How to Split Holiday Time Between Families When You Have Young Children
The first sign of trouble was the nap schedule. We had packed the car for the two-hour drive to my parents’ house on December 23rd, and my three-year-old was already crying about a missing toy dinosaur. His sister, eight months old, had just fallen asleep in the car seat. My husband and I looked at each other across the back seat, both thinking the same thing: we had four family visits in five days, and we hadn’t even left the driveway yet.
Like most families with young children, we don’t have a simple holiday plan. My parents live in one direction, my husband’s mother in another, and there are aunts and cousins scattered across three counties. Every December we try to make everyone feel seen, and every January we collapse wondering why the kids spent most of the holiday season overstimulated and overtired.
This year, we decided to do it differently. Not dramatically—no cruise, no skipping family entirely—but with a few small adjustments that actually took into account how young children experience time. Because the truth is, a three-year-old doesn’t measure the holidays in visits or meals. He measures them in naps, snack timing, and whether he can find his favorite cup. When those things get thrown off, everything else falls apart.
That first visit to my parents was fine, mostly because we had given ourselves a full day in between. That was our first real change: we stopped trying to do two households in one day. Last year, we had Christmas brunch at my mom’s and dinner at his mom’s. Six hours apart. The kids were wrecked, and so were we. This year, we planned a buffer day. We stayed home on December 24th, made cookies, let the kids play with their new toys, and did not get in the car. It felt like a waste at first—we could have squeezed in another visit—but by the time we pulled into my mother-in-law’s driveway on Christmas afternoon, the kids were actually happy to be there. They ran inside, hugged her, and immediately started exploring her tree. No tears. No clinging to my legs.
The second thing we changed was the present situation. For small children, opening gifts is not a calm, joyful ritual. It’s a chaotic blur of paper, noise, and competing demands. Last year, everyone gathered in the living room, and the kids tore through three or four presents each before they even knew what they had. My son ended up crying because he wanted to play with a truck that was still in its box, and my niece kept grabbing his other toys. It wasn’t anyone’s fault—it’s just what happens when you put young kids in a room full of gifts and tell them to go.
This year, we asked both grandmothers to space things out. Not every gift at once. One present at a time, with time to actually play and explore. My mom thought we were being ridiculous, but she allowed it. My husband’s mom did it naturally because she always prefers watching the kids open things slowly. The difference was huge. My son sat on the floor, unwrapped a small set of wooden blocks, and played with them for twenty minutes before even looking at the next gift. My daughter, who is too little to understand wrapping, was happy to chew on the ribbons. There was no crying, no grabbing, and the whole thing felt a lot less like a gift-wrapping grenade.
We also stopped scheduling things around adult meal times. That was my idea, and it came from exhaustion. I was tired of sitting down for a big holiday dinner at 2:00, only to have my toddler refuse to eat anything because he was too excited about the gravy boat. So we started packing a little bag of familiar foods—bananas, crackers, cheese sticks—and giving them to the kids before the big meal. Not as a replacement, but as a bridge. It meant they weren’t starving when dinner was served, and if they didn’t want to try the ham, that was okay. There was no pressure. My mother-in-law was a little offended at first, but then she saw my son actually sit at the table for ten minutes without a meltdown. She came around.
One of the harder parts was communicating our boundaries to family without sounding like we were holding something over their heads. My husband was the one who handled that. He called his mom ahead of time and said, “We’re trying to keep the kids on a loose routine. It’s not about being strict—it’s just so they don’t get overwhelmed.” To my surprise, she understood. She told him about how we had a meltdown at his niece’s birthday party the previous spring, and she said she’d noticed we always left early. She just hadn’t known what to offer.
That conversation reminded me that grandparents aren’t mind readers. They want to see the kids, but they don’t always know what feels sustainable. And if we don’t tell them, they’ll assume the old schedule works. So we started being more specific with our requests. Instead of “We’ll see you at some point on Christmas,” we said, “We can come for two hours, from 3 to 5, and then the kids need to wind down.” It felt awkward at first, but it was better than pretending we had unlimited energy.
What I didn’t expect was how much the kids themselves would help us stick to the plan. On the drive to my parents’ house, my son asked, “When are we going home?” at least four times. He wasn’t being difficult—he was just trying to map out the day. Young children understand time through routines and anchors. If we say “we’re going to Grandma’s,” they need to know what comes next. So we started talking about the trip beforehand. We showed them pictures of the house. We said, “We’ll play at Grandma’s, then have dinner, then we’ll drive home and sleep in your own bed.” That visual script made everything easier. It gave them a sense of control.
At the same time, we made some mistakes. I forgot the pacifier at my mother-in-law’s house, and we had to do a forty-minute round trip to retrieve it. My husband forgot to charge the tablet, which meant no winding-down videos before bed. The kids had a rough night sleep, and the next day was a little grumpy. So we adapted again. We made a checklist before every outing: diapers, snacks, pacifier, tablet, change of clothes. It sounds obvious, but when you’re rushing out the door with a baby and a preschooler, the basics get lost.
By the time New Year’s weekend rolled around, we had a rhythm. We arrived at family gatherings a little later than we used to, and we left a little earlier. We didn’t stay for every toast or every game. We skipped the late-evening gathering entirely that involved four kids and nine adults in a small living room. Instead, we went home, put the kids to bed, and ordered takeout. My husband and I sat on the couch, half-watching a movie, half-checking our phones. It wasn’t a romantic New Year’s, but it felt honest. We were tired. The kids were sleeping. And for the first time in years, I didn’t feel resentful about the holidays.
There’s a certain pressure that comes with family time during the holidays, especially when you have young children. You want to honor the relationships. You want the kids to know their grandparents, their cousins, their aunts and uncles. But you also want to survive. And the older I get, the more I realize that survival doesn’t mean doing everything perfectly. It means choosing what to let go.
So we’ve stopped trying to make every holiday visit a marathon. We’ve stopped trying to hit every house, every meal, every meaningful moment. We’re learning that a two-hour visit where the kids are actually present is worth more than a six-hour visit where everyone?—including the adults?—feels stretched too thin.
Will it work next year? I don’t know. The kids will be older. The schedules will shift. Maybe my son will want to stay longer at his grandparents’ house, or maybe he’ll beg to leave even earlier. The thing about parenting during the holidays is that the plan always changes. And the best we can do is show up with snacks, a flexible spirit, and a clear idea of what we can manage. That’s not a moral victory. It’s just the practical reality of raising small kids in a world that expects everyone to be everywhere at once.
This year, I’m holding onto a small moment: my son sitting on my mother’s lap, both of them looking at a picture book, him telling her the names of the animals. She was patient. He was calm. No one was rushing to the next thing. And when we finally packed up the car to leave, he said, “I want to come back.”
It was enough.
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