Whether this year is your first or your umpteenth Christmas as a divorced or separated parent, you may be viewing it with trepidation.

There could be a host of reasons for this, but one difficulty is that there is no partner to share the burden of cooking, shopping, hosting visitors and making sure the kids have a great time.

However independent and organised you are, everyone can do with a little help now and again – especially at stressful times like Christmas. So don’t be too proud, or too shy, to ask friends and relatives to get involved in your plans.

Grandparents can be a particular godsend: they are likely to be happy to entertain the kids, maybe cook the Christmas dinner and have the children for a festive sleepover during the holiday.

Their presence over Christmas also supplies extra adult input – helping to create a sense of family continuation for the kids in the face of one parent’s absence.

Grandparents can also serve as a safety valve when it comes to the Yuletide “handover” from you to your one-time partner, or vice versa. If you can’t bear to come face to face with the kids’ mother or father, it may be possible to arrange for them to be dropped off at a half-way house, such as the grandparents’.

Conversely, grandparents – however kind their intentions – may try to interfere with your carefully orchestrated plans for Christmas, insisting you need company when, quite frankly, you’d be happier for it to be just you and the kids.

Keeping them out of the fray isn’t easy, because you won’t want to offend or alienate them, but if you’re feeling vulnerable and desperate to cocoon yourself in your own home, you may resent their insistent offers of help or company.

In a situation like this, my advice is to be honest: gently explain to the grandparents that you greatly appreciate their offer, but you need to be alone or with other people this Christmas. If you spell out exactly how you’re feeling and why you’re making arrangements that don’t include them, hopefully they’ll understand.

Don’t forget that at the end of the day, Christmas is about kids – so try to make sure your plans reflect this.