4 Tips to Surviving Post-Holiday Blues with Kids

The past week or so I’ve found it very hard to get out of bed. I’m tired all of the time. And sluggish. And even though my schedule is jam-packed with work, I’m not finding the joy I usually do in my chosen career. I know part of it has to do with the weather. I may have grown up in New England, but I’ve never been a cold-weather person.

So when we recently had a 50-degree day and I still wasn’t feeling motivated, I self-diagnosed myself with the post-holiday blues. And I can tell Arielle has them too. So I went looking for ideas on how to get over it and found great resources in Mother.ly and Psychology Today. If you’re also missing the excitement of the holiday festivities, I’d suggest you check out both articles. Here are a four other tips that I find helpful for surviving the post-holiday blues with kids.

Schedule Something you Look Forward To

We were lucky that between masking up, socially distancing and lots of negative Covid tests that we were able to visit and spend time with family and friends over the holiday season. But now that the holidays are over and Omnicron is surging, we’ve basically been shutins. So I’ve started planning Covid-friendly activities like continuing our socially distanced visits with relatives we know are Covid negative, take out nights beyond our usual Friday evening sushi, and re-learning French. Writing these events into my calendar and seeing it fill up with something other than work gives me a lot to look forward to! 

Watch Good TV Show and Movies … or Indulge in a Guilty Pleasure

While films like “Being the Ricardos” and “Tick, Tick, Boom!” came out during the holidays, I hadn’t watched them because I was too preoccupied with my favorite Christmas movies. But the past few nights we’ve watched both (they were excellent) and I have a few other selections I’ve added to our nightly movie schedule that I’ve been anxious to see… another thing to look forward to!

Make Getting Back into a Routine Fun

Especially the week of Christmas and New Year’s we all had some late nights and that has completely thrown off our internal clocks. After Arielle got a taste of this routine-free life, she hasn’t wanted to return to pre-holiday schedules. So we’ve tried to make it fun for her, rewarding her with little treats and extra playtime when she cooperates with us. 

Enjoying what the rest of the Season has to Offer

During one of our socially distanced visits, we headed up to New Hampshire and brought along Arielle’s sled. This was the first time she’s been able to use it to do something more than glide across our town common so she was very excited as she slid down the small snow covered hill. Now she keeps begging me to “build a snowman like Anna and Elsa” and I am just hoping that the snow we get today will make that possible. 

What are some of the ways that you have relied on to get back to “normal” post-holidays?