Elf on the shelf? I don't get it!

[mineandyours]

Someone help me understand elf on the shelf.

It's a toy elf who watches your children and reports to Santa if they've been bad or good? What? Why?

And he sets your children challenges and activities? To what end or purpose?

And you have to move him around every day?

I don't get it. Is this even fun for the parents??

It’s just some Christmas fun. Why have Christmas lights? Advent calendars? Christmas “trails”? It’s not my thing so I don’t do it but I couldn’t care less if that’s what other people want to do. I’m sure I spend time doing things to entertain my children that other people wouldn’t want to do.

Ours doesn’t report back, he just gets up to stuff at night. Sometimes he hides, sometimes he has a bath or plays with some toys.

@WishUponAStar88 what the hell is a Christmas trail?! My poor kids have no hope with a mum like me 😬

Ours just moved at night and dose fun things. We do it so the kids have fun finding him each morning and it’s a bit playful.

I’m not down with telling kids they’re being watch or they’re good or bad. I guess some people use it as a way to manage behaviour. Most people I know just do the fun bit though.

We didn't do EOTS, but occasionally I would rearrange DD's teddies and dollies to be having a picnic with her teaset on a blanket, or biggest teddy reading them all a story in a circle on her bed, or 2 dollies racing around a "track" in a couple of cars, things like that. Never really mischief like a cotton wool ball "snowball fight" or hanging off the tree. And it was usually if I was at home during the day, so she found them when she got in from school.

I can see why it’s fun to do for young children but it drives me insane the parents who post photos of theirs on Social Media every fucking day! 😤

We have an elf. He doesn’t report or anything like that. He does ‘cheeky’ things every night and they find him in the morning. DH takes responsibility for it... he enjoys doing it, the DC love finding him. So I guess ‘enjoyment’ is the point of it.

Our elves do not report to Father Christmas. We've never encouraged the naughty/nice element of Father Christmas.

They don't set challenges either, I've never heard of that.

They do move around every day. It's fun for me in the way that playing Monopoly for an hour or reading the same book over and over is fun for me, i.e. not very but the kids get something out of it so I do it anyway.

I avoided for a long time but my younger two came home from school crying two years running because their friends had elves and the school had elves. So we got elves.

Ours is the same, we just set it up in different poses each night for DD to find in the morning. Nothing extravagant. She came home from school yesterday very very excited because "the elves are coming to stay with everyone tomorrow". All her class were talking about their elf so it would be a shame to miss out on it.
We've never needed to use it as a behaviour tool.

It's just harmless fun for DH and DD, I don't really get involved.

I love the elves! No reporting back here either, not used as behaviour management. And I'm afraid I am one of those people who posts the daily antics on Facebook… But this is because my adult friends ask me to post it on Facebook! I think we all love it more than the children!

I don’t post ours on social media but sometimes get ideas from other people who post theirs on there!

My instinctive reaction to it was along the lines of what fresh hell is this but it’s not really that bad. Having it ‘create’ mischief to make the children laugh is nice. All traditions were once newfangled and (once you’ve bought the elf) it’s something that can be done year after year without any more outlay.

They do move around every day. It's fun for me in the way that playing Monopoly for an hour or reading the same book over and over is fun for me, i.e. not very but the kids get something out of it so I do it anyway.

This perfectly explains the elf!

YANBU. It’s creepy to suggest that a toy watches children and reports on their behaviour. As a child I used to be terrified about my toys coming to life. In fact it’s the premise of several horror films.

Also, as a parent - who the heck has time for that shit? Moving a doll, thinking of things for it to do. Purposely making a mess which you pretend the doll made then having to tidy it up again? Personally I have enough to do for Christmas without creating more work.

Creepy little fucker! It also now seems to have a bigger wardrobe than Barbie. I'm glad it wasn't a "thing" when DC was little.

Bah, humbug!

YANBU. It’s creepy to suggest that a toy watches children and reports on their behaviour. As a child I used to be terrified about my toys coming to life. In fact it’s the premise of several horror films

Ours doesn’t watch the children and report on their behaviour.
DH has time to do it every evening because he doesn’t watch TV (and his sports clubs aren’t running!). Takes 5 mins after dinner.

We don't do it, I find it another totally unnecessary thing to do...bit like Christmas Eve boxes. That said if other people want to do it then that's up to them but I agree that posting it all over social media is annoying.... I tend to just snooze anyone who does that for the month of December 😀

I mean Christmas’ for a lot of people, centres on A fat old man creeping in your house in the middle of the night.

How could you have an issue with elf on the shelf but be fine with Santa?!

I had this very opinion about the elf in the shelf, until I dropped my child at school this morning and EVERY child on the yard was talking about what their elves had done that morning. The disappointment in my daughters face was unbearable. So I dashed home and put out the elf, in a less obvious place, so I could claim she’d just missed it this morning. If you seen the excitement and magic on my daughters face you’d completely understand the point.

Santa knows anyway whether they’ve been bad or good - he has a Good-Bad-Ometer on his sleigh, as anyone who’s read The Empty Stocking will know. So these pesky elves are redundant.

Unfortunately the Good-Bad-ometer did malfunction during this story, but it was a one-off and will never happen again. And don’t worry, there is still a very happy and satisfying ending.

Elf on a shelf is awful but so is faux confusion. What are you not getting? It's not a complicated thing, just annoying and naff.

This was only just coming in when the kids were small so I never did it. Where did it come from? One minute it never existed at far as I'd ever heard next minute it's everywhere :/

Ditto Xmas Eve boxes.

Never heard of the trail.

I remember coming home from school when they were little and a mum saying oh that elf this morning he'd thrown flour over the kitchen floor and yesterday he squeezed toothpaste around the bathroom. It's such a mess to clean up. I was.....

Very pleased the kids never expected this or had even really heard of it!

I never did good or bad with father Christmas either.

I mean if they had been little sods no one would actually not give them any presents.

I'm not very good at this stuff

We do tree decorations slap up meal presents. Same story Xmas Eve every year. How my Xmas was when I was s kid really.

Haha. My BIL (he and DSis have young children) was just moaning about this!

"And it's bloody elf on the shelf now, too! When did that start? Where did it come from? Gotta get up early and move the stupid thing around now on top of everything else. What's next!?"

Gave me a laugh. :D

I think the elf came from America about 10 years ago.