Christmas is nearly upon us. Our children are bottling their excitement as we approach the holidays ready to release all this pent up energy at some point over the festive season. For some, managing expectations is a challenge and at some point, perhaps through tiredness or an inability to know how to handle the demands of more intense and confined relationships over an extended period, there may well be a tantrum or two and some tears. However, this all pales into insignificance and is soon forgotten within the all-pervading sense of fun and good times induced by the Christmas season.

As parents, we know this is all part of growing up. Learning to recognise emotions and taking the necessary steps to manage them effectively can be a challenge. These days, many of us resort to our phones and social media for our ‘quiet’ time. Phones have become self-defence mechanisms. And that is the theme of my Christmas message, because these days we are all guilty of too quickly resorting to our phones as barrier or excuse.

Did you know?

By this, they mean rules like; no phones at the dining table during meal times, phones off whilst we are talking, don’t interrupt a conversation because a notification has come through.

Here is an interesting statistic for you.

* 89% of people agree their relationships are damaged from being ignored due to phone distraction.

In this post I’m not going to focus on children and their use of technology or making mistakes online to an audience of thousands. Or how viewing between 400-600 carefully crafted / photoshopped images per day is impacting our children’s self esteem. Instead I’m going to suggest that over Christmas we all (staff, parents and pupils) make an effort to not resort to our phones at the first suggestion of not being busy. Perhaps we can all use this time to enjoy, appreciate and revel in each other? Perhaps we can rediscover  face to face, real, long lasting, empathetic relationships with each other that make us feel valued and good about ourselves?  Just a thought!

Have a wonderful Christmas.