The Gift of Presence: A Therapist's Guide to Being Present with Your Children This Holiday Season
Key Takeaways:
Holiday overwhelm often triggers anxiety and depression in parents who feel pressure to create perfect moments while managing endless tasks and expectations
True presence with your children doesn't require elaborate activities or flawless execution—it requires showing up authentically and letting go of performative parenting
Identifying your core family values helps you say no to what doesn't matter so you can say yes to meaningful connection during the busiest season of the year
As a therapist, I sit with parents who are carrying an invisible weight that grows exponentially heavier during the holiday season. They describe feeling stretched impossibly thin, trying to be everything to everyone while quietly drowning in a sea of expectations. They want to be present with their children, to create magical memories, to savor these fleeting years. But instead, they're exhausted, distracted, and constantly behind on an endless list of holiday tasks.
A phrase I often hear during this time of year is "I just want to enjoy this time with my kids, but I'm so overwhelmed that I'm missing it all. I'm physically here, but I'm not really here."
If this resonates with you, you're not alone. Parenting during the holidays has become a perfect storm of overwhelm, and it's taking a serious toll on parents' mental health and their ability to connect meaningfully with the people who matter most.
The Holiday Overwhelm Is Real
Let's acknowledge what parents are actually dealing with during the holiday season. You're expected to:
Maintain your regular work schedule and household responsibilities while adding dozens of holiday-specific tasks. Shop for gifts for extended family, teachers, coaches, friends, and of course your own children. Wrap everything beautifully. Send cards with the perfect family photo (that took seventeen attempts to capture). Decorate your home. Bake cookies. Plan and host gatherings. Attend multiple parties and events. Manage your children's holiday performances, parties, and activities. Navigate complex family dynamics and travel logistics. Create special traditions. Preserve the magic of Santa or other holiday figures. Stay on budget. Make sure everyone feels included and loved.
And somehow, while doing all of this, you're supposed to be calm, joyful, and fully present with your children, creating those picture-perfect holiday moments that everyone else seems to be effortlessly achieving on social media.
It's no wonder that anxiety and depression spike during the holidays for so many parents. The gap between expectation and reality feels impossibly wide. You're running yourself ragged trying to do it all, and yet you still feel like you're failing because you're not enjoying it the way you think you should be.
The Picture-Perfect Holiday Trap
Social media has fundamentally changed how we experience the holidays as parents. We're no longer just trying to create meaningful experiences for our families—we're unconsciously (or consciously) curating moments that look good from the outside. The pressure to document, stage, and share perfect holiday moments has turned parenting into a performance.
I see this dynamic frequently in therapy. Parents describe spending so much energy trying to create and capture the perfect moment that they completely miss the actual moment happening in front of them. They're so focused on getting their child to smile for the Christmas morning photo that they don't notice the genuine delight on their child's face while opening the gift. They're so stressed about the gingerbread house looking Instagram-worthy that they snap at their kids for making a mess with the frosting.
This performative approach to parenting doesn't just rob us of presence—it also models for our children that appearances matter more than authentic experience. We're teaching them that life is something to be curated and displayed rather than lived and felt.
The truth that many parents don't want to admit is this: the picture-perfect holiday moments you're exhausting yourself to create are often more stressful than meaningful. Your children won't remember whether the decorations were magazine-worthy or if the cookies were perfectly iced. They'll remember how they felt. They'll remember whether you were present with them or distracted and stressed.
How Holiday Stress Shows Up
The anxiety and depression that many parents experience during the holidays manifest in ways that directly impact their ability to be present with their children:
Anxiety might look like constant mental chatter about everything you need to do, difficulty sleeping because your mind won't stop planning, irritability and snapping at your kids over small things, physical tension in your body that never fully releases, or decision paralysis when faced with yet another holiday choice.
Depression during the holidays often presents as going through the motions while feeling emotionally flat, difficulty experiencing joy even during moments that should be special, exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix, withdrawal from your partner or children when you need connection most, or feelings of inadequacy when comparing yourself to other parents.
These mental health challenges create a vicious cycle. You feel anxious or depressed, which makes it harder to be present. Not being present with your children makes you feel guilty and inadequate, which intensifies the anxiety and depression. And around and around it goes.
Breaking this cycle requires a fundamental shift in how you approach the holiday season—starting with getting clear on what actually matters to you.
Identifying Your Family Values
Before you can be truly present with your children, you need to know what you're being present for. This is where values work becomes essential. In therapy, we spend significant time helping parents distinguish between the expectations they've absorbed from culture, family, and social media, and the values that authentically matter to their unique family.
Take some time, ideally with your partner if you have one, to reflect on these questions:
What do you want your children to remember about the holidays when they're grown? Not what you think they should remember, but what genuinely matters to you. Is it elaborate decorations and perfect gifts, or is it feeling loved, having unstructured time together, experiencing wonder, learning generosity, or feeling part of something bigger than themselves?
What holiday activities bring your family genuine joy versus obligation? Be brutally honest here. Maybe your children actually don't care about seeing Santa at the mall but love decorating cookies together at home. Perhaps they're overwhelmed by too many events but light up during quiet evening walks to look at neighborhood lights.
What traditions feel meaningful versus burdensome? Some traditions are worth preserving because they create genuine connection. Others we maintain out of guilt or habit even though they've become sources of stress. You're allowed to let go of traditions that no longer serve your family.
How do you want to feel during the holidays, and how do you want your children to feel? If the answer is "connected, peaceful, joyful, and present," does your current schedule support that? Or are you so overscheduled that those feelings are impossible?
What would you regret not doing with your children during this season? And just as importantly, what are you currently doing that you wouldn't actually regret eliminating?
These questions help you identify your core family values—the principles that should guide your decisions about how to spend your limited time and energy. Common values that emerge include connection, simplicity, joy, generosity, rest, tradition (but the right traditions), and presence.
Practical Tips for Being Present
Once you've clarified your values, here are concrete strategies to help you show up more fully with your children during the holiday season:
Protect White Space in Your Calendar
Being present requires margin. You cannot be emotionally available to your children when you're rushing from one commitment to the next with no breathing room. Look at your calendar and intentionally create empty spaces—mornings or afternoons or entire days with absolutely nothing scheduled.
These aren't times to catch up on holiday tasks. They're opportunities for spontaneous connection. Maybe you end up baking together, maybe you build a fort and read stories, maybe you just exist together without agenda. The point is creating space for unscripted moments where real connection can happen.
Practice the One-Thing-at-a-Time Rule
Multitasking is the enemy of presence. When you're with your children, be with your children. Put your phone in another room. Close your laptop. Stop mentally planning tomorrow's tasks. Give them your full attention for even just fifteen minutes of truly focused time.
This doesn't mean you need to play with them constantly or entertain them. It means when you are engaging, you're fully there. You might be surprised how much more connected your children feel from twenty minutes of your undivided attention than from hours of you being physically present but mentally elsewhere.
Let Go of Perfect, Embrace Real
Give yourself permission to lower your standards. The Pinterest-worthy holiday you're trying to create is exhausting you and preventing actual connection. Your children don't need perfect—they need you.
Let the house be messier than usual. Serve frozen pizza on Christmas Eve if that's what reduces your stress. Buy some gifts instead of making everything from scratch. Skip the holiday card this year. Use paper plates at your gathering. Put out store-bought cookies. Every time you let go of perfect, you create space for presence.
Create Simple, Repeating Rituals
Instead of elaborate one-time events, establish simple rituals you can repeat regularly. These don't need to be complicated or time-consuming. Maybe it's hot chocolate before bed while looking at the holiday lights, or reading one holiday story together each evening, or lighting candles at dinner and sharing something you're each grateful for.
These small, consistent moments of connection often mean more to children than the big productions we stress over. They provide predictable touchpoints of togetherness that kids can count on and look forward to.
Narrate the Moment
When you notice yourself falling into mental chatter about your to-do list, practice narrating what's actually happening right now. "We're sitting together reading this book. I can hear you breathing. I notice you're touching the textured page. I see the smile on your face." This simple practice brings you back to the present moment and helps you appreciate it while it's happening.
Ask Your Children What They Want
We often assume we know what will make the holidays special for our kids, but have we actually asked them? You might be surprised to learn that your child's favorite part of the holidays has nothing to do with the things you're stressing over. Maybe they just want to stay in pajamas all morning with you. Maybe they care more about driving around looking at lights than attending parties. Ask them. Then honor their answers by prioritizing what actually matters to them.
Notice and Name Emotions (Yours and Theirs)
Presence isn't just about physical attention—it's about emotional attunement. Notice when your children are feeling overwhelmed, excited, disappointed, or tired, and name it for them. "You seem really excited about this." "I notice you're getting frustrated." This helps them feel seen and teaches emotional intelligence.
Equally important is noticing and naming your own emotions. When you're feeling anxious or overwhelmed, you can say age-appropriately, "I'm feeling a bit stressed right now, so I'm going to take a few deep breaths." This models emotional awareness and healthy coping, and it's far better than pretending you're fine while your tension radiates throughout the house.
Implement the "Good Enough" Standard
In therapy, we often discuss the concept of "good enough" parenting—the idea that children don't need perfect parents, they need present, loving, consistent-enough parents. Apply this to the holidays. Good enough decorations. Good enough gifts. Good enough meals. Good enough family photos.
When you aim for good enough instead of perfect, you free up enormous amounts of mental and emotional energy that you can redirect toward actual presence with your children.
Schedule Rest for Yourself
You cannot pour from an empty cup, as the saying goes. Being present with your children requires that you have something to give. This means you must prioritize rest and self-care, even during the busiest season.
This might mean going to bed earlier, saying no to some social events, asking for help with tasks, or taking even just ten minutes alone to reset. It might also mean seeking support through therapy if you're struggling with anxiety or depression that's impacting your ability to show up for your family.
When to Seek Professional Support
If you find that anxiety or depression is significantly interfering with your ability to be present with your children—during the holidays or any time—therapy can provide valuable support. Some signs it might be time to reach out:
Your anxiety about the holidays feels unmanageable and is impacting your daily functioning
You're experiencing depression that prevents you from enjoying time with your children
You're having frequent angry outbursts with your kids that you regret
You feel persistently disconnected from your children or family
The pressure to be a "good parent" during the holidays feels crushing
You're using unhealthy coping mechanisms (excessive drinking, overspending, etc.) to manage holiday stress
Therapy provides a space to explore the underlying beliefs driving your overwhelm, develop strategies for managing anxiety and depression, and create a more sustainable approach to parenting during stressful seasons.
The Gift They'll Actually Remember
Years from now, your children won't remember whether you sent holiday cards or if your house looked like something from a magazine. They won't care if you made all the gifts by hand or if you stayed perfectly on budget. They likely won't even remember many of the specific gifts they received.
But they will remember how you made them feel. They'll remember whether you were truly with them or perpetually distracted. They'll remember if the holidays felt warm and connected or stressful and tense. They'll remember your presence or your absence, even when you were in the same room.
This holiday season, what if you gave your children the gift they actually want most—your authentic, present, unrushed attention? What if instead of trying to create picture-perfect moments, you simply showed up for the messy, imperfect, real moments happening right now?
You can't do it all, and that's okay. You were never meant to. Choose what matters based on your values, let go of the rest, and be here now with the people you love. That's more than enough. That's everything.
Lauren Donohue specializes in parental wellbeing helping busy parents, to heal, grow, and rediscover joy amidst the demands of raising a family. Lauren is trained in ACT, CBT, and EMDR.