Tips for Keeping Calm Over the Holidays

The Jewish Holidays can often be a stressful time for families. Couples who are often high stress people have a tendency to create a stressful atmosphere in their homes. This is the time of year when you want to focus as much as possible on creating a relaxed atmosphere. Creating a vision that includes meal times, shule times, and play time is important. It may sound like a lot of work, but doing the work ahead of time cuts down on lots of fighting and arguments over the long haul.

Here are some top tips for making sure your Rosh Hashanna is as sweet as possible:

• Keep a clear focus on what sort of atmosphere you want to create. Plan things out, but also include flexibility.
• Pace your preparations. Don’t cram it all in at once. This will only stress you out.
• Make sure that not everything falls on one partner, but rather divide and conquer.
• Be clear about what your roles are ahead of time. If you don’t want to be doing the same thing the whole time, mix it up.
• Make sure synagogue and menus and guests are joint decisions because you don’t want to create the potential for the blame game.
• Make sure to cater to different age ranges. Take into account all the different generations that will be attending. Get the kids involved with games. Show them pictures and have them make up stories. Create age appropriate quizzes.
• Try to give yourself as little to do over the holiday as possible. Try and do as much cooking before-hand, so you can relax more on the holiday itself.
• Have your menus printed out so there aren’t any fashlachs with using up too much food at the beginning.
• Adopt a healthy attitude towards mess as they will happen. Getting stressed and uptight about it will only create a bad atmosphere. It pays to just tolerate the mess as what it communicates to the other family members is that what you value is them. And that you care more about their happiness and well-being than a squeaky clean house.
• When you feel stressed, remember to take a deep breath!

Hope you find these tips helpful. Wishing you and your families a Shana Tova U’Metuka!!!

Micki Lavin-Pell helps create healthier and happier families all year round.