Want To Avoid Holiday Mortification? Teach Your Kids How To Receive Gifts Well.

In so very many ways, the holidays seem designed to bring out the absolute worst in young kids.

They’re off their routines. They’re loaded up with sugar. And they’re likely getting presents, often while friends and family they don’t necessarily see all that often or know especially well look on in breathless expectation. It’s a lot to process.

With a few days to go before Hanukkah and Christmas, here’s how to teach your kids to be polite, adept gift receivers — and hopefully avoid a holiday meltdown or two.

Practice ahead of time.

“What it means to be a gracious gift receiver is simply to show appreciation,” Diane Gottsman, an etiquette expert who runs the Protocol School of Texas, told HuffPost. “So your job as a parent is to prepare them in advance.”