Christmas Tips when you have Twins or Multiples

It’s Christmas. Again. Why it takes me by surprise considering the shops have Christmas decorations on sale from October I do not know!! It just seems to come around faster every year!

I love Christmas, so don’t get me wrong. Our families don’t live locally, so Christmas is often about travelling somewhere. This has positives and negatives, but the positives far outweigh the negatives. It means that we can just relax and just be with the family, rather than trying to get all those endless “chores” that the extended time of work would usually lend itself to. Plus the family are happy to help entertain your multiples, giving a rare opportunity for a break for an hour or two.

Christmas is a great time to spend quality time with your multiples. Having children around at Christmastime makes Christmas so special. And having multiple children makes Christmas multiply more fun!

Here are some tips from Twinfo to help you get the most out of the festive season with your multiples.

If your multiples are still quite young, then you can breathe a sign of relief for a year. Your 3 month old twins aren’t going to be open presents themselves, and they will probably get lots of presents from family and friends. The truth is, they will probably enjoy the wrapping paper and the Christmas lights more than what is actually inside the gift!

Just because they are multiples, it doesn’t mean you need to buy the exact same presents for each of them. Individual presents will help with fostering a sense of individuality between them.

Choose something that can be shared by all of them. Construction sets (ie Lego/Duplo is great for this). It means they will get double the amount of blocks to play and create with. Most “sets” these days just don’t have quite enough “parts” anyway to stimulate their creativity. I prefer to do is buy second hand (gumtree, ebay and various buy, swap and sell groups) and then several “sets” to share. This allows them more blocks for the same price.

One thing you need to consider when having multiples who do have identical presents is that to be careful when it comes to them opening them, as otherwise they can spoil the surprise for each other. In the past, if I know they have the same or even similar gifts, I have craftily engineered the opening to occur simultaneously (or at least one immediately after the other). It’s wonderful to see the joy mirrored on each of their faces when they open something they have wanted, only to find their twin/triplet has the same thing.

Christmas is also a good opportunity to give a ‘family’ present, a single, larger gift that can be shared by all rather than a multitude of smaller presents.

Once your twins or multiples are a bit older, they will start to develop their own tastes. You can foster individuality by asking them what they would like for Christmas. You can do this subtly by writing a letter to Santa or just outright asking them. Make sure you do this separately though, so you can focus on what they say they want, rather than what their sibling says!

My biggest tip though is to remove all toys from their boxes, unscrew them and untie them from the packaging and pop some batteries in them BEFORE you wrap them. This will save a lot of stress and bad temper when you can’t find the small screwdriver set, or your 2 year olds want to play with the toy NOW, but you don’t have any batteries!

Remember, Christmas is more about presence than presents. Christmas time is a great time to just be with family and make memories. Life with twins or more is quite chaotic, so the Christmas period is a great opportunity to just “be” with your family. Do some baking, watch some movies together and go to the beach. Forget the ironing. It can wait.

During Christmas, you might need to let go of your set routines and go with the flow a bit more. This is especially so if you are travelling to family/friends and the children will be in a new environment. Fingers crossed though that this means additional hands to help!!!

As the lead up to Christmas begins, start to remind your children that it’s always polite to thank people when they are given a gift. Being faced with presents is often a time that children get overwhelmed by whats under the wrapper and they can easily forget to say thank you.

Twinfo would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Twinsmas and a multitude of good wishes for the New Year.