Just to confuse matters, :wink: I wound up leaving the Advent calendar away in the drawer after a few years because it seemed to make mine worse. I had to keep things really low key because my difficult child obsessed over Christmas gifts to the point of not being able to sleep at night weeks before the big event.
Some things that helped:
1) As TM mentioned, keeping decorations on the slim side helped a lot, as did moving the Christmas tree to a location where it wasn't constantly in sight and disrupting his main play area. Gifts didn't go under the tree until Christmas morning so they weren't adding to the problem.
2) Watch the Christmas talk--I was amazed once I tuned into myself how much chit chat I was initiating about the holidays in the weeks leading up to it. Just a comment here and a comment there but it really added up. Kids will be inundated with the holidays outside of the four walls of the home so I decided there could be one place they weren't bombarded with it. We don't generally watch tv outside of PBS or videos so they weren't getting commercial breaks every ten minutes and that helped big time I think.
3) I enlisted sibling's help on the above by giving them whatever their level of holiday talk needs were when difficult child wasn't around. My daughter especially is a big Christmas fan so it was hard but when difficult child was off to school we'd do it up big--plan, play music, wrap, bake, etc.
4) We don't do Santa--we were going to but my oldest easy child was absolutely terrified by anything Santa for several years that I finally put him out of his misery and told us the truth. I mean he had it bad to the point of any Santa (stuffed, inflated, moving, real, etc) would cause terror in the kid (as did Halloween) so that he didn't want to even go anywhere because...well, they're everywhere. That helped when difficult child came down the line because Santa wasn't some phantom good guy with an unlimited number of toys to bring him. Mom and dad bring the toys and we don't have a lot of money.
5) Gifts were difficult child's bane during the holiday season--caused him serious problems even to the point of him crying at night and not wanting to go to the school party because of the nature of the gift exhange. One year he had a book exchange while his siblings had a regular (likely toy) exchange and he was furious and couldn't cope. His teacher even offered to let him go home early and not attend the party. What we finally worked out was to go select a small toy and wrap it and stash it in his drawer to open when he got home.
6) I banned all talk of "What I want for Christmas" until a certain date. On Dec X the kids could give me their lists but not before. This helped a lot plus it gave them time to think about what to put down.
7) The gift problem reached its peak somewhere around K or 1st grade and I had to take some drastic steps or we wouldn't survive. difficult child was miserable--not so much about when it would get here but about whether or not he would get what he wanted so desperately (in line with his obsession). The whole surprise aspect of gift giving was making my son totally frenzied so it had to go. Finally I sat down with him and made a written list of what we wanted and then together we decided which were his top three picks that were affordable/reasonable. After that I wrote whether I would shop for it or he would come with me, who would wrap it and with what wrapping paper. When we'd carried out that plan he took the gifts and stashed him in his closet and his anxiety level was tremendously lowered. It seemed ludicrous in a way but I decided any tradition that was causing emotional distress to such a level had to go.
8) difficult child was so worried about receiving something he didn't want I was seriously concerned about how he'd act around the rest of the family. The first time I realized we were in trouble was when he'd received an Easter basket from a relative that had something in it he didn't want and he flung it down with a comment and the relatives were shocked and I was horrified. So, we have a drill around here that goes like this: "If you get something you already have or don't want, just say THANK YOU and then quietly tell mom about it later." When I say "drill" I mean exactly that--my kids know it so well now that when I start the sentence on the way to Grandma's I get the "We know, we know"...and the rest spewed out. difficult child had to have this followed up with some positive action to make it stick so for a few years there I swapped the gifts he didn't want, either by returning them, paying him and sticking them in the garage sale pile, etc. I know there are some problems with this, but I went for survival first and then as he was calmer and more mature I could deal with the attitude issue and turn the plan over to him.
Good luck with this. I know how hard it can be when a child can't cope this early in the season. Last year difficult child was 9 and things are so much better but around Dec 1 I can count on his issues starting to rise and not settling down until mid Jan. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/10-311.gif :wink:
