It’s December and the kids you care for are already completely amped up about Christmas. They’re asking daily when they can decorate, when Santa arrives, whether it’s Christmas yet. The parents want their children to have magical holiday experiences filled with special activities, traditions, and wonder. And you’re supposed to facilitate all of this while also managing kids who are progressively more wound up, households that are increasingly chaotic, and your own exhaustion from weeks of holiday intensity.
By mid-December, the holiday activities are in full swing. Cookie decorating that somehow gets frosting on every surface. Craft projects that produce glitter you’ll still be finding in March. Special outings to see lights and Santa that involve meltdowns in parking lots. Holiday parties where kids consume their body weight in sugar then crash spectacularly. And you’re trying to maintain some semblance of routine while also embracing the festive chaos that families expect during holiday season.
After twenty years working with nannies across Los Angeles and nationwide, we’ve watched many navigate holiday season brilliantly, creating beautiful experiences for kids while protecting their own energy. We’ve also watched nannies burn out completely, arriving at January 1st depleted and resentful because they gave everything to creating holiday magic for other people’s children while running themselves into the ground.
Managing Kids’ Holiday Excitement
The biggest challenge of December childcare is managing kids whose excitement levels are completely dysregulating. They’re hyped up about presents, visitors, time off school, special activities, and everything else that makes holidays feel big to children. This excitement is developmentally normal and even healthy, but it makes them harder to manage.
Kids who normally listen reasonably well become boundary-testing tornados. Kids who normally handle transitions become inflexible and prone to meltdowns. Sleep gets disrupted because they’re too excited to settle. Eating gets weird because there are cookies and special treats everywhere. Their entire regulation system is thrown off by anticipation and stimulation.
Your job is providing structure and routine that helps them stay somewhat regulated while also allowing for the special experiences that make holidays meaningful. This is delicate balance – too much structure feels like you’re crushing their excitement, too little structure means complete chaos that’s miserable for everyone.
Maintain core routines as much as possible. If bedtime is always 7:30pm with specific rituals, keep doing that even when everything else is different. Kids need that predictability when holiday chaos is disrupting their normal world. The routines that stay consistent provide anchoring points even when their days are filled with special activities and changes.
Build in downtime between exciting activities. If morning included visiting Santa, afternoon should be quiet play at home rather than another high-stimulation outing. Kids need recovery time to process exciting experiences and to return to baseline before the next big thing.
Watch for signs kids are overstimulated and hitting their limits. Meltdowns about seemingly minor things usually signal they’re overwhelmed rather than genuinely upset about the specific trigger. When this happens, scale back on activities and increase quiet routine time even if it disappoints them temporarily.
Creating Special Moments That Don’t Destroy You
Parents often have Pinterest-level expectations about holiday activities – elaborate gingerbread houses, intricate ornaments, complicated crafts, magical outings. Your job is facilitating special experiences without burning yourself out trying to achieve unrealistic perfection.
Choose activities that are actually manageable rather than aspirational. Making simple sugar cookies with store-bought dough that kids decorate with sprinkles is special holiday baking. Attempting elaborate gingerbread houses from scratch with intricate royal icing designs is recipe for disaster with young kids and a stressed nanny.
Focus on the experience rather than the outcome. Kids remember making ornaments with you and having fun. They don’t remember or care whether the ornaments were perfectly crafted or looked Instagram-worthy. Let go of perfectionism and embrace the messy reality of holiday crafts with children.
Build in cleanup as part of the activity rather than something you’re stuck doing alone afterward. “Okay friends, craft time is over and now it’s cleanup time. Everyone helps put away supplies and wipe the table.” This prevents you from spending hours cleaning up glitter and paint after kids are done.
Also give yourself permission to say no to activities that are too complicated or that you genuinely can’t manage on top of everything else. If parents want elaborate holiday project, they can facilitate it themselves during weekend. Your job is providing good childcare with some special holiday elements, not producing magazine-worthy holiday experiences that exhaust you.
Navigating Different Family Traditions
Every family has different holiday traditions and expectations, and understanding what yours values helps you support their specific version of holidays rather than imposing your own ideas.
Some families go all-out with decorations, activities, events, and intensive celebration. Others are more low-key and prefer simple traditions without extensive holiday production. Some families celebrate religious aspects seriously. Others treat holidays as purely secular cultural traditions.
Early in December, have explicit conversation with parents about what traditions matter to them and what they want you to facilitate. “What are your family’s holiday traditions that you want me to maintain with the kids?” This prevents you from guessing or assuming traditions that might not match what this family actually values.
If families have cultural or religious traditions you’re not familiar with, ask for guidance. “I’m not familiar with Hanukkah traditions. Can you explain what you’d like me to do with the kids each night?” Asking shows respect and ensures you’re supporting their traditions appropriately rather than making mistakes from ignorance.
Also clarify what families want you to handle versus what they want to experience with kids themselves. Maybe they want you to do holiday baking and crafts with kids, but they want to decorate the tree as family activity. Understanding these distinctions prevents you from accidentally co-opting experiences parents wanted for themselves.
Dealing With Holiday Overstimulation
The combination of sugar, excitement, disrupted schedules, and constant special activities creates perfect storm for kid dysregulation. By mid-December, many kids are complete disasters even though they’re having fun.
You’ll see regression in behaviors you thought were established. Kids who’ve been potty trained might have accidents. Kids who normally sleep through the night wake up repeatedly. Big emotions about small things become daily occurrence. This is normal response to overstimulation, not sign you’re doing something wrong.
Your response is providing more structure and support rather than less. Kids need you to hold boundaries firmly even when they’re melting down constantly. They need routines maintained even when they’re resisting. They need you to stay calm when their emotions are all over the place.
Limit sugar and screen time even though both are more available during holidays. Kids who are already overstimulated don’t need additional sources of dysregulation. You’re not being mean by saying no to constant cookies and extra TV – you’re protecting their nervous systems from complete overload.
Create quiet spaces and calm-down opportunities throughout the day. Reading books, taking baths, doing puzzles, having quiet time in their rooms – these help kids reset when they’re starting to spiral. Don’t pack every moment of holiday season with excitement and stimulation.
When Families Expect Too Much
Some families have unrealistic expectations about what you can facilitate during holidays while maintaining kids’ wellbeing and your own sanity.
If parents want you to do elaborate daily activities while also maintaining normal routines, handling extra household tasks, and dealing with increasingly dysregulated kids, that’s not actually sustainable. You can do special activities or maintain perfect routines or take on extra tasks, but not all three simultaneously without burning out.
Address expectations directly if they’re unrealistic. “I’m happy to do some special holiday activities with the kids, but I want to make sure we’re maintaining the core routines they need. We might need to choose between doing elaborate crafts daily or keeping things calmer so kids stay regulated.”
Also clarify what you’re actually able to manage. If parents want gingerbread house decorating and you know that’s three-hour project including cleanup that will leave kids overstimulated and exhausted, say so. Suggest simpler alternatives that achieve the experience parents want without the chaos that complex activities create.
Don’t let families make their own holiday stress your responsibility to solve. If they’re hosting big gatherings and they need extra help, that might require hiring additional temporary help rather than expecting you to take on catering and party planning on top of childcare.
Your Role in Family Holiday Preparations
The line between childcare and household management gets blurry during holidays when families need help with shopping, wrapping, decorating, cooking, and all the tasks that make celebrations happen.
Be clear about what’s in your normal job scope and what’s extra work. If childcare is your role, then keeping kids entertained while parents prepare for hosting is within your scope. Wrapping all the family gifts or decorating the entire house probably isn’t unless your contract specifically includes household management.
If you’re willing to help with holiday tasks beyond childcare, negotiate appropriate compensation for that additional work. “I’m happy to help with gift wrapping on Friday afternoon for my overtime rate.” You’re not being ungenerous – you’re acknowledging that work beyond your normal scope requires extra payment.
Watch for families who assume you’ll just pitch in with everything because it’s the holidays. “We’re a family and everyone helps during holidays” is something families say to each other, not something employers say to employees they’re paying to provide specific services.
Also protect your time from becoming consumed by family holiday preparations. If you’re scheduled to work until 6pm, leaving at 6pm isn’t abandoning the family during their party prep. It’s completing your work day as scheduled. Their failure to plan earlier doesn’t create obligation for you to stay indefinitely.
Keeping Some Perspective
It’s easy to get caught up in holiday intensity and lose sight of what actually matters during childcare work.
Kids will remember that you were present, engaged, and fun to be with during holidays. They won’t remember whether activities were elaborate or whether everything went perfectly. The magical childhood holiday memories that parents want to create aren’t actually about perfect activities – they’re about feeling safe, loved, and excited.
Your job is facilitating good-enough holiday experiences while maintaining kids’ basic wellbeing and your own sustainability. That’s completely different from producing Instagram-worthy holiday magic that looks perfect but leaves everyone exhausted and dysregulated.
The kids you care for are getting special holiday experiences through school, with their own families, and in all the other parts of their lives beyond time with you. You don’t need to create every magical moment yourself. What you do with them is one part of their holiday season, not the entirety of it.
Also remember that what families remember and appreciate isn’t whether you facilitated elaborate activities. It’s whether their kids were safe, happy, and well-cared-for during chaotic season when family stress was high. Showing up consistently with patience and good care is actually what matters most.
Protecting Your Own Energy
Creating holiday experiences for other people’s children while potentially missing time with your own family or celebrating holidays differently than you’d prefer is emotionally taxing.
Set boundaries about what you have capacity for even if families want more. You might genuinely not have energy for daily elaborate activities on top of managing increasingly dysregulated kids. That’s information about your real limits, not failure of commitment.
Take care of yourself outside work so you have something left to give. Enough sleep, decent food, some downtime that’s actually restorative – these aren’t optional during holiday intensity. They’re requirements for sustainability.
Allow yourself to feel complicated about working holidays. You can enjoy creating special experiences for the kids while also feeling sad about missing your own family gatherings. You can appreciate families you work for while also feeling resentful about holiday demands. Feelings are complicated and all of it can be true simultaneously.
If holiday season is genuinely depleting you year after year, consider whether this timing works for your life. Some nannies take December off because the intensity isn’t sustainable. Others switch to positions that don’t involve significant holiday coverage. Protecting yourself might mean making different employment choices rather than grinding through miserable holiday seasons repeatedly.
What January Brings
By the time January arrives, everyone is usually exhausted and ready for return to normal routines. Kids are dysregulated from weeks of excitement and disruption. Parents are stressed from holiday hosting and expenses. And you’re depleted from weeks of managing elevated chaos.
Give everyone grace for the transition period. First week or two of January are often rough as kids struggle to return to regular schedules and routines. They’re coming down from holiday high and they’re resistant to structure returning. This is normal and it settles eventually.
Return to simple basic routines rather than trying to immediately resume complex activities or high expectations. Kids need to reestablish foundations before you layer anything additional back in. Simple meals, consistent sleep schedules, regular outdoor time, calm play – focus on basics until everyone settles.
Also acknowledge if you’re burned out from holiday intensity. If you arrive at January feeling depleted and resentful, that’s information about whether this level of holiday demands is sustainable for you. Use that information to set different boundaries for next year or to make different employment choices if this isn’t working.
The Bottom Line
Holiday season with kids can be genuinely wonderful – creating special experiences, seeing their excitement, being part of family traditions. It can also be completely exhausting – managing dysregulation, facilitating elaborate activities, navigating family expectations, and working through chaos while potentially missing your own celebrations.
The nannies who navigate holidays most successfully are the ones who maintain perspective about what actually matters, set realistic boundaries about what they can facilitate, protect their own energy, and accept good-enough rather than striving for perfect.
After twenty years in this field, we know that families remember and appreciate nannies who showed up consistently with good care during holidays, not nannies who martyred themselves trying to create perfect experiences. Your sustainability matters more than perfect holiday magic, and protecting yourself isn’t selfish – it’s what allows you to continue providing good care long-term.
Create holiday experiences that are special without destroying yourself. Maintain routines that help kids stay regulated even during excitement. Set boundaries that protect your capacity. And remember that good-enough is genuinely good enough when it comes to childhood holiday magic.
