Countdown to Christmas

I love any type of win that we have with my boys, big or small, it is always great to see them progressing. But with growth, there are also some new problems that arise that you haven’t ran into in the past. A big example of this came about for us just last Saturday during our visit with Santa. For reference, we continued our tradition of having Santa come to us (a big plus for many reasons), so all of this experience luckily took place at our house.

Damion has been excited to see Santa before, but I think mostly for the same reason that he gets excited to see any character dressed up. He has never paid much attention to the concept of Santa, or how anything works with presents. Fast forward to this year and he is actually excited to see Santa and ask him for a gift! I can’t express how happy I was that he had made this step forward from years past. Until we hit a bit of a snag. He was super excited to ask Santa for the gift he most wishes to get (a book that goes with one of this favorite book sets), but he also thought that Santa was going to give him the gift right then and there at the party. Yikes.

I had not originally talked with him further about the fact that it would be another couple of weeks until Christmas morning where he would actually be receiving his gift from Santa. So, we had a very excited boy who swiftly turned to upset.  I quickly tried to explain the process of asking how we ask now for what we want, and then Santa brings the gift on Christmas. But as we already know this whole process requires waiting and waiting tends to be the hardest part for my boy.

Thankfully having Santa at our house with a group of understanding friends made it very easy to pull Damion to the side and talk with him until he calmed down. After a few minutes he seemed to grasp at least the concept that presents would not come tonight. He definitely began to insinuate that Christmas would be tomorrow morning at that point, but I knew that I could deal with clearing up that problem later, once the party was over. Once he calmed, we were able to finish his visit with Mr. Claus and get a few more cute photos.

Time has always been a bit of a tricky concept for Damion, we have just had some success working through this issue recently, which you may remember from last week’s article. Christmas is a tough one for sure because there are so many Christmas festivities that take place before we get to the actual Christmas morning! So, we started implementing the calendar countdown again to help work through the waiting game of Christmas. Fingers crossed that we see the same success we had the last time around. But for now, I will reflect on the positive of his growth with understanding the holiday traditions. He is really looking forward to that gift and I am hoping that with him actually showing excitement this year, this will be our best Christmas yet!