If you clicked through hoping for words of wisdom and a foolproof way to stop your little critters from destroying your festive display, then you’re out of luck. By cunningly misplacing my punctuation, I’ve lured you in and now need you to tell me. Please…how do I stop them touching Christmas decorations and removing everything from the bottom half of my tree?
I love Christmas and especially love decorating my house. My aim is to achieve something between Pinterest worthy classy and Santa’s grotto. I fear I’m more the latter but if nothing else my house is garishly festive. Last year, with two year old twins, I kept breakables out of reach and was very mindful of not putting too many enticing nik nacks out and about. I’m not sure why, but yesterday all that went out the window as the decorations went up.
Maybe the over zealous child within just could contain herself or maybe I was just naive but either way everything came out. I just hoped at now three years old, they might be able to restrain themselves. Ha! Unsurprisingly, this was totally unrealistic. Within minutes, my hearth display was scattered around the house and my carefully organised tree was undressed.
Not so top tips
I have attempted the following to try and stop the daily carnage but you’ll need to tell me whether you have any success as for now my tactics are failing.
1. Separate Decorations and Toys
Put all the Christmas toys (not decorations) in one place and explain they can play with these and move them about the house. At tidy up time, at the end of the day, these go back to the allocated spot. The main problem I’m having with this one is that because my decorations are pretty childish, it’s understandable that they can’t really tell the difference between the toys and decorations.
2. Give them their own tree
I happened to have a smaller tree and thought by letting them decorate this, they may be less tempted to touch mine. We have also accumulated a ridiculous amount of named decorations (Yes that’s you Nannie and Nin). I’m not sure how many tree ornaments we need with Jessica and Emily written on them but we have enough. These can now go on their own tree. They covered their tree in tinsel to the point you could barely see the branches but I actually love it. Did this plan work? Nope.
3. Allow touching but not moving
I was getting desperate at this point and so told them they could touch some of the decorations but that they needed to be sitting. The decorations must stay where I put them and couldn’t be moved to another place. This worked for about five minutes and then they just forgot which ones they could/couldn’t touch.
Please help
My decorations have been up less than 48hrs and already there has been a casualty. Poor Rudolph has been ridden and his antlers snapped off. They didn’t mean to and were very sorry but he was just too tempting. With a glue gun and nails, I’m sure he’ll be right as rain but I think he may need to retreat to the sanctuary of our loft for another year.
I’m really hoping that given a few more days, the novelty of all the trimmings will just wear off and they might actually want to play with some of their toys again. If anyone has any tips, I’m all ears.
Ahhh lovely post! I just don’t think you can expect little ones not to touch anything sparkly! I mean I can’t stop touching anything sparkly! Bring on the glitter!! I love it! My class and I dressed our class tree today and it looks bonkers but they did it and that’s important. I love your idea of their own tree so hopefully they can’t go mad with the family one! That poor reindeer though 🤦🏼♀️😳🤔🤣🎄😍 #thechristmaslinky
I love the idea of getting them their own smaller tree, will be picking one up later! Thanks so much for sharing with #Blogstravaganza xx
Poor Rudolph! I’ve got a crawling 7 month old and I dread to think what’s going to happen to the tree when we put it up this weekend! We’ve got a smaller tree which I’m going to give to her to decorate in the coming years – fab idea! 🙂 #Blogstravaganza
Haha, this is a parents nightmare isn’t, sometimes I just think I should be done with it and get a Christmas tree that you can put on the ceiling that will stop them won’t it! Nevertheless Fantastic tips, thanks for sharing X #Blogstravaganza xx
My little boy is now 4 and very into Christmas and my magical stories. He kept touching the decorations and so I told him that he had to remember that the tree didn’t have the Christmas magic yet and the more he touched the decorations the longer it would take for the magic to come in and if there was Christmas Magic santa wouldn’t be able to find our house. Seemed to work for today at least. Shame the one year old doesn’t understand and keeps going over and giving everything a poke! #Blogstravaganza
I don’t think anything would stop them. I have a 10 months old and a almost 3 years old so I just have to pick them up everyday! #FamilyFunLinky
Haha! My eldest is fine but the toddler is obsessed by the apples as he calls them on the tree! I like the idea of giving them their own tree though x
#blogstravaganza
Haha Slovenia their own tree! I think it’s a pretty common theme these day, their own space to have full creative license over. I am sorry I have no tips. We don’t have lots of decorations though and the few we do have are mostly out of reach. They still play with the tree and the Christmas light though…and I continue to bang my head against the wall telling them not to! Thanks for joining us at #familyfun
By Christmas surely they’ll be bored of touching
Having two little ones myself I do understand what you are going through. The trick I’ve found is have things that could potentially break up high and put the baubles back on the tree when they’ve gone to bed. #Blogstravaganza
Completely understand! I have a one year old who, on top of wanting to touch and pull on everything, doesn’t quite understand “don’t touch” yet. I just wrote a blog post about baby-safe Christmas decor, but yours at are that age where they could find ways to get to what they want. Protect those breakables and family heirlooms! May the odds be ever in your favor! Good luck!