Modeling Holiday Priorities: How Parents Can Create Calm, Connection & Meaning for Their Kids

by Paula Brunning

Counsellor / Parenting Coach / Career Coach

Modeling Holiday Priorities: How Parents Can Create Calm, Connection & Meaning for Their Kids

The holiday season promises joy, connection, and festive magic—but for many parents, it also brings overstimulation, expectations, and an endless to-do list. Children don’t learn holiday values from what we tell them; they learn from what we model. When our behaviour shows connection, gratitude, empathy, and emotional regulation—even in busy seasons—we give our children a powerful roadmap for how to navigate stress and celebrate meaningfully. Counsellor & Parenting Coach, Paula Brunning, discuss what will help you prioritise what truly matters and teach your children the heart of the holidays through your everyday actions.

• Why is modeling more powerful than telling children what matters during the holidays?

  Children learn mainly through observation. When parents demonstrate connection, gratitude, calmness, and healthy boundaries, children naturally internalise these behaviours. Modeling becomes especially impactful during stressful seasons where real-life examples teach emotional skills more authentically than verbal instructions alone.

• How can I stay emotionally regulated during the holiday rush?

  Emotional regulation begins with awareness. Pay attention to early signs of overwhelm, take short grounding breaks, ask for support, and simplify your commitments. When you model calm problem-solving—rather than rushing or multitasking under pressure—your children learn that stress can be managed in healthy ways.

• What are simple ways to build family connection during the holidays?

  Connection doesn’t require elaborate plans. Extend dinner time with a shared game, create a gratitude ornament tradition, have a family movie or snack night, or build a silly “holiday superpower” family ritual. The key is presence—emotionally and physically—not perfection.

• How do I prepare my child for overstimulation or challenging family dynamics?

  Discuss what to expect before events, identify coping tools (earphones, colouring materials, quiet breaks), and agree on a signal if they need support. This proactive planning models empathy, self-awareness, and self-regulation while helping your child feel safe and confident.

• What if I struggle with my own boundaries or emotional regulation during this season?

  Holidays can highlight deeper challenges such as people-pleasing, emotional overload, or difficulty setting limits with extended family. If these patterns make it hard to prioritise your values, working with a parent coach can support you in creating meaningful shifts that strengthen both your wellbeing and your parenting.

It’s December! The holidays are coming. What does that mean for you? When I close my eyes to think about the best moments in a festive occasion, it is about being with people I love, enjoying games and activities, eating generously and feeling connected.

In reality, however, things are not quite so simple and peaceful. There are endless demands on my time, and a growing list of expectations around buying, making, preparing, pleasing and doing that somehow don’t match that vision. As parents we are constantly adjusting our navigation towards the vision we have, aligned with our values and goals. Many external factors can be obstacles to this, including festive seasons. How does a calendar full of obligations help me nurture my values of connection? What do I want my kids to learn about as they see me navigate these?

Avoiding getting caught up in this stressful cycle takes some effort. We know that parent modeling is often more impactful on children than what we might be saying, as they watch and learn about the behaviors, attitudes and values that we demonstrate. So in preparation for another holiday season, this article will aim to share some tips to support parents who want to show their children values that focus on appreciating experiences and connection and expressing gratitude and empathy. We also want to model emotional regulation because this is a sure time of year when we might feel overwhelmed.

Focus on experiences and connection

Connection in parenting is the emotional bond and feeling of security a child has with their caregiver, fostered through being seen, heard, loved, and understood. It’s a relationship-focused approach that prioritizes the parent-child bond as the foundation for healthy development, fostering trust, cooperation, and emotional resilience. This is achieved not just through dedicated time, but through both big and small moments when we are emotionally available, ensuring our child feels safe and valued.

Connection is a complex interaction of being present, showing emotional attunement along with nurturing a sense of safety and trust. When we focus on connection for holiday time we are not only physically present, we are also emotionally available. Doing things together with a focus on connection may mean adjusting our adult expectations of having things just right. Be aware of your own need for control by reflecting on your expectations and check in if they are realistic or manageable. This might mean being flexible with time allocation, avoiding an overscheduled day or week that not only leads to individual overwhelm, it is likely to disrupt our efforts to build connection.

So how might modelling connection look?

Prioritize family time.

Set aside time and ensure everyone knows this is for us to be together. To make it special, consider spending about twice as much time together as you normally would. To start, extend dinner time with a game or conversation starter.

Start or build on a family tradition.

Traditions that children look forward to create a sense of shared belonging. Simple activities done together with the message that each person is important and valued, where interpersonal respect is demonstrated, are good starting points. Here are a few possible ideas:

‘I love you because’ baubles:

One idea could be creating and hanging gratitude baubles on the tree, where you create lovely baubles out of paper and each family member writes things they are grateful to others for throughout the holiday.

Down time games or tv and snacks:

Be creative with your ideas and turn towards what your children naturally enjoy, such as making snacks together and hosting a game night or family movie marathon.

Super-power activate:

decide on a holiday themed ‘super power’ code word like ‘presents’ that when said requires everyone to do a 30 second happy dance, walk like a chicken, or babble like a baby. The guidelines are yours to create.

The key is that connection can be nourished through being creative and humorous in ways that are high value, low risk and accessible for every family member to join in.

Emphasize gratitude and empathy

We can easily get pulled into the excitement of giving without really being attentive to what we have that is both material and in relationships, health, skills or talents.

Start conversations about gratitude:

At meal times, initiate conversations that share what you are grateful for and help children reflect on what they are thankful for.

Volunteer as a family or contribute to a donation drive:

Suggest family volunteering or contributing to a donation in your local community. Interacting with others in this way models empathy and generosity and can be very enriching. Having discussions that honestly share any discomforts are important too, as these experiences can push us outside our comfort zone, and that’s ok. What are we learning about ourselves and others in the process?

Acknowledge and validate feelings:

Empathizing means we can understand how someone else feels the way they do. As parents, we encourage and help children learn to label and manage their emotions, beginning with our ability to acknowledge and validate theirs as well as our own. For example, it is understandable that we feel rushed and pressured when we are getting prepared for many guests.

Acknowledging that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed during busy times and demonstrate that we can still be respectful to self and others because we self-regulate is a real gift. Self-regulation means we manage our emotions effectively by things such as requesting support, taking a break and other choices.

Set realistic expectations

A challenge around the holiday season is that we have ideas of what things ‘should’ be like. Left unaddressed, these expectations can clash with what others are thinking, or with the reality of time and capacity. A few ideas to plan for this include:

Manage gift expectations:

Set clear, realistic expectations around gift-giving to avoid disappointment and overindulgence. This might include talking to your children, as well as friends or family members about your limits whether they come from financial considerations, having a sustainable mindset or other reason. Saying outright if you appreciate homemade gifts, or have a spending limit will make it possible for others to respect this.

Plan for challenging scenarios:

Sometimes despite our best efforts, when holiday season begins, we model stressful behavior such as restating how many things we have to do, worrying about family dynamics and otherwise bringing on overwhelm.

Guide you and your children towards managing by creating intentional time to check in with yourself and let your children know how you are doing this to stay calm and focused on positive aspects of the holidays. Maybe that is by sitting down with some tea, going for a walk, taking a nap or doing some exercise.

Prepare for overstimulation:

Prepare yourself if needed, and particularly children for potentially overwhelming situations. Problem solving this ahead of time demonstrates empathy and deepens connection and trust. This could mean preparing for overstimulating environments, unchecked food and drink intake or known dynamics with a family member. Set clear expectations beforehand so your child has options to self-regulate and come to you for co-regulation. Devise a plan and have resources such as coloring material or a headset. Be prepared to limit time at such an event, or have a back up plan.

As much as holidays are wonderful they are also often filled with challenges. These ideas are a starting point to support you as a parent to model the values you hold. If you notice that your modeling may indicate a challenge with your own emotional regulation, meeting external expectations, setting boundaries with extended family or other issues that mean holiday stress is something that makes prioritizing your values difficult for you, consider working with a parent coach. Coaching is individualized to support small meaningful shifts that you decide on, to help you navigate parenting while ensuring you uplift your own wellbeing. Book a session with me today and create a holiday experience rooted in the values you want your children to remember.