9 Chinese New Year Greeting Tips When Visiting Family and Friends with Your Baby

Chinese New Year is an important festival for most Chinese background families; the whole family sitting together to have reunion dinner, and visiting family and friends are the New Year Traditions.

How to make your little one’s first Chinese New Year more enjoyable? Here’s a few tips for you:

1. Full tummy

Before leaving home you can feed your baby first, and change a new nappy. This way you can carry fewer items. Most restaurants offer hot water, so you don’t have to prepare too much hot water to make a meal for your baby. Before leaving home, you can check online to see if the restaurant or shopping mall that you are going to has a parent’s room, this way you can be well prepared.

2. Avoid visiting houses that have too many people

Babies under two years old are still developing their immune system so visiting houses with lots of people can increase the chance of your baby get sick. So, if your baby is under two years old, you should stay home with them if necessary, especially during Chinese New Year. Some babies don’t like places with lots of people and when they arrive back home they may not want to sleep. Try not to go to places with too many people; this doesn’t means that you can’t take your baby out to celebrate Chinese New Year, you just need to choose a time when there will be less people out there such as before noon.

3. Inviting friends and family to your place

For some parents, taking baby out is not an easy job, especially getting on public transport, there’s a lot of things you need to bring with you. Why not invite your relatives and friends to your place? That way you and your little one don’t have to go out. This really suits a family with newborn or parents who don’t want to go out, you also don’t have to experience the problem with carrying too many items when you are going there or on the way back home.

4. Do not play with the little one when they are eating

Find a quiet spot to feed your baby where distractions are less. This is to ease the stress of the feeding experience for mother and child as some babies may take longer or fuss when over stimulated. Remind your friends and family not to play or make fun with baby when they are eating. This can prevent the food from going down to the wrong way.

5. Protect your little one

Everyone likes a cute baby and they all want to get close to your little one, some older generation people may want to kiss your little one. Parents need to be careful and reject nicely when this happens especially a kiss from others. Kisses are an act of love, but they could be dangerous to your little one. A kiss can be an act of sending good wishes to your little one, but also a way to send your little one some virus. The person who kisses your little one may not know what virus they are carrying, so just to be safe you shouldn’t let anyone kiss your baby and if they really do, excuse yourself gently to the bathroom to clean your baby up.

6. Call to greet

When you’re little one is too little then you may want to have a good rest during this festival session. You can call your relatives to greet them and send them your love, tell them you will go visit them in March or April. This way you can go out when there is less people on the street.

7. New faces

Some babies are shy with new faces, if the greeting visit will involve lots of new faces, your little one may cry till they reach home, some babies even have difficulty going to sleep at their usual sleeping time too. If possible, try not to greet in a large group, this can give you a better ability to protect your little one and make your life easier as your little one may not cry as much.

8. Hug from strangers

Your little one may reject a hug from strangers, you should give your little one enough time to get to know the new face or strangers. If they want to hug your little one, make sure your baby is ok with it before you hand them to the strangers.

9. Shorten greeting time

Your little one needs enough rest and needs to sleep when they want to. If the environment is too noisy, your little one may not be able to sleep as needed. If your little one is sleeping, do not wake them up to greet your relatives, or if you want your little one to join your greeting process and interact with your relatives, try to choose a time that suits your little one’s timetable and shorten the visiting time.

Chinese New Year is a time for everyone to get together, parents can take this as a time to relax, go out to chat with other relatives and introduce your little one to them.

About the author