Awkward Moments With Children
The Early Show continues its "Sticky Situations" series with questions from parents on how to deal with some awkward moments they may face with children around the holidays.
Parenting magazine's Denene Millner visited The Early Show on Tuesday to give parents some advice.
The following are questions Millner addressed on The Early Show.
Q: How do you talk to a young child about why both parents won't be around during the holidays, if they're divorced?
A: At Parenting, what we suggest that parents do is to be parents. Understand that Christmas is about creating magic for the child. And so you are going to have to, whether you get along or not, figure out how to get along, long enough for your child to understand that, OK, daddy may not be here, but we can call him and you can open his gift and tell him how excited you are about what's in that box or next week, you get to have a second Christmas with dad.
Q:How to prevent children from snooping around to find presents?
A: Find the one place where they will never look -- the laundry basket! Another great thing we mentioned in this month's Parenting is to check with the neighbor and see if you could borrow a little space in their basement. Wrap your presents down there. Leave them there. Your kids can't snoop around in the neighbor's basement and they'll never find it there, and then on Christmas eve after they go to sleep, stop over and get them and put them under the tree.
Q: How do you handle the situation when a child gets a duplicate gift or a gift he or she doesn't like?
A: If it's a duplicate gift, you can take it down to the store and exchange it the next day or maybe the day after that, because it's kind of crazy the day after Christmas. But if it's a gift they don't like, what you need to do is have a conversation with them before we get to the gift giving: "Listen, we are very happy for everything we get and even if you don't like it, be very gracious." This is time for you to be a parent and go on and say, "this is the way we react when you get things from people." It's a great learning lesson from people to get them to be gracious.