Who’s been cutting onions..? I can’t be the only one to see the 2025 John Lewis Christmas advert and need to reapply my mascara.
Spoiler alert – If you haven’t seen it yet, the advert shows a teenage son in his family home at Christmas. He is initially seen with headphones on, somewhat withdrawn, and the narrative hinges on the father discovering the gift addressed to him and the son’s attempt to reach out.
Without giving too much away – his Dad does indeed find the gift and it enables him to connect with his son again – with the help of a banging 90s house tune! There is of course, the implied suggestion that this ability for the pair to connect may have been difficult recently.
I of course, watched this as a parent of primary-age children, thinking with trepidation about the challenges the teenage years will bring.
However, moreso, I had my “safeguarding hat” on – and this blogpost aims to capture the lessons in safeguarding, offered by this heartwarming advert.
Firstly, there is the need for connection. All children need to be seen and long to be understood and accepted.
Ernest Hemingway once said “To truly love someone over a lifetime is to witness, accept, and embrace their countless transformations”.
Sometimes it is easy to expect too much from children and young people – as though they should already innately know the lessons that we teach them – rather than the point being that we HELP them change and grow, and enable such transformations.
Children and adolescents often signal need or desire for connection in subtle ways – through behaviour, through gifts, through their interests. Recognising that beyond the “look” of a child, there is an internal emotional world being expressed is key.
In practice, professionals and carers should look for the message behind “quietness,” “withdrawal,” or “seeming distant” and respond with professional curiosity.
One of the great tragedies about the UK’s shortage of teaching staff is that there is a risk of losing those longer term relationships forged between staff and students. Even the most fantastic and committed short-term supply teachers cannot possibly begin to get to know their students and thus, spot those tiny changes that could be an indicator that something is going on.
Secondly, the advert reminds us of the power of meaningful connection and continuity. The advert highlights memory and time: the father is drawn back through the toddler years and babyhood of his son, through to the present.
When safeguarding children, especially those who may experienced upheaval (in care, moving homes, disrupted family relationships); maintaining continuity and connection is protective. Ensuring that children’s stories are known – their histories, their experiences – helps build a sense of identity and belonging. When these are missing, children can feel uncared for, misunderstood and lost.
Thirdly, there is the message that gifts and gestures are forms of communication when words fail. The central strapline of the advert is: “If you can’t find the words, find the gift.”
The gift (the vinyl record) becomes a medium of connection between father and son.
Of course, John Lewis is a business and it would be naïve to assume this advert was simply a heartwarming gesture rather than a seasonal sales pitch. However, I do love that in a cost-of-living crisis, the gift given is small, relatively inexpensive and very thoughtful as it immediately takes the Dad back to his clubbing days.
When we consider this through the lens of safeguarding, children may struggle to articulate what they feel. It might be easier to show than say. This urges us to consider creative responses: allowing children to communicate through drawing, music, shared activities, symbolic gestures. Carers and professionals should open spaces for non-verbal communication and the use of drama, art and nature-based therapies can be transformational.
Finally, many people have linked this advert to the successful productions of Aftersun (starring Paul Mescal) and of course, the Netflix series Adolescence, starring Stephen Graham. Relationships between children and their fathers is having a moment.
It would be difficult to watch this advert without being reminded of the men’s mental health crisis. Many are aware that the biggest cause of death for men under 50 is suicide. However, we might not be aware that while, the biggest cause of death for young women under 35 is also suicide; men and boys are approximately 4 times as likely to end their lives than women and girls.
In our training sessions and webinars, we speak regularly about the need to engage boys in support; find ways to enable them to open up and give them the language to describe how they feel. On the ground, some professionals might say that while some boys can open up about their feelings, many of their peers simply do not have the skills to know how to respond appropriately, inadvertently creating an atmosphere that impedes further talk of feelings.
Having a teenage boy as the focus of the advert, reminds us that while teenage boys might look and sound like men; they are children first and foremost.
Rather than a younger child-centric scenario, the advert centres on teenage years – an age when children are often harder to engage, and relationships may feel more distant. The fact the campaign focuses on father-son rather than mother-child is also notable.
Safeguarding frameworks sometimes emphasise younger children, but adolescents are equally vulnerable – often in more complex, less obvious ways. Their need for dignity, recognition, autonomy and relationship is high, even if they don’t show it in traditional ways. Safeguarding practices must evolve for different developmental stages, and engage fathers (and male carers) equally.
To conclude: While the 2025 John Lewis advert is, on the surface, a festive storytelling piece, it offers a potent metaphor for safeguarding children: the importance of emotional attunement, of connection across time, of alternative communication, of developmental sensitivity, and of everyday presence.
In safeguarding children, our aim should not just be to protect from harm but to enable flourishing, to be their best selves and to witness their afore-mentioned transformation.
In that sense, “if you can’t find the words, find the gift” becomes shorthand for: if children don’t speak openly, find other ways to reach them; if the past is unseen, bring it to light; if the bond is strained, invest in presence.
