A blog showcasing the importance of not taking Christmas decorations down too quickly, backed up by research!

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, Kate recently shared an article with me about Elaborative Reminiscing, and this article comes on the back of a study carried out by clinical psychologist Dr Claire Mitchell and looks into benefits of not taking the Christmas decorations down too quickly. Christmas can be difficult for children to process, as they may not fully understand the meaning of Christmas until they have actually experienced it, so January is a valuable time for children to be able to process what they have done and experienced over the Christmas period and they are able to explore this in a way in which supports their mental wellbeing. The children used in the study were followed up aged 15 and it was found that the children that have experienced elaborative reminiscing showed less symptoms of depression and anxiety than those in the control group.

Elaborative Reminiscing is something that you probably do every day without realising, it is simply talking about and sharing memories of recent events, allowing you to talk about them with empathy and validating the other person’s emotions or experiences. It comes down simply to encouraging children to express how they experienced an event how the child felt, what they saw, how it smelled and how all our senses are experienced. This is something that is done so easily and we all do without even realising, children’s focus weeks also help us to experience this by looking through the photos that you send in from home to allow us to talk to children about their experiences and they are able to relive these again with us.  Recently, Laura our deputy manager also commented on how the children in our toddler room are still not ready to put away their Halloween costumes, they are still too young to understand these traditions and why they come and go so quickly.

At Great Wood Farm in the New Year we are going to be keeping our Christmas decorations out for a little while longer so that children are able to continue the Christmas spirit. This will enable us to continue to talk to the children about their Christmas holidays and role-play things that they have experienced over the festive period, as for some children this may be the first year that a child fully experiences and understands the magic of Christmas.

Following on from this we have also delved into how Christmas as a whole can impact children and I just wanted to quickly touch on the pressures and expectations of Christmas.

We understand how stressful the festive period can be and that whilst there are of course moments of joy and happiness, it is also a very busy time, with changes to routines, seeing so many different people and this can be overwhelming for children and as a result there can be so many emotions bought up. There are also so many expectations on you as parents too, so we also want to remind parents to enjoy this time with your children and to take some time to have some down time and enjoy Christmas as family, for some of you this Christmas may be very different compared to other years and remember that this is ok.

Each family has their own special and unique way to celebrate over the festive period and we look forward to celebrating and reminiscing with the children in the New Year.

Best wishes, Robyn