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Photo Credit: Getty Images
Parents are all about the holiday hype: a new survey has found 55% get just as excited as their kids when it’s time to unwrap gifts. But the real challenge, according to the poll of 2,000 US millennial parents, is keeping the joy of opening gifts alive on holiday mornings from persistent, curious children. Amidst the chaos of opening gifts (which nearly all 98% said they love), many let their morning coffee or tea go cold (48%), miss phone calls and texts (44%), and will stop everything to assemble or set up gifts as soon as they’re opened (37%). Commissioned by Lowe’s and conducted by Talker Research, the study revealed that kids ask their parents about their gifts an average of 51 times over the course of the holiday season. Data shows parents are using gifts as a bribery tool an average of 39 times during the holiday months, with over half (56%) using a holiday-related character (i.e., Santa Claus, Krampus, Jack Frost, etc.) to deter their kid from snooping for their gifts. To keep those presents a secret, most parents are putting major effort into hiding them ahead of the holidays. Two in three (63%) disguise gifts as something else to keep their kids from suspecting, and 34% will let their kids find decoy gifts to throw them off the scent.