Well, happy holidays and welcome to Middle School Mary Poppins. I am Suzanne M. Swain, EDS, LMSW, and I am your friendly neighborhood kid therapist that works in the schools. So today's topic we're going to talk about is a homophone, presence versus presence, P-R-E-S-E-N-T-S, which means gifts or presence, P-R-E-S-E-N-C-E, which means time and attention. Both are gifts. Both are homophones. But we're going to talk about how you can make more quality time to be your Christmas this year or holiday. So we want to basically just try to remember that we have an opportunity through the holidays to teach gratitude and empathy and perspective to kids. You can try the one-to-one ratio where for every toy that they receive, they give one away. For older kids, you can do one to two. For older kids, you can maybe help them volunteer some time or make handmade gifts for people. They can donate money that they've made to a charitable cause by a bag of dog food, things like that. There's so many things that people can do, but I made some lists of ideas and I wanted to share them with you. But the first thing I want to share with you is first a hello from Lieutenant Steve because he's laying right next to me and he's got his chin up on this pillow. And so he says hi. He's doing great. And he's going to be a nurse really soon. Folks, on the day that you get this podcast will be the day that I'm going to turn into a cyborg. Yeah, I said it, a cyborg. They're going to give me a left knee replacement and I'm going to get a 3D printed knee. But wait, there's more. The surgery is going to be done via robot. Cool. So excited. So I am feeling a lot of you stress about that. I'm so excited. I think it's going to be really cool. I have questions. Do I get to pick the color? Can I have a copy? You know, come on, let's go. Let's go. So, but it'll be the day that this podcast comes out. So I really appreciate any positive thoughts that you have and sure to appreciate it. If you'd like to visit over to the site, msmarrypoppins.com. I do have a GoFundMe page. It's sort of like my little tip jar. If you have the means to help donate to this non, you know, I don't put any advertising or anything on this on this podcast. I try to keep it as honest as possible. But if you have the means and you feel like you'd like to donate, I'm trying to keep it like PBS where, you know, you just donate according to what you feel that you may be able to do. So that's fine. Mostly I'm here just about talking about the holidays and presence versus presence, but the idea of really building on gratitude and empathy and the perspectives from adults to children. So kids can can really do a lot during the holiday season and it also helps people to stay busy, but in a positive, you know, a positive way and that has so many psychological benefits. You know, it reduces entitlement, which can be a really big thing because kids these days, they have no concept of what anything costs. Kids, you're not probably getting the Xbox or whatever video game thing that's like $500 for the holidays. If you do, I sincerely hope you write a thank you card to everyone that may have contributed to that thing because those are really expensive. So maybe just like they, you know, I'd love the adults to do more things with presence or being present, just like you could as well. Why don't you donate cleaning time? How about make a coupon for mowing the lawn? If that's something that you do, you know, consider your love languages and that, you know, material things don't really matter that much. If you have a video game system that's perfectly fine, just keep it. Save people money. You know, maybe that's the gift you're giving them is to not have to worry about paying for things like that. So it, you know, reduces their entitlement and increases overall happiness because they feel like they've done something that really makes a difference. My eighth graders were so charitable. We designed, we read diary van Frank and we built a butterfly garden to represent the children and they are so helpful, so helpful. And, you know, it was stressful, but that was a huge stress. So that was some good stress. And this time of year we have a lot. Oh my gosh, so much you stress like you're in a great mood, you know, the lights, it's so twinkly and everybody's, you know, in their cute little sweaters and everything and you want something nice, warm coffee or what have you tea, whatever you drink. And it's just, it's just kind of a magical time of year where I feel like people are a little kinder and people are more willing to spend time with others. So, you know, I have you stress. So you stress is basically, you know, positive stress that motivates and energizes us. I always think of you stress as sort of like when joy and anger have a ball that mixes but not entirely. So it's sort of swirly. So it's the opposite of distress, of course, you know, and that's kind of that negative overwhelming stress that people feel. So like examples of, okay, so some examples of you stressing kids. So like excitement for planning a gift for someone special or, you know, creative challenge of making ornaments or making a decoration or they're getting excited about a family tradition, you know, grandma's apple pie or maybe learning a new skill like baking cookies with, you know, with gran or grandpa. There's always options. So, but you stress for adults, you know, some good stress type of things. I love that. I hope y'all feel me here. So let me know. Let me know. Suzanne Swain at gmail.com. You feel me. The satisfying rush of organizing a meaningful family activity. Is that a satisfying rush for you? Hopefully, hopefully, but you can plan charitable activities. You know, create special memories come up with something on your own that is a tradition that you'd like to try. Maybe it's making your own hot chocolate from scratch or oatmeal cookies from scratch for that matter. So just teaching kids new life skills are really important and it's something that you take with them. So, but I mean, not all holiday stress is bad. You know, some pressure creates really beautiful memories and personal growth when it's, but it's got to be purposeful. And it's got to be manageable. You know, there needs to be a point to why am I learning this? What's the point? But if it's something that they see that they can utilize like doing the laundry, that's pretty easy. They can become more self-sufficient and earn your respect. So what I've been doing this week with the kiddos is I had to make two gifts for family members that they wanted to give something to, but maybe couldn't afford. And then they got to make their own what I called wishing stars. So lately I've seen a couple of crickets in the schools that I've been in and I'm convinced I'm being stalked by Jiminy Cricket. So we're going full Pinocchio here with the when you wish upon a star. I'm not singing because the world don't need it. Yeah, I don't need to hit that. Okay. But in any case, when you wish upon a star, sing it. So I had the kids make themselves wishing stars. So what I did is I got a six pack at the local dollar store, basically, and some quarter inch ribbon and some craft glue. And so I cut several pieces of ribbon from the ribbon roll and then made little almost like an ornament out of it. Now, obviously I have kids of all ethnic, religious, social, socioeconomic backgrounds. So I don't know what they celebrated their house and I'm not going to speculate. But the wishing stars is a very non, you know, holiday oriented thing. It's just something that's kind of cute. So the kids, you know, use the wooden star ornament and they use markers and most y'all, by the way, excuse me, I'm going to tap, tap, tap on this one. Do you have any kids I had to give markers to this week because they didn't have any markers at home? Come on now. Also, they were very impressed by having the paintbrush markers as well as the chisel chip, you know, two sided type. Get those nice markers, you know, do that, order them off, you know, your favorite low cost site. But anyway, so the kids decorate the stars for the rooms and hanging up in their bedroom or wherever they near where they sleep. Sort of like a dream catcher. But it's a place where at night they can, you know, wish upon a star and express something that they really hope for. It helps to build the sense of hope. I mean, you know, hopes and dreams are good. We don't want to crush children's hopes. And I think as soon as we start doing that, we're really harming people and we're going to change our society just with, you know, absolutely no empathy. And we don't want that, of course. You know, we want people to be empathic. So, you know, you could always, you know, ask them, you know, what are you wishing for? Even though it's private, but they're not supposed to necessarily tell. But, you know, you can always ask your kid, I was like, what are you wishing for? Make one for yourself. You know, have an adult wishing star. Make, you know, both of you make one. All of you make one. But what kind of good things are worth wishing for? So there's that. The other craft that they were making were these love heart ornaments. So I found these heart shape wooden block kind of things and once again put ribbon on the back and glued it and turned them into ornaments. So this case, it was a little bit more Christmas oriented, but, you know, it's really something you could just hang anywhere. So they were able to take markers and but I had them with a permanent marker, write the name of someone that they truly love, that they don't have an opportunity to say, I love you to enough. So something where they could keep it. So on the back, I had them write their name and 2025. So that way they could remember it and whatnot. But kids had a ball coloring these. It was like, I want to make one for me, mom. I want to make the grandees are winning this week. I mean, everybody want to make something for grandma. So it's granny week. Go granny, get it girl. So thank you for your service, grandmas. So they just personalized the heart basically. Some of them did it for teachers. Some did it for their siblings, which I thought was kind of cool. One would did it for someone in the community that they admire. So you can ask them, why did you choose this person? What makes them interesting? Why do you, you know, why haven't you been able to say, I love you as much as you'd like? So and usually there's a pretty good reason for that. And that can be a good conversation to start. And besides, you know, it's low cost, it's high impact. It combines creativity with emotions and you get a tangible reminder of love and connection. And it can even become kind of an annual tradition. So you could do that. So so many ideas, so many ideas. So one of the things that y'all can do is maybe, you know, start an animal shelter food drive or something. You can collect and donate bags of food or research, you know, what then local. Have the kids do the research and make phone calls because they need to learn how to do that kids. Mm hmm. I see you. I see you. So you need to start making phone calls. I have them call the animal shelter and ask for a wish list. Maybe you can get emailed or something like that. You can always drop off donations at the animal shelter or local animal rights group, something like that. You can do that. You can help work at a soup kitchen. There are maybe some age requirements on that. You just want to check with them. But even if kids can't serve, they can help, you know, set tables and things like that. And it's a good way to talk about food insecurity, I think. And to talk about how a lot of people maybe can't afford it in this year, especially with the economy, not being very good right now. Everything's really expensive. So, so kiddos, it's a it's a lean year for us adults. So please don't be mad if and Santa too. So like I said, don't be mad if if you don't get that $500 video game system and that you get something handmade, which I think would be awesome. So I don't know. But some other ideas you could do. I don't know. Let's see. Let me let me throw some out there. Maybe like a coat drive. Yeah, you could do a coat drive. They always need that. You could make cards for people in nursing homes. I think that would be cool. I think that would be really our soldiers. I think that's good. You can bake some cookies for like the firefighters. How about that? Or the police or something like that or, you know, local child services building with the social workers. You can collect books to give to schools or anything like that. You know, we can always use more books for people's classrooms. You could do some like say there's a lot of snow outside and you could shovel snow. Like find someone who maybe is elderly in the neighborhood and see if, you know, just say, Hey, can I shovel your walkway for you? Because that's a lot of work for, you know, an older person and they could get hurt. So, you know, just kindness. Let's show kindness again. Let's make empathy cool again. I think that's really important. So it makes it meaningful for the kids and it makes long term memories that are happy memories. And even if they're used to us like a swirly yellow red ball, that's also competition. You know, it makes you want to have fun and be competitive and all that kind of stuff. But in any case, I mean, the holiday season is about making it meaningful and you can help kids because the first thing I would do is let them have choices. You need to explain about the benefits and why it matters, things like that. Discuss, you know, what it's like to give and how does it make them feel and things that they can do with that. But then you just sit down and have a family meeting. You could do like a one to three savings rule. So you can do that. I get one thing. I give away three things. So you can, you know, maybe you can even like put out a jar that says like save, spend and share if they get money or something like that. But just set the goals to be more age appropriate to your kiddo. So they may want to save for something special, a college fund or helping others for a car someday or, you know, I don't know, whatever. But you can always go back to the money management episode and listen to that and that may be of some help to you. So the main thing is just having some financial literacy options. You know, people need to learn about money from other people. So the holidays and holiday money is a teaching opportunity, not really just spending money. So so the real gifts kids want is presence over presence with the T.S. They don't really care so much about the gifts unless it's like some high end video game. But I made a list of some things that the kids are asking for. So here's my list. Okay, it says uninterrupted time with my family. Sorry, folks, if this gives you the feels, but this is this is what came out of the malliles of babes. So learning new skills alongside their family, simple things like baking cookies, learning to do laundry and setting up game night. One kid really wanted to set up game night. You know, help them to feel more helpful, more capable, more intelligent, have more responsibility. And they just want to make some positive memories. And I'm absolutely certain that my ridiculous joy episode, you know, it inspired me to make more memories and more happy memories to blot out some of the negative stuff that's happened to me. So it's important. You know, you need lots of positive memories. And this time of year, you can have such a sensory experience because of all the twinkle lights and, you know, nice kitchen smells and things. So, you know, speaking of kitchen, you know, smells and whatnot, you can also, you know, do kitchen skills. I mean, do that. Baking is chemistry. Baking is measurement and math. You know, kids can learn to make one simple meal, maybe like lasagna or chicken or something, but teach them how to make something or a breakfast, have them learn to make breakfast, because that's really interesting if they're old enough, of course, but they're in middle school. So they're playing old enough. So unless it is unless you happen to have younger kids and you're still listening, but I thank you for that. So, you know, you can read the recipes together. Be really cute and, you know, you get your math skills and if you homeschool, you could also count that. So but, you know, just general life skills like sorting and measuring detergent, folding laundry, doing laundry, basic cleaning routines, you know, show them how to clean from top to bottom, things like that. Organizing their own space, like sit with them and have them organize their room and you help them. They can wrap gifts for other people for their younger siblings. They could do things like that. But just be creative, you know, make crafts. You can decorate. Make thank you notes. My kids also got blank letter envelopes or actually card envelopes with blank greeting cards. They can make cards for people and people love that. They absolutely love that. And the kids were so proud to be able to make something like that. If you're not dorsy kind of family, you can always go on a nature walk and collect pine cones and make art out of it. You can build snowmen or snow angels or snow, whatever you want to make. You can go right around and look at neighborhood lights, which was always kind of one of my favorite things. We ate candy canes and looked at the neighborhood lights. That's it. Simple, simple, simple. I had a kid this week that said movie night with mom where we eat popcorn and watch old movies once a week on Fridays is the best thing that she knows. It doesn't take much. Kids aren't really wanting a whole lot. You know, maybe even make like a, I don't know, a winter scavenger hunt. That'd be kind of fun, like in the yard. But it's, it's just all about building confidence and confidence. And it creates those strong family bonds and teaches life skills. So it makes memories that last way longer than toys and definitely reduces screen time. So we're all amped on that lately. So, you know, block out the schedule for together time on the calendar. Let the kids help plan the activities. Keep it simple. You know, don't work, you know, just kind of ease yourself trickle drip, drip, drip into this. But just focus on the connection, not the perfection. You know, we're going to fix the 96. That's what we used to say back in 1996 when I was graduating, but now it's, we're going to fix in 2026. So we're going to try to get things better just like we did in 96. So, but in, you know, just saying, but kind of to put it all together. I mean, have your family meeting, discuss giving principles and the importance of giving as well as receiving and do, you know, one to one, one to three, whatever, you know, choose a couple of charities of, you know, an adult choice, maybe a kid choice that your family can support together or and then pick a couple of quality time activities. Or you can always make little strips of paper with different quality time options of things to do and you can pull it out of a jar. So there's that. But just, I mean, set expectations about gifts and experiences and adults, you know, feel free to discuss that maybe financially you're not in the best spot. Kids can handle that. They understand that. So they don't have any money either, right? Kids are broke mostly. So, you know, they don't have any money. So them hearing that you don't have a lot of money is sad for them, but they can handle it. So it's, it's perfectly fine. So you just want to adapt the activities to the age of the kid and let the older kids, you know, mentor the younger ones and that really would help, you know, have individual and then family projects, different things, but just start small. Just pick one tradition a year and build on it, see if it works. Keep it, you know, kind of pressure free, you know, not even a lot of youth stress, just total joy and youth stress. I mean, youth stress is good, but being overwhelmed isn't clearly the way to go. So the one on one giving method is, is, you know, it builds character and gratitude and empathy and all those wonderful things and can be a positive channel for holiday energy into, you know, meaningful activities. So let this creativity run wild and if you're feeling a sense of youth stress, you know, write down some ideas that may come to your head from that superior gyrus. So you can make little simple crafts like wishing stars. You can make those love hearts. You can make cards. There's all kinds of low cost things you can do. You can make a book, staple the, you know, take some copy paper and staple the sides and you have a sketchbook and you can share that. But just giving back teaches empathy through action. So money is a teaching tool. It is not money power ego is the evil triad. You know, don't be afraid of money. Don't hate money, but respect money. So save a third of what you receive of holiday cash. So spend, save, share. You can have those, you know, maybe like a jar that you can put stuff in. So, but it is the perfect time for learning with your family. And so make this holiday season a learning experience. I mean, is it's not found in a store. It's not ever going to be found in a store. It's presence with a C E not T S and the opportunity to experience the joy of giving together is second to none. So try one idea from this episode. You know, share your family's giving tradition with me, Suzanne Swain, a Gmail, you know, tag photos, whatever you want to do. Go back and listen to the money management episode and good luck having some fun out there with your holiday activities. I'm so excited to hear what you all come up with on Tuesday. I'll be having that. I'll be in the middle of my knee surgery getting my 3d printed knee. So wish me luck. Y'all see on the flip side, but that is so cool that a robot is doing it. So stay clever little foxes. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Ho, ho, ho. And may all of your dreams come true when you wish upon a star.
