I’m a mum of 12 – my kids get £250 each for Christmas, but I have a £20 rule for the teenagers
A MUM of 12 who spends £3,000 on her kids' Christmas presents has revealed the £20 rule she has for her teenagers.
Zoe Sullivan, 46, husband Ben, 49, and their dozen children make up one of the Scotland's biggest families.
The couple are parents to Elisabeth, 19, Olivia, 18, Noah, 15, Evangeline, 12, Tobias, 11, Agnes, seven, Joseph, six, Florence, two, and two sets of twins - Charlotte and Isabelle, 16, and Leah and Erin, eight.
The bumper brood live in a six-bedroom house in Burghead, Moray, where they regularly document their busy lives on .
With 12 children, the supermum has to be very organised when it comes to Christmas gifts for everybody - following a set budget for each kid.
But she admits that her older children usually pick their own gifts - with the exception of £20 worth of surprises.
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In a recent video, she said: "The way we work it with the kids is everybody gets a budget. They have £200 and £50 for a stocking so £250 [in total].
“But the older ones I keep back £20 so that I can buy them some bits that they won't know about. It’s just going to be smellies and bits and bobs like that.
“The rest of the money they get to choose what they want because it's pointless me choosing because they'll end up not liking it. I won't get it right and it's just pointless.
“So they choose what they want and I buy it and then I wrap it up and they open it up and go ‘oh look what I got’ when they knew what they were getting anyway."
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She added: "I'm not prepared. The little ones, Christmas-wise, are kind of done, some of the older ones are halfway there, some of them have not even told me what they want yet.
"If it's stuff that I need to order and they don't tell me soon [they might not get it]."
“So yeah some of the teenagers don't have anything yet.
"I haven't started to wrap anything yet either so you're not alone if you're feeling that you are behind as well.
"It's fine, we'll get there. We always do, we always get there.
“We always panic about it but we get there in the end so don't panic about it, it'll be fine. We'll wing it and it'll be absolutely fine."
And Zoe has an important piece of advice for other parents who may be feeling stressed this festive season - don't give in to the pressure to go "all-out".
She sighed: "I found out the other day that people are starting to do December boxes now.
"That's as well as the Christmas Eve box, as well as the Christmas pyjamas, the elves, advent calendars, we're now doing December boxes as well?
"I'm not doing December boxes. I mean if you want to do all those things that's great, crack on, that's brilliant if you've got the time and you really want to do them then that's great.
"But you don't have to feel pressured into doing them because I saw that and I'm like ‘oh my God we're supposed to be doing that?’ but you don't have to do it."
She added: "I do the Christmas pyjamas because I love doing them. We do the advent calendars. I don't do a Christmas Eve box as such but the elves go home then so they normally leave a little something including the Christmas pyjamas.
"But yeah it's sometimes it's difficult to not get caught up in all the hype of everything that you feel that you ought to be doing. You don't have to. You don't have to get caught up in it.
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"It doesn't matter as long as you take some time for yourself and spend time with the family and enjoy what you're doing, then you can either do it all if that's what you enjoy doing or don't. You don't have to feel like you have to.
"Just pick a few things if you're feeling overwhelmed. Pick the ones that are important to you and your family and leave the rest, simple."