14: Winter Break Survival Tips for Parents
Winter break can be something we look forward to and something that quietly overwhelms us at the same time. In this episode, I’m sharing simple, realistic ways to make winter break feel more manageable for your family, especially if your child does best with routine, downtime, or fewer expectations. We’ll talk about planning just enough structure, knowing when it’s okay to say no, and how to support both your child’s needs and your own so the break actually feels like a break.
Key Takeaways:
Lower the bar on expectations so winter break feels restorative instead of pressure-filled—for both you and your child.
Create light structure by mapping out a few anchor points in the day (meals, downtime, sleep) to help kids who struggle with sudden schedule changes.
Plan for decompression time, especially in the first few days of break, when kids may “crash” after holding it together at school.
Say no—or leave early—when holiday plans don’t match your child’s needs, and know that protecting their nervous system matters.
Ease back into school routines a few days before break ends to reduce stress and avoid a chaotic return to school.
Resources:
Conquering After School Restraint Collapse blog post
5 Ways to Make Transitions Easier blog post
Feeling Overwhelmed as a Parent? You’re Not Alone blog post
Connect with Scotti:
Transcript
14: Winter Break Survival Tips for Parents
[00:00:00] If you know things about your particular child, do they really crave quiet time? How can you build that intentionally into your schedule? Do you as a parent, have work needs that you have to work around that you need to schedule their activities to accommodate the things that you have to get done?
having an open conversation goes a long way towards helping them plan for that where they know ahead of time what those days are going to look like.
Scotti Wentraub: Welcome to Unlocking School Success, a podcast with the smart strategies and support parents need to help their kids thrive. I'm your host, Scotty Weintraub, parent coach, school navigator, and your go-to guide for turning School Stress and Chaos into clear strategies that work. Let's get started.
Welcome back to another episode of Unlocking School Success, and today we're [00:01:00] not actually gonna talk about school. We're gonna talk about time off of school and specifically winter break. It can be a much anticipated time, both for kids and for parents, but it can also be kind of a tricky time. So we're gonna talk through some strategies on how to manage winter break so that you have fun.
And some success. Stick with me till the end because I'm gonna talk about something and name a feeling that I think a lot of parents might have and kids too. But we might not say out loud. So stick around. I wanna start by being really honest about winter break. It is both a very anticipated time in December.
School can feel like a lot. You've got regular school activities and assignments, but then you add onto that extra holiday activities. Maybe there are parties in the classroom. Maybe you have extra family [00:02:00] activities in the evenings or on the weekends, it can feel jam packed. So you may be anticipating both the time away from school and the time away from all of the busyness.
But it's also true that winter break. While it can be fun, also brings its own challenges. Maybe you have holidays to attend to. That might involve shopping, cooking, meeting with family, which may be both really great but also challenging. And for some kids it's similarly a time of real excitement. For others, it can feel disorienting to not have the schedule of the school day.
And it can also be a time when perhaps the weather is more challenging. It's harder to get outside for some of us, and so it just can bring its own challenges along with all of the [00:03:00] fun. So first I'm gonna ask you to do something that might sound difficult. That is to try to lower the bar and by lowering the bar, I mean let's lower our expectations.
Yes, December is full of holiday fun, and we can get very wrapped up in needing or wanting to feel holiday magic. Whatever holidays your family's celebrates, it can feel like some pressure. We want our kids to have a good experience. We maybe have a vision in our heads about what that's supposed to look like, but that can come with a lot of pressure.
Pressure for our time, pressure for our finances, and pressure on our nervous systems.
So my, if we can lower that bar, maybe we don't have to do every single activity maybe. [00:04:00] Just being together, having some fun. Maybe we don't need to cook four kinds of cookies when one will do. So. If we can lower our expectations, it gives us the time and the permission to allow for more downtime if that's needed, or to really personalize what that time means for us and for our kids.
So let's talk about this idea of a schedule. School is very routinized. Our time in school is regimented by the opening bell moving between classes if our kids are slightly older and by the closing bell at the end of the day. So we know, and our kids have a predictable routine. They're used to it now by the time we've been in school for several months.
So we have this schedule, they know what's expected of them, and then all of a sudden winter break comes along. Poof, that schedule is out the window. All of a sudden we have days with [00:05:00] perhaps no schedule. And while that might sound really wonderful to me as an adult, I love a good day with no schedule.
But for some kids, that lack of schedule is a recipe for challenges. They don't quite know what to do if they don't know what's happening or don't have a sense of what is possible for their day? So my suggestion is let's spend some time, maybe even before break starts really doing some planning. What do we need to get accomplished during our break and on very specific days?
And map that out. Are there days when we know we have an activity that's happening and then we want to engage our kids in conversations. What would you like to do over break? Are there ways to incorporate some of their ideas in between all the other activities you already have scheduled? And how can we try to be as [00:06:00] consistent as we can with things like bedtimes, which I know my kids too would love to not have a bedtime, but especially when they were younger.
The lack of bedtime if we pushed that too much, always meant problems the next day. So if you know that that's true for your kids, how can we try our best to keep up consistent routines around bedtime or meal times if you know that they need consistent food in order for their blood sugar to not drop too low, which.
I certainly know can be a recipe for crankiness in my house. So how can we be more consistent with those meal times and other things that you know that you are going to need to do, including chores around the house, family activities, things that the kids really need to get done. So let's bring our kids into those conversations.
I think it's one of the easiest ways to make winter break go more [00:07:00] smoothly. You could do it as a sit down family meeting, but really it can be less formal than that by just inviting their input in simple ways. I think open-ended questions about what do you think is something you would really like to do over the winter break?
Let's look at the calendar and figure out what day that makes the most sense.
And then if you know things about your particular child, do they really crave quiet time? How can you build that intentionally into your schedule? Do they need maybe an hour or two every afternoon? Maybe morning fun. Afternoon downtime before an evening activity. Do you as a parent, have work needs that you have to work around that you need to schedule their activities to accommodate the things that you have to get done?
So [00:08:00] having an open conversation, even with younger kids, I think goes a long way towards helping them see, okay, mom has to work in the afternoon. So if I need her time and attention, I need to do it in the morning, or if they're going to day camps or other kinds of childcare settings, helping them plan for that where they know ahead of time what those days are going to look like.
When winter break starts I think some kids also have a decompression crash. It can be hard, as I've said, to go from that rigid schedule of school to all of a sudden exhaling if they've been holding it all together at school, to then let their bodies rest. So maybe that means for the first few days of winter break, maybe you need to schedule even less.
If you know your kid is someone who needs a lot of that decompression time, maybe you have slower mornings on the first few days or fewer [00:09:00] transitions, or maybe just lower expectations in general about what all is going to be able to be accomplished. One of my other big tips, which I had to learn the really hard way when my kids were younger, is that sometimes it's okay to say no.
Especially at really busy times of the year when you may feel pulled in a million different directions where you're getting invitations to parties, to dinners, to holiday gatherings of all kinds. Sometimes it's okay to say no, especially if we're trying to take our individual kids' needs into account. It might mean that that New Year's Eve celebration that goes until midnight might not be the best fit.
Instead, maybe you stay for a little while and leave by 9:00 PM Maybe you don't go at all.
Maybe your kid needs breaks in busy bustling holiday [00:10:00] activities. This can be especially true if your child has sensory needs and you are, for instance, at a bustling holiday party where there was a lot of noise. Maybe they need to know that there's a place they can escape to for some quieter time. So kind of plotting that out with the host in advance.
Where's the place where my son can go if he's feeling a little overstimulated or needs a quiet space? Is that a back bedroom or the basement or whatever that might look like? Is there somewhere outside that they can go and run off some steam, shoot a few basketballs. Is there a place and you can plan for that in advance and maybe head off some of those challenges.
And really, if you feel in your gut that activity, that party is not the right fit for your family right now, it's okay. I'm giving you permission in case you need it to say [00:11:00] no to say. We've had too many activities right now, and what we really need is to just reset at home.
Being prepared for those activities too. Knowing where those quiet spaces may be, but it also might mean you bring some things with you. Those foods that are familiar that you know your child is willing to eat.
A book that you know they might actually enjoy an iPad or other device, if that's something that your family allows. So. Those things. Making a plan in advance will just set you up for more successful activities and gatherings. But again, it's okay to say no too or to leave early or just stop by something else.
I'd like to suggest for winter break is as best you can not to think about school. Unless your child really has some schoolwork that they have to get done, in which case, I would say maybe make a plan about how much time is that gonna involve [00:12:00] and does it make the most sense for your child to get it done in the beginning of the break?
Or do they really just need a break before they can come back to it and we can push it off to closer to the end of the vacation. But if you. Give yourself and your child permission not to think about school. Sometimes we just need time to not feel like we're holding it together, and especially for kids who have learning differences or NeuroD diversities, they spend a lot of time holding it together at school, so having a break from that where they can do the things they wanna do, have some fun that can feel really, really good.
Whether that's reading a book that they just want to read and isn't for a homework assignment, whether that's cooking or playing board games with the family, whatever that looks like going sledding, if you happen to have some [00:13:00] snow, doing something fun that they enjoy.
And then as we. Ease toward school. Starting again. I'm gonna encourage you to think about a transition period just a few days before school starts again, where you start easing into it. If you've changed routines like bedtimes,
if you've changed routines like bedtimes, start. Shifting them closer to a school schedule.
Talk through what do we need to get done before we go back to school on Monday? Do you need to gather materials? Do you need to finish that last minute assignment? But the more you can kind of ease into those conversations and activities over a couple of days, the less. Last night before school starts will feel very pressure filled and we want to try to ease back into a school routine as smoothly as we can.
So before we [00:14:00] wrap up, I wanna name something about winter break that I think goes unspoken. The truth is that for some of our kids, school is not necessarily a place where they feel successful or that they feel like their most authentic selves.
So if we can acknowledge that it's okay to feel glad that we're not in school right now and it's. Kind of nice to not feel those rushed mornings, those demands, you know, if there are social pressures at school or parts of the day that just felt really hard. It's a big relief not to have to face those, and that doesn't mean that school is bad, and it certainly doesn't mean that your child is failing.
It's just an acknowledgement that some parts of school can feel heavy and difficult. And that it makes sense to [00:15:00] exhale and be relieved when they stop, even for a few weeks vacation.
So I hope that you two can enjoy your winter break, whatever it looks like. If you're traveling, I hope that you can still find routine. Amongst the new experiences. If you are visiting with family, I hope that you can find ways to ease the stress of overstimulation or of expectations. And if you're just staying home, I hope that you also will find time for yourself so that you too can feel like winter break is a rest.
With that, I'm wishing everyone a wonderful winter break, a happy new Year, and wonderful holidays, whatever they may be. Until next time, thanks for listening to Unlocking School Success.
Thanks for tuning in to Unlocking School Success. If you're finding these episodes helpful, [00:16:00] please hit follow, leave a review, or send it to another parent who's also navigating the school maze because no one should have to figure this out alone. You'll find full show notes@reframeparenting.com slash podcast and you can come say hi on Instagram at Reframe Parenting.
Thanks again for listening. See you next time.
