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Your Child's Journey

wisdom for the big steps little children take

You are here: Home / Archives for Christmas

The Parents Who Canceled Christmas

December 17, 2014 By Diane Constantine

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Katia Hetter writes about travel, parenting and culture for CNN.com.

Why Cancel Christmas?

John and Lisa Henderson of Hurricane, Utah, had finally had enough of their little hurricanes. For months, the couple had been trying to teach their three boys, ages 11, 8 and 5, to stop being disrespectful and acting entitled.

“We gave them good warning, either it was time for their behavior to change or there would be consequences,” wrote Lisa Henderson, co-founder of the Over the Big Moon blog, in a recent post.

“We patiently worked with them for several months and guess what, very little changed. One day after a particularly bad display of entitlement John said, ‘We should just cancel Christmas.’ ”

And that’s what they did.

Santa isn’t coming to the Henderson house this year. The family is taking the money that would have been spent on gifts and using it for service projects and helping other people. It’s not like her children suffer from a lack of toys, Lisa Henderson wrote. The family will still decorate and celebrate Christmas as the birth of Christ, and the children will still get presents from other family.

Though they’re taking some heat from critics who call them Scrooges, the gifts these parents are giving their children are so much more important than the latest popular “Star Wars” figure or electronic gadget soon relegated to the dustbin. These gifts will last a lifetime.

The gift of consequences

How many times do parents threaten to take away the television/iPad/favorite toys unless their children start to behave?

If the threats continue but there’s never any follow-through, children come to believe that there aren’t any consequences. They also learn that their parents can’t be trusted to tell the truth. And they develop a nasty habit of manipulating to get what they want.

The Henderson children will probably never doubt their parents’ word again.

The gift of perspective

Henderson knew that her children had plenty to be grateful for, including good food, a nice home and too many toys to count. What they needed was a dose of perspective, which they got. They used the Santa money to start a clothing drive for victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and ship the goods overseas. They are also considering participating in an Adopt-a-Grandparent program.

The gift of imagination

The boys aren’t sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. Besides organizing as a family to do good works for others, the boys have responded by making gifts for each other and sneaking them into each child’s stocking.

“They are learning exactly what we wanted them to learn, because they are not moping around feeling sorry for themselves,” she wrote. “They are thinking of others.”

The gift of family

Christmas hasn’t been completely canceled in the Henderson household. What’s been canceled is an overwhelmingly commercial Christmas. Instead of a race to the tree to see what Santa brought, the focus on Christmas morning will be on spending time together with Lisa’s cinnamon rolls, their faith, family games and the opportunity to “truly enjoy the few presents they did get” from grandparents and others.

“While this may not be the best choice for everyone, it feels right for our family right now,” she wrote. “Our kids get to focus on that feeling. I am almost certain this will be the best Christmas they ever have!

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Filed Under: All Ages Tagged With: Christmas, holiday

Share /Role Play

December 4, 2014 By Diane Constantine

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Last month I shared ways to help our children learn through play. This month I found this wonderful article by Tanya Marlow about sharing her faith with her son through role-play. What a wonderful time of year to begin using this type of play to teach the story of Jesus’ birth.
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Let Us Play
by Tanya Marlow at: Tanyamarlow.com

“You can be Jesus.” My little boy says this to me last Advent, when we are playing together in my day room on a particularly dark and rainy day.

I can “be Jesus” – he wants me to pretend to be the Son of God, made incarnate as a baby. I sit on the sofa, and in the few seconds I have before I respond to him, I try to sort through the complex emotions surrounding his request.

His favourite thing in the world is role-play, and every day he finds stories to enter into – Superman rescuing an orphan girl, or Cinderella going to the ball, or Aladdin on a magic carpet flying all over the world. The nativity story is just one more story to enter into, and it’s a good one, with secondary characters of angels and shepherds and the best, most holy kind of magic.

He is already talking, bustling around with cushions as props, arranging a stable as he prepares to be Joseph, and I try to catch my thoughts. I can be Jesus. Why am I struggling with the concept? It still feels slightly blasphemous – I think that is my problem. How can I pretend to be Jesus? Am I breaking one of the ten commandments, making a false image of God? What if I get it wrong…?

And there, right there, I realise what is at the heart of my hesitation. Play is dangerous, because I might get it wrong. We might stumble into blasphemy along the way. I am someone who needs to get it right. It feels written through my identity, like a stick of rock: I am someone who does the right thing, and gets it right. I am the good girl.

Playing is a kind of rebellion. To pretend to be God, even in play with my three-year-old, shakes and challenges my very core.

It was about two years ago that I first came across Alice Buckley’s blog, Play on the Word. A friend had recommended it to me as a good resource for parents who want to introduce Jesus to their children. When I read her site, it was utterly revolutionary: at once intuitive and counter-intuitive.

Her thesis is simply this: Children love to play. So the best way to introduce them to Jesus is not just through books or discussions but through play, either with art and craft, messy play (don’t get me started on my hang-ups with making a mess in play…) or role play.

I read her website again: yes, she really did mean role play. But that meant not just acting out lines and the ‘right things’, but improvisation. And that meant departure from the Bible, a filling in of gaps as we explored together how it might have been. Again, that question – what if I get it wrong?

But it felt peculiarly liberating, as I read her website, to realise she was giving me permission to share my faith with my son in his native language, the language of play. I took a deep breath and entered into the story with him.

First I played Mary, and he was the angel Gabriel. This Gabriel was so excited to share the news that his eyes grew wide and he bounced up and down at the annunciation. Then he switched to Joseph, and he was a very protective and organised Joseph.

I was now Mary in the stable, so I dared to play: I groaned, I rubbed my back in agony, I moaned at Joseph to make the pain stop. I said I was worried about giving birth in the dirt.

Joseph, to his credit, stroked my hair and told me he had found a broom, and started sweeping out the stable. Then he stopped, because there, on our blue and white carpet, was a one-penny piece.

“Mary!” my boy exclaimed. “Look! I’ve found some money. I’ll just go out to the shops and buy a present for baby Jesus so he has a toy to play with!”

It was entirely anachronistic, and entirely perfect.

I am exploring what it means to have a theology of play. Alice Buckley is helping me with that, as is my now four-year-old. I am more relaxed about it than I was last year, and I am catching some of that excitement of what it means to enter into the story. Play is a rebellion, but not against God, against my perfectionist and control-freak tendencies.

I still can’t articulate it properly – I feel like I’m on the cusp of discovering something more about myself, and creativity, and meditation, and God. I am the person who likes to be able to explain everything – but I can’t talk it, and I can’t fully write it, but I feel it, and I am experiencing it.

I am wondering if we are designed for play, even as adults. I am wondering if God likes to play, too.

“You can be Jesus now,” he says, and in a matter of seconds before we start the next part of our play, I consider how to be Jesus.

Through my head runs the mystery of God who created outer space contained in a dark womb for nine months, God who shaped the blue whale gripping onto Mary’s thumb, the Creator who spoke roaring waves into existence screaming with tiny lungs.
“Goo goo, ga ga,” I said, and as I look up at my son from the carpet, I gaze with fresh wonder.
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Thank you, Tanya, for sharing your experience and your thoughts on sharing your faith through role play.
Why not try some role play with your little one this Christmas season? If your baby is too young to role play, take the time to tell the wonderful Christmas story. Your child will absorb your enthusiasm and begin to love one of the greatest stories ever told!

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Filed Under: All Ages Tagged With: Christmas, faith, play

Christmas 2013

December 7, 2013 By Diane Constantine Leave a Comment

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Christmas has always been a special season for me. My mom used to buy Christmas gifts all year and squirrel them away. Each year she selected one gift to be the gift. It was for only one of us, but we were all excited about what that gift would be and whose it would be.

We woke up Christmas morning with a tree that was decorated over night and surrounded by gifts. We took turns opening the gifts one at a time so everyone could enjoy the thrill of seeing what each one got. Then the moment would come for the gift to be given and opened. It was always perfect! We all celebrated!

Christmas was about giving. We always found some way to make someone less fortunate than us happy too. A few years, we went to an orphanage and brought Jean home to share our Christmas. We each bought her a gift from our allowance and we tried to make her feel like a queen for the day. Some years we bought gifts, wrapped them, and took them to some family who lived in the poor part of our community. We always took food, as well as gifts.

Most of all, I remember the Advent Wreath and how the story of the first Christmas came alive to us little by little through the month before Christmas.

Here are some of the things we have practiced in our own family that you might like to incorproate into your own celebrations:

1. Do not go into debt for gifts. When we didn’t have enough money to buy expensive gifts, we bought ‘meaningful’ gifts. Sometimes the nicest gifts were the homemade coupons we made offering our services to those we loved that could be redeemed throughout the coming year.

2. Make the emphasis giving rather than receiving. Help your children learn to enjoy the delight their gifts give to others.

3. Find ways to reach out to those in need during the season. Get your kids involved in Angel Tree or Shoebox or some other outreach to the needy. Have them help buy, pack, and wrap the gifts; and when possible deliver the gifts. These encounters really leave a lasting impression on youngsters.

4. Remember to tell the story of Jesus’ first coming to our world so it becomes a part of their foundational beliefs. Then teach them to anticipate his second coming, too. The hope of heaven helps us through rough times we will face.

If you have stories of your Christmas, past or present, that you would like to share, please email me at: Diane

May you have a blessed Christmas season. Delight in the preparations and may your faith be contagious!

Blessings!
Diane

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Filed Under: All Ages Tagged With: Christmas, gifts, holidays

An Attack of Wonder

December 3, 2011 By Diane Constantine Leave a Comment

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With Christmas this month, it is a great time to wake to the wonder all around us. A friend wrote an article about learning from the Book of God’s Word (The Bible) and the Book of God’s Work (Creation and all around us). Don’t let this be an ordinary Christmas, take time and quiet enough to have an attack of wonder.

We can be sitting at home in our ordinary, undramatic life, when suddenly we are struck with an attack of wonder. It can begin in a moment as you watch your little one sleeping peacefully or when you stop to watch the pattern of raindrops on your window. A simple thought or the flash of a half-remembered dream may be the spark. Whatever it is, the effects can ripple throughout your lifetime.

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Filed Under: All Ages Tagged With: Christmas, holiday

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