How do you do Santa with teens

[yodelsay]

Do you still put carrot and mince pie and brandy out?

When do you fill stockings??

I'm knackered and they aren't and I want to go to bed but probs have to stay up til after they go to bed!

DS5 and DD11 , little boy asleep and girl so excited I’m surprised she hasn’t p’d herself 😂.

Well I just witnessed my 50 year old single next door neighbour put a mince pie and carrot on his doorstep. I was tempted to wait and take the mince pie away and leave him some crumbs I guess you're never too old for traditions

You don’t. Ds is still awake. His stocking is on his bedroom door so I can just quietly slip presents in.

So many Grinches on this thread! My 14 yr old has gone to bed at 10pm, we put out snacks and a drink for Santa, carrot for the reindeer, he still enjoys it so why not?

Round here the foxes would make short work of those Soup.

No foxes around here to blame @sparkling maybe he'd think it was a Christmas miracle

@BigSandyBalls2015

My kids all have the option to be here or not. The oldest goes out a fair bit with her mates etc but my second oldest has asd. They all LOVE christmas and are more than happy to comply with a rule we impose on one night of the year. They still have 4g data. If I didn't turn the WiFi off they would never go to sleep!

My 2 are at the pub (eldest no longer a teenager) so all presents are under the tree and stockings done. No mince pie or drink for Santa here since they stopped believing.

No one will go into th living room until everyone is up then we will do presents, or if they get up late it will be delayed until Boxing Day as we are going visiting tomorrow.

I don't want to have rules about bedtimes and wifi at Christmas as they are nearly 17 and 19.

We have the Wifi on all the time but they self regulate their bedtimes and sleep. If that means a few lie ins over the holidays that's fine.

My teen is out (midnight service not the pub ), I usually go too but too tired this year. Have left his stocking presents by his bed, not waiting up & we don’t put out snacks for Santa.

I’m waiting for ds’s (16+12) to go to sleep so I can do stockings. First year I’ve not had at least one believing. Plus side of that is that they have done me a stocking this year.. ds1 just filled it for me, so I guess I'm old enough to be trusted not to peek!!

Oooh we still do stockings (age 13 and 15)! I had a stocking into my early twenties when I went home for Christmas...

We do stockings for each other. We have a stocking each, same one every year. They go under the tree empty and get filled with anonymous gifts from other members of the family. Stopped with FC when the youngest was around 9.

You do not do Santa with teens. All teenagers here, Christmas has evolved we still do presents / stockings for the kids and decorate but nothing to do with Santa.

Lovely and magical when they were young (although tbh I was over it when the youngest was about 6) but it is really nice to have a less frantic Christmas (no getting up at stupid o'clock for presents, trying to keep the pretence etc)

What 18+ year old is at home for Xmas eve?!

My 22 year old was.Think he spent most of it watching YouTube on his laptop in his room.

No sign of life from our two yet.

I’m sat here, surrounded by presents and stockings.

No bugger is up yet and they’re meant to be going to their dads at 11.

I was awake before mine this morning so I sat having cups of tea until the 13 yr old woke everyone else up for me

I'm knackered! I thought I'd get a nice lie in.

They woke us up at 7.15.

They are 16 and 18.

On any normal day the 18 year old would need a forklift truck to get him out of bed!

Still do the stockings and we do the Christingle service and I read The night before Christmas to them though

DD surfaced about an hour ago (she is nearly 20 though) and she is quite excited, but her younger brothers are still in deep sleep.

I will go and wake them shortly because we need to do presents (DD struggling to wait lol) and then head to my parents for lunch.

First time I had to ever wake ds1 up on Christmas morning! (I blame the night nurse he took for his cold before bed..) Presents were opened, short but lovely morning service at church, now all chilling. 😀

My parents never did/do stockings either, in fact I'd never came across anyone who did it before I joined MN. When I was about 14 my mum started to just put the presents out when we were still downstairs (we helped her, in fact). The magic was well and truely gone by then so thought might as well help her out. It was around the time when we started buying presents for our parents too.

This Christmas though, my 63 year old father was tracking Santa on Christmas Eve.

We had all been out seeing local family we wouldn't see on Xmas day dropping off presents, when we got back ds(14) was exiled to his room around 10pm while (a rather tipsy) dh and I tried to interpret crap instructions for putting together a folding weight bench. This included a argument discussion of whether it was ok for an over the limit dh to stagger down the road to his van on a public street to find the right tools for the locking nuts and much banging of noisy metal putting it together which ds says he never heard over his xbox headphones and shouting at fifa.

Bench was built and wrapped by just gone midnight and we went upstairs to wish ds merry xmas, left him a drink, put his stocking outside his door and went to bed. Didn't see him until gone 10 the next morning.

We just stopped doing the santa snack when he stopped believing and he never questioned it. We will probably still do stockings for a while yet, but they are smaller and we don't do plastic tat anymore, just things he'll need in coming year anyway.

My 16 year old still has a stocking. He doesn't believe in Santa anymore but goes along with it for the sake of his two younger brothers.
I still tell him to turn lights off by midnight on Xmas Eve as he will have to get up early with everyone else.
I take his stocking in when I wake him in the morning. He likes to get up early with me so he can see his younger brothers wake up full of excitement for their stockings.