Tips for Celebrating New Year’s Eve with Children

Tips for Celebrating New Year’s Eve with Children

New Year’s Eve is an important celebration for most of us. It’s the time to say goodbye to the year that’s gone and welcoming the new year and all the possibilities it can bring us. 

Before kids, you likely celebrated with friends, attending New Year’s Eve events or parties, whilst drinking a lot and staying up all night. That tends to change once you have children. In this article, I’m going to share some tips for celebrating New Year’s Eve with children. 

Little ones are not likely to want to party all night long (well, some might!) nor want to drink Champagne (until they’re teens at least…) but there are lots of ways that you can make New Year’s Eve with kids special.

• Do Something Special (Food & Entertainment)

The agenda for the evening doesn’t need to be super extravagant but it is nice to make an effort to make some special plans for your family’s celebrations. Get the kids involved and choose a nice meal and a dessert to enjoy together and then decide how you would like to spend the evening. With slightly older kids, a game night is a nice idea that keeps everyone entertained and doing something together. In our family, we love playing EXIT games, for example. Because they are play-once games, they are a bit of a special treat so great for special occasions like New Year’s Eve. 

• Reminisce

Another lovely thing to do with your family on New Year’s Eve is to sit down together on the sofa and look through your photos from the year gone – the trips you’ve been on together, any holiday snaps, birthdays, special events, and other photos from the year that you love. Remember all the fun you had and the quality time you enjoyed together, talk about funny or special things that happened, appreciate the beautiful places you visited, and laugh at the silly pictures and videos that you come across (there will be some!). You can cast the photos to your TV from your phone to make it easy for everyone to see. These days, few of us take the time to print photos but it is such a nice thing to do if you have the time.

• Make New Plans

New Year’s Eve is also a great time to talk about what you would like to do together as a family in the new year. Are you planning any holidays? Are there any places you would like to visit or something new you would like to do together? Get the kids involved and chat about plans for the new year. Make a list and hang it up, or create a mood board-style picture with inspiration and ideas, then take the necessary steps to make the plans into reality. 

• Age-appropriate Time Adjustments

Very young children will not be bothered about staying up until midnight, or watching the fireworks, but older children might be really eager to join in with the celebrations. This is why it’s a good idea to make the other parts of the evening an important part of your family’s celebration – not just the clock striking midnight.

Children who are too young to stay up until midnight could be allowed to stay up but get cosy on the sofa in pyjamas so that they can comfortably fall asleep when they’re feeling tired without feeling like they’re missing out. You could also let them watch a fireworks video on YouTube from last year or promise to let them watch the new one the following morning if they’re interested in the fireworks display and don’t want to miss it.

Tweens and young teens will most likely enjoy staying up late but encourage them to go to bed soon after the midnight festivities end so that their sleeping schedule is not disrupted too much – I’m sure you as the parents will be ready for bed at this point too!

Make New Year’s Eve a family event with the above tips that allow everyone to join in with the fun and the celebrations without disrupting their schedules too much. Take time to share memories from the year gone, and make exciting plans for the one to come too.