Christmas Story

Oh, the stories my children could tell about me and discipline!!! If I had any money, they could blackmail me to ensure their silence. Since I’m not loaded, I thought maybe I could beat them to the punch and tell on myself.


The most infamous was caught on video. It’s on a surprisingly peaceful Christmas morning. I’m sitting on the couch supervising six children under the age of ten opening their gifts. I am keeping the baby (number 7) occupied. There is at least an hour of pleasant footage. But only the very inexperienced of parents would be deceived. It seems rather easy to me to see that I am on high alert. Eyes darting here and there, reaching over to help tear wrapping paper before frustration sets in, reminding about inside voices, leave your sister’s things alone please, etc.

All of a sudden, one of the children starts into meltdown. It’s the one that can go from totally calm to complete insanity in less than 10 seconds. There I am- flying off the couch to get him before he can hurt someone. He’s screaming, “Where’s my stocking? Who took my stocking?” over and over again. I’m trying to get him to listen to me, “No one has your stocking. It’s lost, we’ll find it.”

I might as well try to stop a train with my bare hands. He’s not listening. By the time, I’ve put down the baby, carefully chosen my path across the children, toy, wrapping paper maze that was my living room floor, he has been screaming for almost 2 minutes. It seems like 2 hours! Then I melt down- before you can even blink, I’m boxing his ears and shouting “NOBODY took your stocking, go sit on the couch until you can calm down!”

Watching this has become a family Christmas tradition. It even beats out “It’s a Wonderful Life” for family ratings. I thought it couldn’t get any worse. Boy was I wrong!

This year as we sat gathered around the TV for our annual Mom’s meltdown movie we saw something we had never noticed before. Actually, my eldest son and his wife saw it. About twenty minutes before the Big Event as I was sitting on the couch nursing the baby, I reached over absent mindedly, picked up an empty stocking and tossed it behind the tree. Guess whose it was?

They watched it three times adding a running commentary, “there she goes, right there, she’s got the stocking, she tosses, it’s going, going, oh, it’s gone!”

I’m pretty sure that I’m going to skip Christmas this year.

That’s the view from my side of the street today. What’s yours?