This Mom Has A Message For Holiday-Grinch Dads: Your Kids Will Remember How You Show Up
Age makes it clear who created the magic and who harumphed the whole month.
I remember growing up, it always seemed like my dad could not be bothered to participate in Christmas fun. My mom took my sister and me to special holiday markets and tea parties and helped us make handmade ornaments. We’d drive through Christmas light installations and traverse the mall with our grandparents. We knew Mom picked out all our gifts (except the ones from Santa, of course), and half the time we’d have to wait for our dad to finish his eons-long morning dump before we could open them at all. Plenty of millennials probably have similar recollections. One creator on TikTok remembers her own childhood Christmases this way, and made a video cautioning the dads of today that their children will, too.
Paige Connell, aka @sheisapaigeturner online, is known for sharing her takes on marriage, motherhood, and the mental load. In a recent video, she shared a bit of a warning for dads that their children are paying attention around the holidays, and they will notice and remember how they acted this time of year forever.
In her video, Paige says it’s kind of a tired-but-true trope at this point — dads who will begrudgingly do holiday things, like go to the pumpkin patch or pose for the Christmas card photos, but they’re not going to like it and that will be everyone’s problem. She recounts an example of her own dad raining on the Christmas morning parade when he opened a package of golf balls her mom had gotten him as a gift from the kids. They weren’t his preferred brand, and instead of playing it off and saying thank you, he turned to his wife and said, “These are wrong.” She was little, but the fact that her dad wasn’t happy still registered for her — a bit of a crack in the magic.
“Kids will remember which parent made the holidays magical, which parent was complaining, which parent didn’t want to be at the pumpkin patch,” she says. And the comments were quick to back her up.
“Nothing can destroy the atmosphere of a house faster than a man’s mood,” the top comment reads.
Another commenter shared, “My parents divorced when I was 6, but I remember after every gift me and my sisters opened at Christmas, my dad would look at my mom and say ‘wowwww how much did that cost me?’”
“I will literally never forget the Christmas I found out that all the gifts I thought my dad was giving my mom were actually gifts she had bought herself so my brother and I wouldn’t know he didn’t get her anything,” said another. (My heart hurts.)
Plenty of the comments also point out that kids tend to blame themselves when things go wrong, and they’ll often find a way to make one parent being a holiday killjoy their fault. “Kids blame THEMSELVES when things go wrong ... parents need to keep this in mind. Even if it’s not their fault, even if it doesn’t make sense, they will blame themselves,” said one.
A second commenter confirmed this, sharing that she felt horrible for years after she and her brother didn’t get anything for their mom for Mother’s Day one year. Then, as an adult, she remembered that they were 8 and 7 at the time — it was their dad’s responsibility to take them shopping, but instead, he just let them feel bad.
So, if you’ve ever been the holiday Debbie Downer or Mr. Grinch, this year is the year to step up, show up, and put on a dazzling Christmas smile. It all matters to the little ones watching us so closely.
