GET YOUR KID TO SMILE WHILE SITTING ON SANTA'S LAP:

Getting your kid to hold still, look at a camera and smile is hard enough as it is. Now throw in a large, smelly, creepy stranger dressed in red with a large white beard...you'll have an easier time finding a cure for the common cold.

Here are 5 tips that will hopefully make this headache a lot easier for you.

#1.) Reverse psychology . . . the logic is that when you tell your kids NOT to do something, it increases the chances that they actually will.

#2.) Making funny faces

#3.) Telling Santa that your kid wants something ridiculous for Christmas like, say, a "ball of snot." The hope is that Junior then will chime in and tell Santa what he REALLY wants for Christmas.

#4.) Fart jokes

#5.) And, finally, when all else fails, you can always resort to bribery.



And now, please enjoy some photos taken with sketchy mall Santas here