Helping Kids Who Get Stressed / Have Meltdowns During the Holidays

Speaker: Pardis Khosravi, PsyD, Clinical Director & Licensed Psychologist at CHC

Pardis Khosravi, PsyD: Hi, my name is Dr. Pardis Khosravi, and I'm a clinical psychologist here at CHC. A question that I get asked very often around this time of year is how to prevent kids from getting stressed or having meltdowns around the holidays when things are chaotic and busy and vary from their normal routine and schedule? vary from their normal routine and schedule? And one of the biggest pieces of advice that I can give parents is to stick to routines as much as possible during the holidays. to routines as much as possible during the holidays. Kids really benefit from having predictable routines where they know what to expect in a given day. This really helps with their ability to self-regulate their emotions. with their ability to self-regulate their emotions. Now, you might be thinking well, but they don't have school, and we have holiday parties and things. And so how do we stick to that 8 pm bedtime, or how do we stick to kind of the more rigid schedule that we might have during the school week? And the answer is that a routine actually is not the same as a schedule. So for something to be a routine it has to be predictable, it has to accessible. So it doesn't mean that you have to rigidly stick to a specific time. A lot of times, you know, we want kids to be able to have flexibility to stay up a little bit later on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve and that's fine and that's perfectly okay and that's fine and that's perfectly okay as long as we are still sticking to some of the routines that help kids anchor their days. So for example, dinnertime and bedtime are two really great examples of routines that help kids feel anchored and feel like their days are still predictable. and feel like their days are still predictable. So, you know, if you have a particular set of things that your kid does during bedtime or during dinner time, you know, particular order of operation, sticking to that as much as possible and then the accessibility piece is having access to their parents. So if, you know, dad always tucks me into bed and reads me a story maintaining that as much as possible. Sticking to these routines can really help during a time that is otherwise unstructured and otherwise busier or more chaotic than a normal week help kids feel that sense of predictability and that sense of regulation.