How to survive Christmas end of term madness

It may feel as if this time of year was designed to drive you wild and particularly you mums with kids with allergies.

Like, if you don’t have enough things to worry about, you now have the additional issues of having nuts spayed across every food counter you go near, diary chocolate has a life of it’s own in all its most appealing forms of wrapping, which the kids can’t help but want to touch, pick up and most seriously eat and so on.

Food feels as if it has taken on a whole new energy of its own, everybody seems to be considering what they are going to cook, and candy canes are starting to appear in Christmas cards and you start to worry about what food is creeping into other students’ lunch boxes.

If all this is not bad enough you also have consider how you are going to attend all the additional christmas school activities, parties and family get togethers, which mostly involve food or treats of some description in different environments! Not to mention difficult dynamics, explaining why you have to take your own food or why your child can't eat certain foods. My stress levels are on the increase, just writing this!

This obviously creates loads of fun for your kids but there is of course a lot of logistical shifting and organization that goes behind all of this and of course as the primary organiser, gift purchaser, Christmas card distributor, cook, taxi driver, and children’s entertainer etc, your up for a lot of additional work.

So, here are six tips to help you get to the End of Term with some sanity and hopefully a smile on your face;

1) Breath – it seems like an easy request, but it is in fact quite difficult to do when feeling stressed and surprisingly it is difficult to feel stressed when you are breathing deeply.

2) Get Organised – Yes I know this is something you are great at, but be realistic and don’t set yourself up for total exhaustion. Write a list, write two or three what ever it takes and slowly but surely work your way through them. Make sure you write a special list of allergy friendly foods you need to purchase in for your extra baking requirements, or alternatively special bought products if permitted. You can start baking now and putting all those festive decorations on the cakes and freeze them so you have plenty at hand ready to go! Order any online special foods/treaties like candy canes, lollies, food coloring you need. Buy your special advent calendar or buy a normal one and replace all the chocolate with pre-sealed allergy friendly ones. Put in your orders for new school uniform before the end of term. Purchase teachers presents and get your child’s closest friends contact details so you can arrange play dates during the school holidays. Pay close attention to your child’s school bag, for letters as this is a time when correspondence is flying around and you need to keep up with it all! Start putting festive special tags, stickers, and serviettes in the lunch box, anything, which makes it, look more special than usual.

3) Be focused – About the experience you want your child to have in the lead up to the end of term. Make sure they know that they will get rewarded if they are given “unsafe” treats. Have a conversation with your child’s teacher if needs be about how they are going to manage treats being brought into school and work out a system that suits you both.

4) Menu Planner – If you don’t already, have a menu plan for the weeks leading up to the end of term. It not only keeps you organised during this hectic time, it enables you to balance out food types if your child is food intolerant and enables you to build in some special treats.

5) Celebrate – Make sure you mark the end of term with a celebration. Your child has reached the end of a year, celebrate their achievements and yours. Show gratitude to all those special friends, teachers, administrators who have supported you throughout the year.

6) Planning – speak to the school about the year ahead, identify what needs to be put in place, any documents which need updating, medication which may need renewing etc. Organise a meeting date and time with the appropriate personnel either prior to the end of term or just before your child starts, so that you are confident about the New Year.

Make sure you take some time out for you, before the school holiday begins. For me it is a time of reflection and gratitude. Having my children back at home for an extended time allows us to fit into our natural "safe" state and very quickly the end of term madness drifts into a far distant memory!