Page 28 2025 Home For The Holidays Lincoln Daily News can still love the holidays even though it might not look like the perfect storybook and could tend to follow more like the popular chaotic Christmas movies. • Be Thankful! – Be thankful for what plans your children make and support those decisions. Be grateful that you are able to connect with them in any way, even though they may only spend a few days (or hours) in your company and decide to go back to school, go skiing with the gang or go to the in-laws. Give them space, don’t make them feel guilty for their choices and let them know you enjoy every minute you can spend with them. • Let Go! – Let go of any expectations, traditions, customs and be flexible! You will have to find out what works for most everyone because going forward when you are working with your adult children and their spouses, family and grandkids, every year from now on will be different in trying to accommodate everyone. But don’t let go too much and stand true to your own past and traditions, like church on Christmas Eve, all the while being open to new family members’ traditions. Nothing is sweeter than learning to meld old and new traditions together into the new normal during holidays. Learning how to embrace the past and the making of new traditions is an unbelievably valuable part of growing up, and the start of other muchneeded traditions with your grandchildren. But this doesn’t mean that even though you always had the kids drink their chocolate milk out of Santa cups every Christmas morning, they will want to do it when they are home for college. One day their children might. • Set Expectations! – Okay, I know we just said to let go of any expectations but, you do need to set expectations when it comes to cleaning up after oneself and helping. Don’t be afraid to let the kids know if they are coming home, you expect their help in getting ready for the meal or the house for guests. You will need to ask for specific tasks as soon as possible and do them without nagging, like doing their own laundry while you are cooking or having them help with preparing food and the clean-up. • No Opinions! – So, your kid brings home a friend at the last minute that doesn’t seem to know what a belt or comb is and has more metal in his head than your car sitting outside! Or your daughter has a new ink on her arm, or your son-in-law’s parenting style is much less strict than when you raised your kids. What do you do? You bite a hole in your cheek if you must, but you do not say a word. Don’t play the “I didn’t raise you this way!” game. Your kids are adults, have developed their own likes and dislikes and your only job is to keep quiet and enjoy just loving your children and grandchildren. Now that you are in the right mental frame to deal with your kid(s), you still have some work to do. Write down everything you want to do from cleaning, shopping, cooking, and decorating, then cut that list in half and throw away the other list. You will want everything perfect but your kids will not care. Often it is said that it’s not enjoyable unless it is perfect for you. We’re not saying to drop all the cleaning, cooking, or decorating, just cut back. • Consider only doing two desserts instead of four or buy pre-made frozen ones from a bakery, buy some candy for the candy dishes instead of spending days doing various kinds of sweets. • Keep your menu down to one large meat
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzExODA=