Husband wants to make 3-year-old wait to open presents

[DucklingDaisy]

Please help me settle a disagreement. We have a 3-year-old and a one-year-old. The older one is extremely excited about Christmas.

Tomorrow morning, my husband wants to make her have breakfast and wait an hour or two before opening presents. He wants to do this so his sister, who is our only guest, can sleep in a bit and then come down and participate in the whole thing. Also because he seems to just believe it's a good rule.

I think that's going to feel torturous for an excited 3-year-old. I think it's setting us up for unnecessary conflict and stress, and getting Christmas off to a terrible start. If she was a bit older it might be different. I think an acceptable compromise would be allowing her to open one present before Breakfast, then waiting no more than about an hour to do the rest. I feel really strongly about this.

Who is being unreasonable?

“She” being the tiny child of course! 😂

On the sherry already?!

FGS get her out of bed! And if she doesn’t get up then she doesn’t get to see her open her presents.

Och, can't be bothered with this controlled fun, not at Christmas.

Give the sister the choice if she wants woken (and tell her she needs to get up and downstairs straight away) to see the kids open their presents or if she prefers a lie in and can see what they got later.

We are an “open it all as soon as you wake up” kind of family, it would be torture waiting until after lunch! We also aren’t a religious family so no church trips and have never watched the queens speech so no need to wait for that either.
Are you able to split the presents, open santas in the morning and if there’s any from family you could open later on?

When I was a child we did breakfast, stocking, church, then main presents. I didn't like waiting until after church to open the main presents, because other children at church would be showing off their wonderful presents while I sat their with a satsuma but I didn't mind waiting until after breakfast for the stocking.

We won't be making DS wait, but people saying that waiting a couple of hours for presents is "cruel" or "miserable" are rather over the top. No child will be harmed by having Coco pops before the chocolate coins!

His sister can make her own decision about how much she cares about witnessing the present opening. If she cares she will set an alarm. If she doesn’t care she can miss it.

We have always done stockings that the dc open as soon as they wake, but presents under the tree don’t get opened until after lunch, so late afternoon or early evening. It has never been a problem, even when they were tiny.
Could you maybe do this to split things up ?

Kids come first it's xmas

Stocking I was going to suggest but you've not done any.
I think you're compromise is fair but really she should be excited for her niece.
Merry Christmas🎄

Could not agree more! Who makes a 3 year old wait?? Completely takes the magic away, poor little mite

This is ridiculous sister gets up when the kids do or she lies in and misses the present opening

How old is his sister ? Christmas is mostly for children and religious adults in my opinion . If she’s religious she can go to church, otherwise she needs to get out of bed to allow the children to enjoy their day.

If your DD doesn't have a stocking and she's excited then she shouldn't have to wait, that's too hard I think. We wait until after Christmas lunch to open the family presents under the tree but the 'Santa' presents in the stocking are opened as soon as he wakes up, he was roughly the same age as your DD last year.

We always waited until after Christmas lunch as kids for main presents and preferred it as it spread the excitement out- the morning/lunch preparation bit was for playing with the stocking presents (and having a bath with our new bottle of matey 😆.) My grandpa started this idea because he always opened his presents first thing as a little boy, wished he hadn't opened them so quickly and carefully re wrapped them all to open again 😆 I don't think it's cruel at all! Although I agree with you OP that it's mean not to let her open them if the presents under the tree are the Santa presents.

I would say stockings first when she wakes, and presents later on slowly throughout the morning. But you haven’t done stockings. I would say three is the perfect age for stockings. You don’t need to fill them with tat. Mine had things like a satsuma, toothbrush, new socks and knickers, a magazine, bubble bath, that sort of thing. The stocking is from Santa. They only get one present from us, no main present from Santa.

I’ll have whatever she’s drinking.

I think alot of this debate partly depends on if Santa brings all the presents in your house. In ours he didn't just the stocking and we opened tree presents after lunch but there was none of the rushing down to see if he had been as the presents had been building under the tree in previous days. That excitement/magic was for the stocking.

port cocker it's great

Kids open their presents early, adults when they're all awake

I've shown my husband this thread and he's a bit annoyed I posted about it, and thinks my language is overdramatic, but I think I've won this one simply by being the one who cares more. And objectively right.

Thank you everyone! I'm going to note down some of the stocking ideas for next year.

Omg way to ruin Christmas! Let your DC go mad for a day like literally everyone else!

I totally get your point about stockings but if you ever change your mind and you're looking for inspo, we just do things like bag of popcorn, satsuma, sellotape, toothbrush, socks, small toy, Mr Men book, novelty pencil with rubber on the end....they love it so much.

Christmas is about the children, not the adults. Sister gets the call - 'we're opening the presents now so come down if you want to watch'.

You do know there's dcs out there get nothing? Ridiculous post.

We have always waited for each other: even when the children were tiny we opened stockings together as a family. Tree presents are after lunch. No torture to wait as we've always done it that way.

YADNBU.

It’s mean to make a child wait.

Even before having kids myself, if I was staying with relatives at Christmas and there were children in the house, I’d fully expect it to be an early start.