Children and Santa photos. You’ve made it to the shopping centre. The kids are in matching outfits. Waited in line for 45 minutes. It all starts. Crying. Screaming. Trying to run away. Everyone is staring. You try to hold it together. Just one photo. Yep. It’s Christmas. 

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas Santa!

The genesis of shopping centre Santa photos

For over 100 years families have taken children to have photos with Santa. The children get really excited to see Santa to the point you can almost see the magic in their eyes. They have the opportunity to chat with Santa about what they would like for Christmas. 

Some kids rush to Santa, like a long lost relative they instantly love and adore. Others, are more cautious, gently approaching, as if ol’ St Nick might explode or vanish at any time.

3 reasons your child is terrified of the big man in red

For all the kids who love being with Santa, there are certainly ones who are scared. Let’s look at why this might be.

1. Santa is a stranger

We send mixed messages about kids talking with strangers. We drum into kids about safety around strangers – don’t talk to them, don’t go with them. But then we expect kids to talk to this man once a year and sit on his knee (often alone, while you wait near the photographer). 

2. Santa looks scary

Maybe if kids saw Santa all year long they would become more familiar with him. But who else dresses like Santa, especially when I live in a subtropical climate where it is summer at Christmas? Santa’s face is partly concealed due to his beard and hat. His overweight body and big fluffy costume. Santa often looks like a giant to a small child. 

3. Santa sounds scary

The sound that tells us Santa is near. The big, loud, deep voice that yells ‘HO HO HO’. The sound of a bell. Sounds that are loud and unfamiliar to small children can frighten them. We expect to hear these sounds, but children often forget from one year to the next, especially under the age of three or four years.   

So, what do you do?

One of the key things to consider is, how important are the Santa photos for you?

Santa photos are part of family traditions around Christmas. My mum took us for Santa photos when we were children, so it was just something I did with my kids without thinking much about it. 

The first photo C-Man was 9 months old, so it was a piece of cake. The second year he was 21 months old and I ended up in the photo with him and he looks very less than impressed! The third year Missy Moo was 9 months old and C-Man refused to go near Santa. I remember being disappointed. The next two years neither of the kids would go near him! They were both so scared. From then on, both kids were perfectly comfortable and are in every photo. 

I hang up the Santa photos every year when I decorate the house for Christmas, and it really doesn’t bother me that there are two years missing. I know that I met the kids’ emotional needs by not forcing and distressing them, and really, how important is a Santa photo anyway? 

Key takeaways from this classic Christmas tale

1. Children are often scared of the unfamiliar
2. Children can be confused about mixed messages of stranger danger
3. Consider how important a Santa photo is to you versus the distress of your child

Final Thoughts

Children being forced to sit with Santa while clearly frightened, crying or screaming, doesn’t sit well with me. It makes me feel very uncomfortable. 

Around Christmastime it’s common to see TV shows or social media displaying photos of crying children in Santa photos. I don’t like it. I think it perpetuates the idea that it is perfectly acceptable to frighten children for the sake of a photo. 

From a child’s perspective, their loving parent forces them to sit on the lap of the scariest looking man in a shopping centre for a photo. It is confusing for them, when the person they love and trust the most in the world does something that makes them feel so frightened. This is not the outcome we want as parents.

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It’s really common for mums to look for sanity tips after they have a baby. One of the things many mums tell me is how overwhelming they find it when they first come home with their baby. There’s so much we just don’t know before we have our baby, some of which we just don’t learn because our village has been lost, and some of which because we need to simply experience it to understand it. Like sleep deprivation. Did you EVER know how hard that was going to be?! 

The problem is that with the loss of the village, and the loss of family in close proximity to many new mothers, new mums are often left feeling alone. Even for mums like me who knew quite well how to CARE for a newborn, I didn’t know how it felt to be sleep deprived and I had never breastfed before. I had never cared for a baby whilst having severe abdominal pain from a ceasarean section, and I had never experienced severe nipple pain before whilst also caring for a baby. So I was in a new zone. Is that where you are?

Top tips for motherhood 

• Sleep when baby or toddler sleeps. Seriously. Leave the housework. Get some rest. The only opportunity you will have is with your first child. By the time your second baby is born, your older child will need entertaining or supervising and you won’t get to rest (unless they are at daycare by then). I used to love going to my bed during the day with my toddler when I was pregnant with my second. We would read books and then both of us would sleep. I never had the opportunity to do this again when the baby was born. I so needed it during my pregnancy though!

• Lower your expectations. With cleaning. With cooking. With parenting in general. Maybe you used to love cooking from scratch before you had kids. And now there’s no time or you are just too tired. So buy a few jars of pasta sauce! Maybe you can manage to cook from scratch a couple of nights per week, particularly when your partner is home. Cook extra serves and freeze for the nights when cooking just isn’t happening.

• Order in or eat out. If you’ve just had one.of.those.days, don’t keep pushing. Just get takeaway. It won’t hurt your toddler to have pizza or McDonald’s one night or matter if you have an omelette for dinner. It’s about lowering those expectations. Sometimes it’s just not possible to have a fully cooked meal on the table seven nights per week.

• Eat little and often. If making your normal meals throughout the day is becoming challenging, then graze on foods throughout the day to keep your energy up. Remember that if you are breastfeeding you will be burning extra calories through the day so you will need more nutrition. Sometimes not eating can make mums feel sick, so eating little and often can be helpful to settle the tummy.

• Use a diary or planner. If ‘pregnancy brain’ or ‘mummy brain’ is getting to you and you forget more than you remember, write it down! Write all your appointments, coffee catch ups, mothers’ groups, birthdays etc in a calendar so you can keep track. Using an electronic one is great because it’s with you everywhere you go and you can check it and make appointments/catch ups on the go.

• Get into a routine. This isn’t for the kids as such, but for you. If mornings are so difficult to get out of the house, prep the night before. Nappy bag packed. Lunch boxes/snack boxes packed. Mum’s outfit chosen/kids outfits chosen. It might increase your nightly taskload, but it will make things run smoother in the mornings.

• Get out of the house. Staring at four walls and not getting fresh air can drive you batty. Pop bub in a pram or carrier, go for a quick walk around the block, or a slow walk, depending on where you are at with your birth recovery and fitness. Otherwise, just wander around a shopping centre. You might find yourself chatting away to anyone who will talk to you (I know I did!) because you crave other adult conversations. That’s okay. There’s usually someone around who will chat.

• Exercise with your kids. It might be that walk with the pram or the toddler is on a bike or scooter while you walk. You might find a gym or outdoor exercise program that has a creche, OR a family centred exercise program so you can all do it together. There’s plenty around. For a few years I went to an outdoor bootcamp that had a creche inside a building and then I joined another bootcamp where babies and toddlers could be there with their mums. Mums stopped exercising to breastfeed their babies and tend to their children but mostly got a workout and it was a great option!
• Last tip: learn to say no! Sometimes it’s really important for your body to rest, for your mental health, for your kids to have some downtime if you’ve been really hectic lately, to just say no and stay home. Maybe you get asked to a social event and your calendar is actually free. It’s still okay to say no! Prioritising yourself and your children is within your rights and it’s important to do so!

Mums Feeling Good

At the Making Mama Village workshop series we cover a lot of this content in the last session. Mums need to learn tips to save their sanity, but also to realise you don’t have to do it all. It’s okay if you are not doing everything perfectly the way you might have done before you had children. You want to feel supported in your efforts to do the very best you can. At the end of the day your children will know that you loved them by what you say to them and how you act with them, not because you have a gourmet meal on the table each night and a clean house. We’ve moved on since the 1950s thankfully!

Have you signed up to join the village yet? Go here to do so: https://makingmamavillage.com.au/

You can check out more about the workshops on offer here: https://makingmamavillage.com.au/services/

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