas things i want to do/get done aren't crammed into an evening and the kids can enjoy the process. all the best and Merry Christmas!