Tips for Christmas Trees with Toddlers

After doing a Christmas tree last year with an 18 mo old and now doing one this year with a 2.5 year old, I’m definitely not declaring any type of expertise, but I have collected a few tips that I wanted to share!

I was pretty nervous last year about what disasters would occur with putting up a Christmas tree with a newly walking toddler around. Would he pull it over on top of himself? Would he destroy everything? Would it be a constant battle of trying to keep him away from it? Some people decide to not do trees with really little ones around, or only do countertop trees, but I didn’t really want to go that route. So I figured I’d do everything I could to minimize the risk and just see how it went! It actually went really well! He loved looking at the lights and didn’t really attempt to mess with it too much.

I’m actually thinking there might be a little bit more mischievous behavior this year since he’s a full blown 2 year old, but I’m sticking with what worked well last year and hoping for the best!

So here are my tips:

Tree in a basket: I first saw the idea of putting the tree in a basket from @nestingwithgrace and fell in love with the look of it! She doesn’t even have super little kids, it’s just a style preference. For me it’s dual purpose because it looks cute and also keeps things a little higher off the ground from little ones.
Non-breakables on the bottom: This one is pretty obvious, but I put non-breakable ornaments and things that aren’t super sentimental that I would be upset about if they got ruined on the bottom.
Have them help: This can be a bit of a double-edged sword, but we decided to take the approach of teaching Hudson what ornaments he is allowed to touch and which ones are just for mommy and daddy, and letting him help with the ones that are safe for him. It backfired a bit the first night we did this during our tree decorating this year because he did NOT want to stop and it led to a bit of a meltdown. But, such is life with a 2 year-old. I think it’s important to teach him how to behave appropriately with the tree so that I’m not fighting this battle forever.
Anchor tree to the wall: This was key to my comfort in feeling like the tree would not topple over on top of him. I used the smallest clear command hook on the wall directly behind the tree and fishing line to anchor the tree to the wall in a basically invisible way.