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The article is subjective and expresses the personal opinion of the author.
1. Avoid high expectations
After the nervous tension in the office, the household chores and the tedious unraveling of the garland, it seems that at last, it will be possible to sit down with a glass of champagne, listen to the firewood cracking in the fireplace and look at the happy faces of the children. Of course, during the holiday's everything goes wrong: the children forget that they should make happy faces, at the same time - they accidentally pour “Russian sparkling wine”, and the fireplace - how could this fly out of my head? - you had no spawn. In general, fantasy, along with marketers-sellers of happiness and fireplaces, palm off on us seductive pictures that are unlikely to ever come true. By age 30, you can already stop believing in Santa Claus. Not a single family problem can be solved by the fact that the Jingle Bells plays on the radio: grandmother will continue to unbearably criticize the tablecloth, dad will switch channels, the children will rush about first and then roar. This is normal, and we must be prepared for this.
2. Remember dopamine and bursts of euphoria
In 2001, Stanford neuroscientist Brian Knutson published a study in which he proved that the neurotransmitter dopamine is not responsible for experiencing the reward, but for its anticipation. When the prospect of wrapping ourselves in tinsel and dancing looms before us, we feel joyful excitement: the brain releases dopamine with might and main (from Kelly McGonigal's book “Willpower. How to Develop and Strengthen”). The expectation of happiness is more important than its realization: in the interests of evolution, so that we strive for a reward, and not sit in spangles with a happy face. That is, while we are running from the store with bags full, we are happy. And the day after the New Year, the euphoria subsides and you already want to start a conversation with your brother why he is putting his motorcycle on your part of the garden plot.
3. Start and keep traditions
In Christmas films, miracles happen to heroes. And no matter how much trouble they would not plunge into, as a result, everyone sits at the perfect table in perfect composition and rejoice indicative of each other. This is the law of the genre. There are no ideal families in life, and most of our relatives are a source of great tension for us. Moreover, from the fact that you all have been hanging around the table for more than one day, love for each other does not increase.
The ideal thing that allows you to stop the flow of jokes from the father-in-law and add tenderness to each other is traditions. Ritualized actions relieve tension, even if they are similar to the activities of the younger group of kindergarten. Get yourself a cute ceremony and strictly observe it every year. Here, writing a huge family wall newspaper-postcard, creating a book with wishes, holiday photo shoots, making wishes with a candle in a circle, notes and playing the “Secret Friend”, strange fortune-telling on an apple, on coffee beans, and on daddy’s skiing suits it.
4. Create a program (board games and no politics)
Do not be afraid that your family will hate you if you post the “Program of events”. It’s much easier to look at Aunt Nadi’s acrobatic study than uncle Valera’s wrangling with his wife on the slippery ground of pickles. Distract your family, support a spark of fun and a sparkler and ruthlessly put out attempts to discuss the political situation in the country. This topic is more dangerous than spilled gas in a fireworks store.
Include in your program something that will bring your family closer: choral singing, blind manners, preference. Usually, board games are something that adults and children can play with the same fervor, so it is better to prepare game boxes in advance by disguising them as candy packaging. But even without boxes, there are always forfeits, pantomime and word games, such as the New Year's Crocodile. They will amuse even those relatives who have come from afar and are upset that Gazmanov did not sing on the Blue Light.
5. Arrange a home theater
This New Year event competes in coolness with the idea of turning off the TV. Home theater does not require much trouble, and those that still require are classified as pleasant. Making a baron’s headdress out of a ski cap is a wonderful pastime. You can play any literary work: a children's fairy tale, an atmospheric New Year’s story, such as The Nutcracker or The Snow Queen. The main fan is to come up with a sudden and funny move: let the dad be a two-meter snowflake, the wardrobe will be a wardrobe, and Vera Palna, the mother-in-law, in the dusk, will be able to condense it.
If the actors are embarrassed to pronounce the words, declare a pantomime or musical (it’s very funny to dance and expressively open your mouth to the sound shows found on the Internet). The appropriate idea for a dark winter is to engage in a shadow performance. Oiled paper and a little mischief come in handy for him. Sometimes the best you can offer your relatives is to cut the hedgehog in profile.
If it didn’t work with hedgehogs, prepare a full-length shadow show: a sheet in the doorway, a paper hat, a lamp, on the other hand, will help.
6. Work with your emotions
The main difficulty for parents is that they will spend almost two weeks at home. A hangover doesn’t work well with children. The guys begin to rustle with wrappers, turn on clockwork dump trucks and helicopters, burn the remnants of sparklers, first hug, and then fight over a plush python ... And all these sounds will cause you to have bouts of hatred for the New Year in general and Seryoga in particular (he’s suggested mixing tinctures). The best thing that can be done now is not to break into children.
Canadian psychologist Gordon Newfeld explains in his course where aggression comes from. It occurs in any parent in response to frustration - deceived expectations. And children are an inexhaustible source of stories from the series "something went wrong." Dad recorded his son in three Christmas trees and five performances, dressed in a tie and a suit of a luminous robot, and the man put the cutlet in his pocket, cried and said that he won’t go anywhere. The main thing for dad is to stop the automatic reaction to stress: increased breathing increased pressure and fixation at the source of danger with a cutlet in your pocket. There is only a moment when a parent can take a deep breath: “Stop! In the end, a Christmas tree for a child or a child for a Christmas tree? ” Maybe today everyone just needs to go and play snowballs in the yard.
7. Sing
Even if a round dance with a chorus “slender in winter and summer” seems to you to be too exquisite an event for your apartment, do not refuse a friendly song. Fortunately, on New Year's Eve, there are enough reasons for the song: you can arrange hellish karaoke, perform with a folk motive, or at least play the national anthem of Russia. Studies show that choral singing has a great effect on the psychological well-being of a person, even if someone is fake all the time. So now the chorus: "The beads were hung, stood in a round dance, fun, fun to meet ...".
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