The Four Christmas Present Rule my

Between lights, decorations and the wide range of toys and sweets, we ended up spending this magical time among catalogs and advertisements full of special effects  and desires encapsulated in marketing strategies.

This can make the decision of what to give our children for Christmas to generate big headaches, not knowing what they will like the most or what will be most useful for them.

We usually ask them to write a letter to Santa Claus with their wishes. We want the gift to be something that they use, that is useful and at the same time educational.

However, most of us probably think that maybe we are doing something wrong . That instead of asking what to give as a gift, we would first have to reflect on how much we could spend and with what criteria to make the selection.  And so the night could be much more attractive and, of course, more educational for children.

The amount of gifts will determine satisfaction

So how many Christmas presents should your kids get? The answer to this question according to experts is that the ideal amount of Christmas presents is four. Not five, not six, not twelve. Four is the perfect number.

Furthermore, these four gifts must obey some rules, conditions or norms that will determine the personal satisfaction of each child with their new acquisitions and, at the same time, the usefulness they have for them.

What are the points we should consider when choosing gifts?

Basically, the four-gift rule aims to provide children with an educational stimulus, thus avoiding that the intention is just to stuff themselves with things. What is the script we should follow then?

• Give him or her something that he or she uses on a daily basis:  clothes, shoes, accessories, etc.
• Something  that helps to encourage the reading habit.  The aim is to provide the child with a way to understand the power of words. Books, short stories, comic books, word board games, etc.
• A gift they want. You don’t need to deny all desires. Here it is the case of giving that most commercial toy that floods television advertisements and that so attracts children’s attention.
• The fourth gift has to be something they really need.

The four-gift rule tries to put some method into Christmas Eve, trying not to discount the educational importance of gift night that has children as stars.

It’s not because they get more gifts that they get more love

Parental affection is the same with four as with twenty gifts. We must try to avoid excess. Instead of giving away dozens of new toys, we can give a little time and effort to help nurture little ones’ creativity and imagination.

In this way children will be able to actually play with a toy. In addition to being creative and giving versatility and identity to your belongings. After all, wasn’t that what we did when we were kids and grew up happy?

A child is very happy with a cardboard box to make a house, cave or pirate boat, a stick that can soon turn into a plane, which turns into a pointing stick, some paint to color everything around and so on. .

If we deprive our children of using this creativity, we make them victims of a consumer society .  Too many gifts detract not only from the meaning of these special dates. But they also penalize the pedagogical content  that we try to work on several fronts for the rest of the year.

But if we use and adapt the rule of four Christmas presents and if we encourage fun with more natural things and artifacts that are always at hand, our children will explore their imagination and intelligence more, will enjoy their playtime much more and will save in memory a beautiful memory, full of imagination.

Only then can we put the icing on the cake of a year in which we try to pass on good values, positive emotions and responsibility. After all, we want our children to be happy and smile for life.