Each year since I became a parent, I've thought very carefully about the messages and values our family's celebration of Christmas would reflect. Last year we started a family tradition of making giving to others an integral part of our Christmas celebration. So we spent a couple of days baking, coloring paper Christmas ornaments and decorating treat bags to deliver to residents at a local nursing home. We called it our first Christmas Giving Project.
By the time our project was finished, we had learned a very valuable lesson. But it wasn't quite the lesson we were expecting. What we learned was that we had focused too much on quantity (we produced 200 bags of Christmas treats) and not enough on quality time with the residents. We had made so many treat bags that we found ourselves rushing to hand them all out instead of taking time to visit with the people we saw.
I think we often see a similar lesson playing out with our kids at Christmas. As parents, we put so much emphasis on making this one day of the year super-special for our kids that we wind up in much the same predicament: Realizing that we put too much focus on the quantity of things underneath the tree and not enough focus on the quality of those things and their potential for adding value to our kid's lives.
I must have been way off my game this year because early last month, I thoughtlessly planted some ideas in my kid's head about toys and Christmas that I quickly came to regret. This was the first year I actually had any
Over the next few days I noticed that talk of these toys began to dominate our conversations. At first this incessant chatter about toys was just a little annoying. Then over the course of the next couple weeks, I noticed my kid's demeanor began to change. Where his mood was once generally content and balanced, he became restless and irritable. Where just weeks ago, he was perfectly content to play with the toys he already had (or none at all), he was now distressed and preoccupied thinking about when he was going to get these new toys. His desire and expectation for these toys had transformed him into a fretful and unhappy kid that I didn't recognize.
I knew this drastic mood change in my kid was not a natural development and it was no coincidence. It was obvious that his preoccupation with those toys was responsible. And I was the one who had put these ideas in his head. I was the one who had made my kid unhappy. But I didn't know what to do about it.
I wanted to explain to my kid that these toys were not a guarantee upon Christmas morning, but rather something he would receive only if he behaved himself until then. Before I spoke a word of this, I realized how ridiculous it is to expect a 4 year old (or anyone, for that matter) to behave themselves for an entire month. If the deal was that he only gets the toys if he is well-behaved for an entire month, then he is guaranteed not to get the toys. That is, unless I give him the toys despite his behavior, in which case I undermine the credibility of my word as a parent. I could not in good conscience set an expectation for my kid that ensured his failure, and I could not undermine my word by giving him the reward even though he didn't earn it. What was I going to do?
I had unwittingly backed myself into a corner. Here I was, basically stuck having to buy these toys for my kid with no contingencies and no requirements of him whatsoever. It appeared that my only option was to give him the toys with 'no strings attached,' no matter how he behaved. This was the only option I could see that wouldn't make me an unfair 'dealer' or a liar in the end- All because I had led my kid to expect these toys for Christmas.
For Christmas?!! Really?!! What was I thinking?! How in the world could I have let any of this be associated with Christmas?!!
I was so disappointed in myself. This wasn't like me. This went against every gut instinct I had had about the way pop culture handles birthdays and holidays with kids. The realization that I had poisoned my own child with hunger and expectation for something that he had never even thought to desire on his own made my stomach ache in a way that I could not ignore. I had made a horrible mistake. I had set both of us up for unnecessary aggravation and I had given my kid the least meaningful understanding of Christmas that I could have possibly given him. I had to fix this-
I decided that buying these toys for my kid was no longer an option. Buying them just didn't feel right to me. Buying them would have accomplished the same end as in giving an infant a pacifier- and seeing as my 4 year old is more than just a bundle of nerves and impulses in need of appeasing, I decided that his distress over these toys should be handled in a more constructive way. I decided my kid was capable of learning some tools and techniques for mitigating his own discomfort. If these toys were something my kid really wanted, he was going to have to put some thought and effort into getting them. They weren't just going to show up in our house one morning like magic. They weren't going to be some intangible source of desire bouncing around in my kid's head for the next month driving us both crazy. They were going to be something that we could see and touch and interact with together and we were going to start drafting plans for their construction right away.
The next conversation I had with my kid about toys went something like this:
"Kid, Mommy screwed up... We're not getting any toys for Christmas..."
"Not getting toys at Christmas?"
"Nope... We're going to make toys for Christmas.
"How do we make toys at Christmas?"
"I have no idea.... But we're going to figure it out. It'll be a Christmas project. Does that sound fun?"
"Yeah! We're going to make toys for Christmas!!!"
We're going to make toys for Christmas??!! Dear Lord, what have I done?
Okay Tiffanie, think....
Trains...the kid really likes these silly character trains from the "Thomas and Friends" series.
Wooden trains? Could we make some wooden trains? I'm sure I won't be able to make the ones he wants but maybe he'll love them regardless of how pathetic they are simply for the fact that we made them together? Yeah, right...
He really seems to like playing with bits of hardware and scraps from the garage and our junk drawer....I bet he'll have fun just hanging out while I bang some stuff around and fail at this miserably. One can hope...
So I was a little nervous. Mostly I knew that this was going be a disaster, that there would be no toys at the end of it and that Christmas would be ruined for my kid forever. But I had committed to my decision. I decided I was going to have to be a great, big, pregnant-ball of super-enthusiastic-fun-ness while my son and I built one disaster-of-a-Christmas together!
Dear Lord, what have I done...
I had no idea where to even begin. Equipped with zero prior knowledge or experience in woodworking, I knew that anything I could make at home wouldn't come close to comparing to the trains he plays with at church. Compared to the 'real' version, our trains were going to be pathetic and he would just be disappointed. But I had to try.
When I first began thinking about what it would take to make some wooden trains I realized
that I used to know someone who would have been perfect for this job. Realizing how much my Pappy would have loved doing something like this with us made me miss him in a way I hadn't felt before. I can only imagine how much he would have enjoyed a project like this and I wished I could have spent this time learning from him, watching him with his grandson and building some wooden trains together for Christmas. I had to settle for borrowing Pappy's jigsaw and checking-out some books on woodworking from the library. So that's where we started.
Determined to be the most fun mommy that I had ever been, EVER, I engaged my kid in the most exciting conversations I could muster about this (doomed-to-failure) project we were going to tackle together...
First, we got online and reserved a couple books on kid's wooden toy construction at the library. Next, we picked up our books and started learning. We learned that the toy train projects in these books were a lot more complex and intricate than our tools and resources would accommodate. So we decided to just wing-it and come up with our own design. In doing so, we discovered that maybe the Thomas and Friends trains could be made more easily than we had previously thought?
We started with a pile of scrap wood from our garage, some wooden dowels, wood glue, some sand paper, a miter box and hand saw. Then we went to the hardware store to see if we could come up with some kind of arrangement for wheels and hooks for linking trains together.
Here is James planning to model our first train after 'James' (Engine No. 5)
Drawing some pictures of the 'James' the train while Mommy works on painting our train pieces.
Just about ready for some wood glue.
Almost ready for wheels!
Our 'James' train gets James' seal of approval!
After reasonable success with our 'James' train, our imaginative gears were really turning! James started drafting plans for more trains and over a few weeks, we set aside time every couple days to work on them together.
James' Train Plan Portfolio
'Gordon' and 'Toby' Train Plans
Getting Down to Business
About half way through our train building adventure, I got the idea to build some kind of train track for James' new trains. Sure, the wooden track-sets that link together and disassemble would have been a lot cooler. But I was confident James would enjoy a fixed track too. After all, he'd been happily playing with toy trains on no track at all for several months. I decided that this part of our Christmas project would be a total surprise for him on Christmas morning. Which meant I had to work through the night to get it made...
Basic Track Design Laid Out
Ready to use the jigsaw. For the first time. In my living room....(sawdust was everywhere!)
Track design cut-out, glued and tacked down to base board, with first coat of paint.
We only got four trains made in about 3 weeks of working on them.
But we had a heck of a good time making them together!
And we have plans to make a few more this month as we're able to find time to work on them.
So I didn't buy my kid any toys for Christmas this year- but somehow I don't think it matters. He has enjoyed drawing, talking about, building and painting these trains over the past few weeks and has been playing with each of them happily as their construction became complete. Now that he knows the kind of work that goes into making a new train (at least according to our method), when he expresses desire for a new one he thinks much more carefully about how much time he is willing to invest in it, and which one he wants to make the most. His mood has improved tremendously since my first mention of getting some new toys for Christmas. And now our Christmas morning can be about more than unwrapping new toys.
By building these trains together, I got to learn a lot more about my kid's fascination with them just from the conversations we had. And he got to see that I was genuinely interested in helping him bring pieces of his imagination to life. I hope that his being a part of making these toys has given him a greater appreciation for them and I hope he will remember the time we spent together this Christmas season, fondly.
I have yet to finish the train track I started building but I plan on having it finished as a surprise for James on Christmas morning. I am hoping it will be a big hit!
Thanks for reading and Merry Christmas to you and yours ♥
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