First Christmas with older child?

[TeenAndTween]

I may have posted this before.

When our DDs came to us our elder DD was already in Juniors at school, so she had experienced a number of Christmases before both in birth family and in foster care.
We were chatting about our Christmas about 2 weeks before, and DD was upset to learn that in our house Santa brought stockings but not large presents (amazingly it hadn't crossed my mind that in other houses Santa brings big presents). We had to explain she got large presents in FC to make up for all the times with BPs when Santa hadn't known where to find her due to many moves ....
So glad we didn't have to have that conversation on Christmas day...

So, if you have an older child for a first Christmas, please check what their expectations are so you can adjust accordingly!

Why don't you give any large gifts? If you've just never gone there, I think I would definitely have got a large gift or two...to help her settle.

MrsUptight - She was settled, and was fine when we explained.

To be honest she was at the top end for believing in Santa anyway, and we also didn't want to set precedents for her sister too who was too young to remember previous Christmases. If it had been just her we might have adapted.
But also, maybe selfishly, we didn't want to be forced into years of Christmas being done not the way we wanted to. (When there are already so many things that are set up different to how we would have chosen).

I guess the point of my original post was not to discuss the rights and wrongs of how to manage differences, but to point out what maybe should have been obvious to us, that children will have views/expectations which you may not even have considered, so it is better to try to get them out in the open before the 25th Dec.

Teen, this is just one of the unsaid routines of a new family. I remember reading somewhere a child's viewpoint of moving to a new family, I wish I could find it. I will continue to look.
Well done for explaining to your dd what happens in your family.
I hope you all have a lovely Christmas together.

MrsUptight I didn't read it that there were no large presents, but more that the large presents are from them rather than from Santa.

Just to be clear

• yes there are large presents (well small now we've hit technology teen age)
• we are now coming up to our 7th(?) Christmas and have lovely shared memories and our own traditions. We have kept Christmas more or less the same every year so hopefully DD1 (and DD2) will have some firm memories stored by now.

Merry Christmas to all new and old adopters.

Great reminder Teen :)

DD1 and DD2 both had expectations of christmas that needed to be worked with and/or talked about, and not just things like you mentionned, but expectations about feelings, home atmosphere etc as well