I am sure my family is like many other families this Holiday season - Globalised.  It can be a particularly hard season for grand parents, uncles and aunties that live abroad or in another city,  so I came up with a few ideas that can help to make people feel that little bit closer to family:

1. Buy a childrens book and make a video of your kid(s) reading it  - I bought ‘Little Miss Christmas‘ from the Mister Men series of books, they produced a very entertaining and respectful story about Santa Claus.  My 8year old and 5 year old really loved the story and enjoyed making the video.  If you have more than one child consider one to read and one to make actions that go along with the story on the video.  Mine is in the post now Grandad - I promise!
2. Get a new family portrait photo -  It’s amazing how fast the years pass by and it never seems like the right time to get a family portrait done.  Maybe this is the driver you need to get this moving and it will be really treasured by your family when they receive it, especially if that is at a time when they are missing your family.
3. Telephone calls are an old favorite - however don’t forget that lots of people make calls coming up to Christmas and the International phone network can get pretty jammed, this goes doubly so for Skype etc.  Consider making a few calls earlier this year so that if you can’t get through closer to the big day, it’s not like your own personal nightmare before Christmas.
4. Post off coloring in drawings - coloring in is a great developmental tool for children, it can be a fun family activity, it keeps the little tikes quiet for a while and it is really fantastic to receive something that the kids have worked so hard on.  Santa’s Rules can provide you with personalized drawings with your kids names and wish list on for free, just click here.

I hope that gives you some ideas,  the main thing is to savor your time at home this Christmas, mostly children will respond well to extra attention, you do not have to be supernanny with a reward chart to know this.  If anyone else has some ideas they want to share, feel free to reply to this post.

Wishing you good behavior this Christmas,
Geoff Grice

Santa’s Rules

Tags: christmas, nightmare before christmas, reward chart, santa claus, supernanny, wish list

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 10:58 am and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.