Christmas wins!

[Noimaginationforaun]

Last Christmas, our DS spent weeks after Christmas Day crying and worrying each night before bed that his presents would be taken away. It took so much reassurance, him hiding toys in secret places and lots of cuddles before he settled.

This year has been totally different. He was so excited for the lead up, in his element on Christmas Day and has just generally enjoyed the festive season. We had one question today about if he toys have to go back now the decorations are down but it was a passing question, no tears, no worry and no hiding toys.

Christmas has just been pure magic this year!

Anyone else fancy sharing their Christmas wins?

@Noimaginationforaun

how lovely, what a long way he has come.

things are a bit different when they are older but my 18 year old loves his man bag🤣

Oh that's so lovely. That's cheered me up no end

A bit late to this, but... we had L.O placed at the start of December and were braced to have to completely ignore Christmas, minimise it, etc. But then we found out he loves Christmas lights and the sensory stimulation, so spent lots of time wandering around the streets singing mash ups of Jingle Bells and Old Macdonald had a farm, holding hands, looking at the twinkling lights and getting over our fear of the dark. We spent ages just wandering to the local shops to get bread or milk and going the long way round to see his favourite lights and stop by the library to see their tree. We also had our tree up, which we weren't really expecting to be able to do and he would spend ages just looking at it and talking about the Christms pigeon (a gold pheasant ornament he found in sainsburys)

I think that without the lights, our local area could have been a bit scary for him, but he really enjoyed it, and to be honest, so did we.

It also gave us some nice opportunities to talk about next year and how he would spend it with us etc.

I'm sure Christmas will become more and more difficult as time goes on, but for a first Christmas, it was really relaxed and chilled.

I'm so glad that you found something that made the first Christmas enjoyable @Torvy. Sounds like you had a lovely, relaxed time

@Torvy That's so lovely

Don't assume Christmas will be difficult - my son always loved Christmas ( at 18 he's too busy trying to be cool🙂)
You have great memories to look back on, the start of your own family traditions - the Christmas pigeon is now a family heirloom!

Thank you both so much for sharing these. We are a few weeks away from approval panel and I have been getting the "fear" a bit lately; and I think Christmas was part of it, thinking "what will next Christmas/future Christmases be like...?!"

Reading this has really reminded me that in amongst the challenges will be so so many wonderful unexpected little moments of joy!

@Torvy That is so lovely! I’m so pleased you had a magical first Christmas together! The Christmas pigeon did make me laugh!

Congratulations on your new arrival! I hope 2023 is filled with many more wonderful memories for you all!

We didn't think we would be able to have a good Christmas with the kids. They moved in 20th December 2021. Both last year and this Christmas we had a really lovely time. The kids are 3 and 7.