If Christmas Feels Like Too Much, You’re Not Doing It Wrong Ep 135

If Christmas feels overwhelming - for you or your toddler - you’re not imagining it.

And you’re not doing anything wrong.

For babies and toddlers, the holiday season brings more noise, more stimulation, more people, more stuff, and disrupted routines - often all at once. Little nervous systems aren’t built to manage that kind of overload, even when everything looks joyful from the outside.

In this episode, I explain why Christmas can feel like “too much” for young children, and how understanding early brain development can help you release guilt, lower expectations, and protect what matters most. 

We’ll talk about how toddlers actually process experiences, what they truly remember, and why simplicity and rhythm are not only enough - they’re protective.

You’ll also hear real-life stories from my clinical work and motherhood, along with gentle permission to keep Christmas simple for your little ones while still enjoying meaningful connection as a family.

This episode isn’t about doing more.

It’s about understanding what your child needs — and giving yourself permission to rest there.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why Christmas can overwhelm babies and toddlers
• How young children’s brains process stimulation and memory
• What toddlers actually remember from holidays (and what they don’t)
• Why fewer toys and simpler routines support regulation
• How to prevent post-holiday dysregulation and sleep disruption
• Permission to give your child a touch of Christmas - without the layers and pressure

Looking ahead: Discovery Call - for parents of babies & toddlers

As we move toward the new year, I also share a brief note about Discovery Calls - free, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine whether a focused six-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time.

There’s no pressure and no obligation. January is now open, and you’ll find all the details here:

👉 Start here to request a Discovery Call

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🌟 Join the Inside Talking Toddlers community for exclusive deep dives and get Erin’s free guide: Top 10 ESSENTIAL Skills For Talking.

CLICK HERE FOR: Building Vocabulary: Single Words to 2-Word Phrases

Because the little years are the big years.

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Disclaimer: 

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: contact@HyerLearning.com
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

Thank you for being here — and for caring so deeply about your child’s well-being.

Transcript

Erin: 0:00

And it took me a while to talk them off the cliff because the way I looked at it is that children were not being disrespectful. They were being developmentally appropriate in the environment that offered more stimulation than their brains could actually process. And what I saw that the parents missed, and I think a lot of parents missed this, is that. Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. here our goal is to develop clarity because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities, so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind, he's thriving. Through your guidance, we know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. By the time you're listening to this episode, Christmas is probably very close or already here, and I want to start by saying something out loud that many parents are quietly carrying but rarely hear acknowledged. If this season feels like a lot. Physically, emotionally, logistically, that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It means you're parenting young children during a season that is genuinely overstimulating, disruptive, and demanding. Especially for little nervous systems. There's a lot of messaging around Christmas messaging, about memory making and magic traditions, and doing it right. And while most of it is well intentioned, it often leaves parents, especially mothers feeling like they're already behind before the day even arrives. So before we talk about your toddlers or routines or development. I want to ground us in something important. Christmas at its very core was never meant to be loud or excessive or performative. It began quietly, humbly, humanly for me that truth is anchored in the birth of Jesus, A baby born without spectacle, without abundance, without a perfectly curated environment. And even if you don't share my faith, that posture still matters. Simplicity, humility, light and darkness, togetherness. Those values are available to every family and especially to families with young children. This episode isn't about doing more. It's about understanding what your baby or toddler actually needs, and then giving yourself permission to protect that. Let's break it down. Toddlers experience Christmas very differently than US adults do, and this is where understanding development changes everything. Your young child's brain is still under construction. Their nervous system is working hard to process sound, light movement, emotion transitions, and novelty all at once. They don't have the neurological capacity to filter or prioritize or self-regulate the way older children do and us adults. what helps your toddler thrive isn't excitement or constant novelty. It's rhythm, familiar routines, predictability, repetition, and a sense of, ah, I know what comes next. So when Christmas introduces more noise, more people, more stuff. More outings later, bedtimes and disrupted routines. What we often see in toddlers isn't joy, it's overwhelm. And even though they might be running in circles and cheering and trying to get into everything that's not regulated, that is a sensory system that's overloaded, so that overwhelm can show up like meltdowns. And clinginess short attention spans, fragmented sleep or just behavior that suddenly feels off and you're looking at your baby or toddler or even preschooler and thinking skills and abilities. They actually have seem to be regressing, and it's very easy for parents to interpret that as misbehavior or even defiance when in reality. It's a nervous system asking for help, needing support. There's a well-known study out of the University of Toledo that illustrates this clearly. Researchers observed toddlers playing in two different learning or play environments. One set of kids were given four toys, just four. That was it. And the researchers wanted to see what toddlers would do when the choices were limited In the other setting, children were given 16 toys. Many more options, many more decisions to manage. And the researchers compared the two groups. What they found was striking the children with fewer toys played longer. These were just four items. They focused more deeply, they used more imagination, and were able to settle into meaningful play. The other group of children who were surrounded by many more options. Seemed to truly just bounce from one item to the next. They struggled to stay engaged and they had much harder time regulating their attention. But the authors also noted something especially that really struck me, and I want all parents to hear this. Children with any kind of developmental differences, sensory sensitivities, or even just a slower developmental trajectory, were even more affected by cluttered overwhelm play environments. And I can tell you when I read this, it all clicked for me because after 35 years of early intervention, I've seen this pattern over and over again with real families in real school systems. This isn't about deprivation and it's not about missing out, and it certainly isn't about doing less out of guilt. It's about bandwidth. When the brain has less to manage, it can regulate more easily. And that's true for older kids and US adults, but it's especially true for these younger children. And that same principle really applies to Christmas and I think more than any other time of the year during the holidays, because it's also extended, right? It's not just one day, it's weeks. Okay. But during the holidays we add more toys, more stipulation, more novelty and uncertainty, and we put that in with more noise and more transitions that they have to manage. And we often see it all at once, And for little brains that can quickly tip from excitement and anticipation to overwhelm and meltdowns. What's interesting, I think if you do a little deep dive, is that the toy industry data cited in this research puts it into great perspective. Families in the United States spend over$24 billion a year on toys, and 3 billion is just on infant and preschool toys. So parents they find spend an average of around$240 per year per child, while grandparents often spend closer to$500 a year per child. So that doesn't make anybody wrong. It simply tells us how much pressure and expectation surrounds this season. And I've talked about this before about the commercialized lifestyle that we get sucked into. And I think it helps explain why Christmas can feel too much, not just emotionally, but neurologically, especially for your babies and toddlers and preschoolers. So another. Important piece that I want parents to understand because I think it's often overlooked, is how memory and processing works in these early years. Toddlers are still living primarily through that right hemisphere, that right side of the brain. And why this matters is because babies and toddlers don't have the sophisticated language and so. That means they don't cognitively understand what's going on. They might look like they're excited. They might jump up and down. They might run around and give people hugs and do all kinds of things, but what level are they really comprehending it in those early years? The right hemisphere is doing most of the heavy lifting. And what that means is that it's responsible to process big picture Gestalt in their environment, recognizing people's faces. Uh, reading emotions or at least registering these emotions, because the truth is they don't really understand these different emotions. They're just registering them and they're looking, oh, that's how Uncle Johnny behaves. That's how Aunt Susie behaves. Right? They don't interpret it well, but it is being registered. And they are trying to understand all this different body language and noticing patterns, especially spatial relationships. You know, when people hug and kiss and then all these hand gestures and, and then they responding to music, right? The musicality of our human speech and talking, and they're picking up on the. Feeling, which you and I know we go to any big family function, there's all kinds of feelings running around, and so they're trying to interpret through the tone and the intonation long before they'll understand words in any detailed way. And so I think it's important, even if you have a 2-year-old who is pretty solid in their receptive and understanding skills, that left hemisphere is still behind that right hemisphere data. Right, because the left hemisphere is handling the sounds and the words, the details, and that that's just how we are born, how we're, we're, we're designed by God to, to help the little guys who haven't mastered language yet. Start to interpret the big pictures, right? But that left hemisphere develops much more gradually in these first several years. So while US adults experience events as stories, right? Oh, remember when Tommy did this, right? Toddlers are experiencing these in states of being. As a very different processing system. They just haven't come online with the language components, and this is where Christmas can quickly become overwhelming for them and, and maybe they'll do well in one setting, but then you have to move over to grandma's house or your neighbor or just one quick stop here or there, but. Imagine what it feels like for them when the room suddenly fills up with people and there's background music playing, and there are lights flashing. All of the new smells that are coming around routines are off, and there's constant movement, you know, 10, 20 times more stimulation than what your toddler typical day looks like. Okay, so your toddler's brain has no clear way to organize all of this? It's, it's a lot of data to process sometimes. It's a lot of data for us grownups to process. Right. But they don't really understand. They want to engage, they want to understand, but it's hard at this stage, and especially because they don't know cognitively and emotionally what's expected. They don't have the language yet to really anchor the experience and to know, oh, we're just going to, you know, Susie's house for a half an hour and then we're gonna go back home. That timeframe and all of that is still, you know, goes over their heads. So what we often see instead of embracing and being engageable is a reaction to this overwhelm, right? And that overwhelm can often look at crankiness and sensitivity and clinginess, irritability, And often they're uncooperative, right? You're like, oh, you know, please be kind or be respectful. And that's hard. And it, and it's not because your child is being difficult, but is really because their nervous system is flooded and, and still very immature and that's natural. That's typical, that's to be expected. But in the moment, your toddler isn't storing these memories, you know, they're not looking at like, oh, how many gifts I had, or what type of toy was it? Or, or whether. everything went as planned or was organized. They're encoding it as the experience of how it feels in their body, Is this comfortable? Can I sustain this heavy load? Was the environment calm or chaotic? Did they feel rushed or was it more regulated? It was there. Warmth and connection and emotional security. That's all that right hemisphere, And, and they're looking for time to process it. They're looking for time at white space in their day to settle into it. And, and that's why parents can do everything right. On paper, it looks great, and still you walk away feeling like something was off, like he was cranky. He didn't appreciate it. He, you know, he was sensitive. He didn't play well with the other kids. it's also why I always stress year after year that a quieter Christmas can be much more meaningful to your young child, even if it doesn't look all that impressive from the outside. It's, it's just to help introduce them to what this season is all about. As I said, it's not just one day, it's several days or sometimes several weeks, and so. With that, I want to share a story that I've never really shared in public before, but I do believe that it illustrates this in a perfect way and in a very real practical way. I once worked with a family whose children were barely three and barely four years old, both kids were very bright, energetic, curious, and yes, I think. to be honest, they had a lot going for them. They had a lot of toys. They had a, a big backyard. They had a lot of experiences. They had a lot of stimulation. Mom and dad were trying to do everything they could, but right before Christmas, I think it was just less than a week, the parents had hid all the wrapping or all the gifts that were wrapped in the garage under a large tarp. and it wasn't just their kids' gifts, it was all the extended family. And at some point during that week, the kids found them, and when the parents walked in, it looked like a tornado had hit the place, right? Wrapping paper was everywhere. Boxes were tossed aside, and there was just. Toys and, and gifts piled up, scattered across the garage. The kids hadn't even paused to look what was inside, right? They were just ripping the paper open, throwing the box aside, ripping more paper, throwing that other box over there. The parents were horrified. Embarrassed, honestly. And by the time they called me, they were so devastated and really, really angry. They had no idea why or how to even handle this. They told me they felt like they had raised totally ungrateful, spoiled brats. And the dad actually half joked as he's rubbing his face, like, oh my gosh, what are we going to do it? It felt like we've given birth to the devil right? They were so devastated. But here how I interpret it is that what those children actually understood was that they see a box that has wrapping paper on it. You tear it open. That's it. And at three and at four, they had no concept of gift giving. They may have had plenty of gifts before, but they didn't really build that understanding yet they didn't even understand what gratitude was or receiving something and how that meant something to, to the giver. Right. At three and four, they don't have that life experience. And it took me a while to talk them off the cliff because the way I looked at it is that children were not being disrespectful. They were being developmentally appropriate in the environment that offered more stimulation than their brains could actually process. And what I saw that the parents missed, and I think a lot of parents missed this, is that. Deriving a true sense of meaning or a true sense of understanding has to be taught slowly and gently and over time, and that's very hard to do when there's simply too much to choose from. Right? Remember the kids with the 16 toys versus the kids with the four toys, it was. Startling different performance. That moment became a turning point for that family, and I remember it as if it was yesterday, not because the children were corrected, but because the parents realized something very, very important. They realized that fewer gifts would actually create space to teach the meaning of giving and receiving space to slow down. Space to model what gratitude felt like and what it meant to other people that you care about and space to help their children learn how to receive. and this is where I believe prevention comes in. When we can keep Christmas simpler for babies and toddlers and preschoolers, we're not taking something away from them. We're protecting their nervous system and building their understanding. Research and decades of clinical experience in my life has shown that it can take weeks, not days. But weeks for young children to actually recalibrate after periods of intense disruption. So when you go through a period of that, the sleep is off track and there's a lot of emotional regulation moments that are intense. And behaviors begin to shift and they don't really know where the North Star is anymore. It can take parents often the whole month of January to get things back to normal, right, to get back in track. But I believe we can prevent a lot of that. By keeping your, your routines during the holidays as close to your typical days as possible. Now, if you're traveling, I know that's much harder, but always have it in the back of your mind to protect their sleep, to maintain or find and carve out quiet time to limit new or unexpected, unpredictable, big events. And, and I've always looked at it as offering young children a touch of Christmas, not the full weight of it. Every year you can give them a little bit more, and, and I think at this point it's important for us adults to acknowledge and give you permission that it's okay for us to enjoy more of Christmas after the kids are down. Or maybe if you get a sitter. Or just restructuring the event, right? I, I love this holiday. I love spending time with family and friends, conversations, meals, traditions, all of that connection. Those, those don't have to be optimized for your toddlers. Little ones don't need layers of activity or stimulation. Yeah, they need to feel more safe, right? More grounded. They need simple boundaries that help their young, immature, developing nervous systems settle in and that understanding, I think, shapes some of the choices that we made. When my daughter was young, because again, I had her when I was a little bit older, I had a lot of clinical experience. I got to live through a lot of Christmases with other people's families to make intentional choices So when my daughter was born, my office manager, who was truly a lovely human, a wise, grounded Christian woman, shared a tradition with her that her family had followed, and she reminded me that according to the Christmas story, Jesus received three gifts from the wise men. And so therefore, her children only received three gifts each every year. My husband and I really thought that was gorgeous, and we decided to carry on that tradition for many, many years, and. As you know, an older woman now looking back, what stands out most to me isn't what we didn't buy, but it's how calm Christmas felt and you know, there were some pretty elaborate Christmases. Elaborate meaning lots of people, right? Because I have nine brothers and sisters, but I really. Stuck to my guns about making it calm in those early, early years, and that I feel like our memories are warm and meaningful and that our Christmas holiday season was really much more focused and that tradition, I, I feel, doesn't limit love. It clarifies it right? Quality over quantity. I've always used that, and I don't think it's just a cute phrase. It's a way of honoring childhood and introducing them one step at a time of how this crazy world works. I believe simplicity does not mean less. Love and humility does not mean that you failed. Generosity is not measured by what's under the tree. Light still matters even when it's quiet and small. Togetherness can happen in one ordinary moment. Reading a book, lighting a candle, uh, making a snowman, you are enough, your child is enough, and the Christmas you are already living is enough. Christmas doesn't require a performance. It invites presence. Your physical, emotional, spiritual presence. It shows up. I believe in small, ordinary moments in your voice, in your touch, in the way that you guide your child through the day, So as we move toward the new year, I want you to know that there are some really meaningful things ahead here on talking toddlers, and I've been doing a lot of quiet work behind the scenes. Pulling all of my years in the clinical practice, plus all of my real life parenting conversations you'll hear more about all of this as we move into 2026. For now, I simply want you to know that I'm here and that this work is continuing to grow in thoughtful, intentional ways. And if you find yourself heading into this new year and you have some questions about your baby, your toddler, your routines, or just maybe you have a sense that something is a little bit harder than you expected, I do offer discovery calls. A discovery call is a free one-to-one conversation. It's a chance for us to review what is feeling heavy right now, and the main purpose is really quite simple. We get to determine whether working together in a focused six week parenting coach format would be helpful going forward in 2026 So a six week coaching program is different than individual therapy, and, and we get to tease that apart, but every situation is different and we get to talk about that over this discovery call. And there's no pressure, there's no obligation. January is now open and you'll find all the details in the description below. For now, I want you to know, let Christmas be what it's always meant to be. Not something you manage, but something you receive. And I think back it began quietly, with a mother and a father, with love and trust and hope held close in that quiet major and a belief that light was still coming into this world. So thank you for spending time with me. May this season bring peace to your home and to your family, God bless you and God bless your family. I'll see you in the next talking toddlers.