If your DC hang their stockings in the bedrooms...

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When do you fill them?

Sorry, title should say ‘in THEIR bedrooms’

Once they’re sound asleep, probably between 10-11

About midnight whilst slightly drunk...

I make DH do it because I am always asleep before the children...

So you just deal with it if they wake in the middle of the night and decide to open it?

I’ve just realised my mistake in putting a stocking in DS’s room and telling him Santa will leave him some presents in it. He’s almost 4 and doesn’t always sleep right through so I’m worried that if I fill the stocking when I go to bed that he will wake around 2am and see that “Santa has been” and want to get up but I also don’t want to set an alarm for about an hour before he should get up in case he catches me or he gets up and thinks he hasn’t been left anything. I wish I’d either left the stocking downstairs or put it in my own bedroom. Jeez, why do we do this to ourselves lol

Mine are 16 and 12 and they (whispers) know
However, I set my alarm for 2am so Santa can sneak their full stockings into their rooms for when they wake up.

Around 1am while slightly drunk. Tried midnight and got caught a few years ago.
So loud and rustly...

Tempted to get them to leave them downstairs this year as all well past believing at 14,13 and nearly 11,but it was always the best part of Christmas for me and I don't want them to lose that yet.

Wake up and feel the heavy, rustly weight at the end of the bed. That's Christmas.

You make sure you have two
Stocking fill one then quick swap them when they are asleep,
If they wake up slight of hand shout oh my goodness Santa's been whilst stuffing the empty one up your jumper.

@Tiltedclone
Happened here.
3am waking
Saw stocking
Refused to go back to sleep
Moral = stocking always downstairs

DH will do it when he gets in from midnight mass.

@ezzergood that's absolute genius! definitely something I'll remember for next year.

@Tiltedclone that’s our dilemma as DD is 5 and very much aware of what’s happening. When she was little if she’d woken up she probably wouldn’t remember it was Christmas Eve but this year I can see her waking in the middle of the night, remembering and going to check.

@Hoppinggreen I’m so scared I wouldn’t get up or would sleep through the alarm!!

I remember being on the cusp of not believing and waking up to find my stocking had gone. My dad was knocking about upstairs so it can’t have been very late and j went and asked him. He said ‘Father Christmas has taken it to fill it and then brings it back’ and that was it, the magic was gone for me.

Usually about 12ish
But may be earlier tonight as I'm knackered
Ours are hung on the outside of the bedroom door nowadays but when they weren't I snuck in grabbed the stocking took it to our room / spare room and filled it there the went back and left it at the bottom of the bed.
Luckily mine are fairly solid sleepers late at night they are just early risers so I'm already exhausted thinking about how early we'll be up.

I wanted to do the two stocking trick but dds was bought by DH and sold out before I could buy another.

We compensate by hanging the stocking on outside door handle. I'll leave filled sticking inside on the chair when she is asleep. But DD6 doesn't drop off until 10 30pm and sleeps through until at least 8.30am .

I have 2 identical stockings. The empty one is hung in his bedroom and I fill the other one elsewhere, sometimes days in advance, it's then just a straight swap once he is sleeping. Easy peasy!

When they eventually fall asleep.

I thought I had persuaded them to hang them on the mantelpiece one year.
Just before going to bed : "Mummy, I think I will put my stocking on my bed after all, it's more Christmassy".

At least it is just my Dc this year - it is very hard to slink into a room which 4 excited cousins are all sharing together, extricate all the stockings and then return them to the foot of the correct bed without making a noise - usually involves staying up well past midnight.

I finally caved and bought duplicate stockings. Just a quick swap is so much easier than removing, filling and replacing three stockings late at night after a few glasses of wine

It also has the benefit on being able to fill 24 hours in advance and realise that one child has most of the presents ...

Santa brings the sack of presents and leaves it outside his bedroom door, much lower risk of being seen.

You take a pair of pillowcases. The child hangs one up in their bedroom. You fill the other one and swap them over before you go to bed.

About midnight, they are teenagers now, they still put them on the end of the bed, I still sneak in, retrieve and fill them and put them back again, it's exciting. Duplicate stockings wouldn't be as much fun. When they were younger they were told they had to wait till it started getting light to open them, never had any problems. If they do them earlier now that's up to them, they know not to wake us till after 7.

I always made mine hang their stockings on the handle outside their bedroom door.

We fill them before we go to bed/about 11ish.

Haven't yet woken a child or had a child wake in the night and open them and my oldest is 10.

Can't do double stockings as mine have special ones made by grandma with their names embroidered on them!

Stockings go in the living room.