To not do 'Elf on the shelf'

[Alottodoaboutssomething]

I understand it as a magical annoying elf turning up 1st December, to watch your children, and report their behaviour back to the North Pole. However, it back fires when it is the "naughty" elf who infact is the one who needs watching. This is demonstrated by his antics each night (set up by the lucky parent who has to think of various mischievous predicaments for 24 days)! Please correct me if I am wrong on this.

I promise I am not a grinch! We do crafts, baking, advent calendars, small Christmas box with night before Christmas book, Santa key, leaving mince pie, carrot on Christmas eve etc in the lead up. I just find the elf idea creepy, especially the whole watching/monitoring idea. Surely it could lead to a "mummy is this you doing this?" and create further risk of them questioning Santa as well. I don't know if this has happened to anybody!

Dc1 has asked about his elf, and I don't want to do it, and feel mean, because the other kids get it visiting them. I don't want a festive squatter in my home!

Like an Xmas eve box but for Halloween

What could be more Christmassy than creepy surveillance in your own home by a toy destined for landfill made from toxic materials in an unsanitary sweatshop by seven-year-old kids then shipped halfway round the world in a massively polluting container ship. It's what Jesus would have wanted.

I have never done the elf and never will, sounds like too much hard work to think of something different everyday let alone cause mess that I will have to clear up!

I enjoy looking at other people's photos, it can be very imaginative but I have no desire to do it myself.

I don't do Christmas Eve boxes but in my head it's a nice thing to do. Same box every year with the same things like a film, a onesie in the next size up, hot chocolate, a special decoration for the tree that only comes out on Christmas Eve. A proper tradition that gets rolled out every year even when the kids no longer believe in Santa.

We don’t do elf on the shelf, I think it’s just more hassle than it’s worth. I do do a 1st of December box, which is literally just Christmas bedding that we already have and a christmassy book and a new bauble for the tree. I also do a Christmas Eve box, with new pj’s, hot chocolate and a bubble bath. Some people in my family go overboard and I just can’t fathom why you’d want to.

Are kids meant to find the elf daily? Then what?

Don’t start it. What a pain in the arse. I got sucked in for a couple of years only thankgod before mine were too old, forgot the bloody thing every night, couldn’t think of new stupid things to do…another thing you don’t need to add to the stress of December! Or expense! In the shops the other day and the amount of crap now to go with elf, clothes, accessories, my god!

That is just repulsive. Honestly.🙄

Yup! Deserves 2 of MNs favourite words, both vile AND grim,

No elf and no fucking matching fucking Christmas fucking pyjamas for the whole fucking family, no fucking way, just fuck the fuck off, no, no, not fucking doing it.

Though I love Christmas, obviously.

We don’t do elf on the shelf. My daughter asked why we don’t have one after hearing a few of her classmates talking about what their elf had done. I told her that naughty elves were banned from our house 😀

Oh the DC spot it. There are gifts every Sunday of advent. But there isn't the pressure to do something every day.

No elf for me, not a chance I was going to give myself another headache in December. My kids survived

We did our own elf, and brought our own cute elf for about 2 pounds from ikea
Our elf was here for training and to see what human children are like but also to see what presents our dc like if fc can't get what they want.

We were told to send our elf back if she was naughty and she stayed for 5 nights only...

And said she may nerve be back. She came back twice in 10 years.
Perfect, short sweet, dc utterly loved it and no creepy

You don't need to spend a penny on the elf (beyond initial outlay) though, if you don't want to. Ours was bought 7 years ago for 5 euro and I haven't spent a single cent since that point.

I'm so glad it wasn't around when my DS was small. As others have said it's creepy. And a pain in the arse. It's another thing to have to remember at a stressful time of the year.

Nope, no, no way.

There's plenty that's magical about Christmas without having to invent something that needs doing every bloody day!

I mean, if it's your kind of thing and you enjoy it, go for it, absolutely!

But if you have any doubts don't beat yourself up, it's really not necessary to feel any guilt about this! You can happily ignore it IMO.

I HATE Christmas being used to control children. I have never outsourced my parenting to either Santa or elf on shelf

To be completely fair, DS1 is 12 and I don’t remember Elf on the Shelf being a thing when he was very little, so it’s been easy to dodge.

As other posters said similarly, I have a neurodivergent couple of teens, and we never did elf on the shelf or any of the naughty/nice stuff as it just confused and upset them. I once did a PNP video for my eldest that said he was headed for the naughty list when he was 4, and after how upset it made him, no more. He was always very unsettled with his behaviour due to the change around Christmas. I told my youngest that we don't have Santa Cam or the Elf because Santa knows she is very good so she was 'pre-approved' and will not be on the naughty list.

Yep we don't do any of all that. Just trying to get more cash out of everyone!

They might get pyjamas in the stocking but that's it!

Mine have spent the last two days doing all the Halloween draw with robs and art for kids hubs they can possibly find which are all the Halloween decs and activities we will do/ buy (bar pumpkins and actual trick or treating).

I refuse to buy more plastic tat for that on top of Xmas!

I never did it for DC1 - I just didn't think he would like it, and I didn't really get the appeal.

However, DC2(6) was asking why we didn't have one, so when DC1(9) had his first year openly not believing, I suggested he could "do" it for his little brother, as a way to involve him.

It was actually pretty fun and low effort, and we will do it again this year. I am not sure DC2 believed it for a second, but he played along and everyone enjoyed it, so why not.

Fortunately it wasn’t around when my were little, but I would have told them it wasn’t real, and tbh I think it’s perfectly acceptable for children to tell other children that elf on the shelf isn’t real, because it’s nothing more than a marketing ploy.

Someone on here once compared telling kids about the elf to telling them about Father Christmas, but I disagree. I think the sooner this kind of crap gets nipped in the bud the better.

I shudder whenever I see one of those horrible elves. I'm so pleased they weren't around when my kids were little.

I wonder if there's any merit is considering 'sharing' elf activities with some other families? You could all have an actual elf but take it in turns to set the elf up at night for a child to find in the morning? In an ideal world you'd have 24 households involved in a street and the street elf could magically appear in a different house every day. Have a WhatsApp group between the parents to show the kids where he's appeared every morning and what he's been up to.

Thankfully my children are too old for this to have been a thing in our house. That elf looks so creepy and the whole thing sounds like a total pain. I’m not being superior though, I know if they had been younger (or the elf had become popular sooner) I would have felt obliged to take part in this craze. There would have been absolutely none of this “you’re being watched” nonsense going on though - at that I definitely would have drawn the line. Apparently, you can buy kits with props, in packs numbered for every day of the month, so I expect I would have used one of those, to take the mental load away, while still ensuring my children did not feel as though they were missing out.

YANBU.

if people need an elf to help control a child’s behaviour then they need to go on a parenting course.

All this nonsense about elves, Xmas jim-jams, Xmas eve boxes is all commercial costs. All it achieves are parents being stressed about affordability and more plastic tat in the house.

We all need to push back against this nonsense. It is drain on our wallets and a drain on our planet’s resources.