Dr. Sarah (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:43):

Welcome everybody. This is probably the most special episode we’ve ever done because we have a very, very special guest today. We have Dr. Rebecca Hershberg‘s son Henry, who’s going to walk us through a little bit of what it’s like to be a 10-year-old kind of ending summer and getting ready to start school. Henry, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Henry (01:09):

Hi.

Dr. Sarah (01:10):

How are you?

Henry (01:11):

Good.

Dr. Sarah (01:13):

Yeah, I heard that you just got back from summer camp.

Henry (01:16):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (01:17):

How was it? Yeah, what was it like?

Henry (01:21):

It was really fun.

Dr. Sarah (01:24):

How long were you gone for?

Henry (01:26):

I was gone for a month. A

Dr. Sarah (01:28):

Month. What was one thing that you did at summer camp that was like, oh, I’m going to remember that for a long time. Special

Henry (01:37):

Wake Sports.

Dr. Rebecca (01:39):

Yes, you can come in. This is like the whole family. John didn’t know that Henry is actually going to be on the podcast.

Dr. Emily (01:44):

He’s permitted to be there, so…

Dr. Sarah (01:48):

We’re getting parental consent live, on the show.

John (01:52):

He’s on right now?

Dr. Emily (01:52):

He’s also like, are you interrupting or what?

Dr. Rebecca (01:56):

It’s just being recorded.

John (01:56):

Okay. Hi everybody. Sorry.

Dr. Sarah (02:02):

So Wake Sports, can you tell us a little bit about why you like that so much?

Henry (02:11):

Because it’s really fun and exciting and I love going fast. Silly with waves on me and I love being in water, so it’s really fun for me.

Dr. Sarah (02:27):

Amazing. And was that something new that you tried this year or did you always, have you known you liked that?

Henry (02:33):

I went last year and tried it and it was really fun.

Dr. Sarah (02:38):

Awesome. Do you think you want to go back to summer camp again next year?

Henry (02:41):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (02:41):

Oh yeah,

Dr. Emily (02:43):

I like it. Confident. Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (02:48):

What grade are you going into when you start school?

Henry (02:51):

Fifth grade.

Dr. Sarah (02:53):

And how new is that? What does that bring for you? What changes does that bring?

Henry (02:59):

There’s definitely a lot more homework and, well, we did this in fourth grade also, but you have two teachers and you switch between both of them so you can get ready for middle school and you have lockers and more materials for school. Yeah.

Dr. Emily (03:30):

So it’s your last grade of elementary school. You’ll go to the middle school next year in a different place?

Henry (03:35):

Yeah.

Dr. Emily (03:36):

Got it.

Dr. Sarah (03:37):

So how do you feel about being the oldest group in the school?

Henry (03:43):

Good.

Dr. Sarah (03:46):

Is it like, Ooh, I’m really excited. I get to be kind of the big kid on campus, or does it make you feel like, oh man, everyone’s going to be watching me to set the example. It’s a lot of pressure or something else?

Henry (04:01):

A little bit of both.

Dr. Sarah (04:05):

And how many kids are in your class? Is it a big class, small class?

Henry (04:09):

Normally it’s like 20 to 24. Well, 19 to 24.

Dr. Sarah (04:18):

Nice. And how about friends? Do you have a lot of friends in your class? Do you have to learn to make friends with new kids each year or do you pretty much know everybody?

Henry (04:31):

Well, since I’ve been there since kindergarten, I know everybody that’s been here before, but then there’s going to be a lot of new kids and I want to be friends with them.

Dr. Sarah (04:48):

Nice. How do you make friends with new kids? How do you help them feel welcome?

Henry (04:53):

I play games with them at recess and talk to them and help them get used to my school.

Dr. Emily (05:05):

Nice. If there’s one thing that you could do to get ready for the school year, what do you think it would be? Even if it was like get a new backpack.

Henry (05:18):

Get all of my school supplies and get ready for school.

Dr. Emily (05:30):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (05:31):

Does it feel I’m as a mom, I have a six year-old and a five-year-old. So they don’t think as much about the start of the school year as I bet you do. And so I’m always curious, is it help you to feel more ready if all of your stuff is ready ahead of time or does that not matter so much to you?

Henry (05:57):

I like it all to be ready ahead of time so I’m not stressed when it’s like a couple of days till school starts.

Dr. Sarah (06:08):

What’s a good window for you? I’m sure it’s different for a lot of different kids, but for you, how far in advance would you like to kind of know everything’s ready to go?

Henry (06:17):

I would like to know one and a half weeks before school starts or two weeks.

Dr. Emily (06:25):

So with you, I love that

Dr. Rebecca (06:27):

Your school supplies like your first day of school, right? They’re all on your desk, right?

Henry (06:32):

Yeah, but we have to order them online first and then…

Dr. Rebecca (06:36):

But we already did in the spring.

Dr. Emily (06:38):

Oh, because you guys do the kit. I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Dr. Rebecca (06:41):

Yeah, we do the kit thing.

Dr. Emily (06:42):

Is there anything though?

Dr. Rebecca (06:44):

I was going to say other things.

Dr. Emily (06:45):

Yeah. Is there anything outside? I have a son who just graduated from fifth grade, so he did fifth grade last year. And there are a couple things that aren’t in the kit that he always requests. So it sounds like Henry, you might have some ideas of things you want outside of the kit.

Henry (07:02):

So I like to draw. It helps me focus.

Dr. Emily (07:08):

Oh, I love that.

Henry (07:10):

I also need a new backpack.

Dr. Emily (07:12):

See, I was right, it’s the backpack

Dr. Rebecca (07:15):

Need as being perhaps a strong word.

Henry (07:21):

I want to have some fidgets in my backpack because Yeah,

Dr. Emily (07:31):

Totally.

Dr. Sarah (07:33):

How do fidgets help? Tell me about fidgets and why you like them and what they help you with.

Henry (07:38):

I’m actually playing with one right now. They help me keep concentration because half of my body is not concentrated, but the other half is.

Dr. Sarah (07:53):

Okay. Do a lot of kids in your class use fidgets?

Henry (07:57):

Like four or five people? Yeah. Last year at least.

Dr. Sarah (08:04):

Are there other things that help you focus at school?

Henry (08:07):

Once again, drawing. And, what?

Dr. Rebecca (08:12):

I’ve never heard you say once again. I just am sitting here so proud.

Dr. Emily (08:16):

Impressed.

Dr. Sarah (08:18):

Got an articulate kiddo.

Dr. Rebecca (08:19):

I guess so.

Henry (08:22):

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca (08:23):

Yeah. Drawing is a really important one for you. And that’s been at times hard to explain to teachers.

Dr. Emily (08:29):

I was going to ask that exact question. I was going to say, what happens if one of the things that helps you? Teachers are like, Hey, stop drawing Henry, what are you doing? Are you paying attention? Does that ever happen?

Henry (08:43):

My teachers know that I need it so they don’t yell at me, but sometimes they’ll tell me to just focus for a second or two. And, yeah.

Dr. Sarah (08:57):

How does that feel when they check in on you like that?

Henry (09:01):

It’s fine.

Dr. Sarah (09:03):

Okay. If there are parents of other 10 year olds who have kids going into fifth grade listening, is there anything you feel like you want them to know that might be helpful for kids going into school so they can help prep their kids for that?

Henry (09:25):

Help your kids get ready and make sure they have everything they need. And yeah.

Dr. Sarah (09:39):

When you say get ready, we talked about making sure you’ve got your backpack, you’ve got your kit of school supplies, you got any extra things that you might want to have ready to go to help you feel organized for starting school. Are there other things like I’m thinking maybe looking over the class list or helping introduce you to who your teachers are, even just on paper or in person, if that’s something the school does or talking about the changes that are going to happen from maybe the previous year to this year.

Henry (10:13):

So if it’s your first year at a school, then you might want to know your teacher and the class list and maybe try to get in touch with them over the summer or Yeah, that’s not really, you don’t need to do that, but it sometimes helps and yeah,

Dr. Sarah (10:43):

So it’s kind of nice knowing what you can expect it sounds like.

Henry (10:46):

Yeah.

Dr. Emily (10:47):

When do you guys get your class list?

Henry (10:50):

Normally late August.

Dr. Emily (10:53):

Okay. Same with us. I was wondering because one of the things that I hear kids ask a lot of questions about when do I get to know who my teacher is and when is my class list? Is that something that you get excited or nervous about?

Henry (11:07):

This year? I haven’t been that nervous or excited. I remember in second grade there was a teacher that had a very strict reputation, but once you’re in her class, she’s very nice.

Dr. Emily (11:21):

So maybe you were a little worried ahead of time, but then it turned out kind of okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (11:27):

So that’s interesting, right? I imagine when you’re going into second grade and there’s a teacher that’s got kind of a strict reputation and you get that class list and you see, oh, that’s my teacher. Maybe that makes me feel kind of nervous. If you are talking to maybe a 10-year-old who might be feeling a little nervous about who their teacher’s going to be, is there any advice you have about how to calm those nerves and be open to having a good year? Even if you’re not sure if you’re going to like your teacher.

Henry (12:00):

Try it out on the first day and see how they are. And if anything happens, you can tell your parents and and your parents can help you and contact the school.

Dr. Emily (12:18):

Yeah, I love that. It sounds like you can ask your parents to help you and advocate for you.

Dr. Sarah (12:25):

Even if they can’t change it, they might still be able to help you feel better about it. Yeah. How about, you were talking about how some of the things you do to help a kid who might be new to school feel welcome and comfortable. If someone’s listening who’s a little nervous about starting school and making friends, is there anything that you might share that’s been helpful for you? Either being the kid who wants to make friends or the kid who’s helping someone else feel like they have a friend.

Henry (13:03):

So you get used to your friends, you get used to the people in your class pretty quickly because they’re in your class and you do pretty much everything with them if you’re in elementary school and you can help them by giving them a tour around school, introducing them to your friends and helping them.

Dr. Sarah (13:36):

Have you ever dealt with situations where kids are just having a really hard time being kind to one another or someone’s being a bit left out?

Henry (13:47):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (13:47):

Have you seen that happen?

Henry (13:48):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (13:50):

How do you feel about that? How do you deal with that kind of stuff?

Henry (13:56):

Well, I normally just go home and talk to my parents because I’ve been in that situation once and I just go home and talk to this person right here.

Dr. Sarah (14:13):

It’s a good person to talk to.

Dr. Emily (14:15):

Lucky man.

Henry (14:18):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (14:20):

So not everybody has a mom who’s a psychologist who specializes in working with parents and kids. If a mom or a dad is listening to this and their kids coming to them feeling like there’s a tricky situation at school, maybe I don’t feel like I love my teacher or I’m nervous about this or I’m having trouble with making friends. What do you think would be helpful for a parent? What kind of things does your mom say to you or that you feel would be really helpful to hear when you’re having a hard time at school? So parents who are listening might be able to try some of those things out.

Henry (14:58):

So there are sometimes things that you can’t work your way around and you just have to deal with them. And once you get used to it, what’s going to happen and you get more used to it so you know how to deal with it and then you can help yourself.

Dr. Sarah (15:31):

So having a parent kind of remind you like, Hey, I’m here, but I also know you will get through this and it will get better.

Henry (15:39):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (15:41):

That’s helpful. I love that. I think parents will hopefully find that pretty reassuring too, that they don’t always have to solve all the problems for you, but just help you feel like you’ve got someone you could talk to.

Dr. Emily (15:59):

And I like how you said, and you’ll get used to it. There are things that you just have to get used to, even if we don’t love them, but you know that you can kind of handle it.

Henry (16:10):

Yeah.

Dr. Emily (16:11):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (16:12):

What’s something you really had to get used to that you couldn’t change? You didn’t love

Henry (16:18):

My strict teacher. I’ve had some hard times with my group of friends a couple of times and you just have to get used to it and find some more friends.

Dr. Sarah (16:37):

What was that like having to find new friends?

Henry (16:41):

Well, I’m in the middle of a new camp right now, so I have a lot of new friends already because I didn’t know these people and then I got close to them. And then at school you can get to know the new kids, like I said. And yeah.

Dr. Sarah (17:13):

It’s almost like a friend making muscle. You have to kind of exercise a little bit in different places to feel like you can use it at school if it’s hard.

Dr. Rebecca (17:26):

And then what do you do? You ask people what they’re into and what’s a good way to get to know if you might want to be friends with you?

Henry (17:36):

Talk to them and ask what they’re into and play games with them and then you kind of figure out what they’re into, even if you don’t specifically ask them what they’re into. And yeah.

Dr. Emily (17:51):

I love that because I think sometimes it takes practice making new friends. And it sounds like sometimes your parents have given you opportunities to do that practice going to sleepaway camp, you have old friends and you make new friends and you’ve had practice doing that. And then starting the beginning of the school year, you also have a little practice. And so I like how you’re saying, well, I have to practice saying, Hey, what are you into what? Into and practice playing games that maybe you don’t always do.

Dr. Rebecca (18:24):

And practice handling the feeling that comes, which I think is what you were saying before with old friendships changing too.

Dr. Sarah (18:34):

Yeah, that does happen, especially as you get older. I feel like sometimes kids grow up in a different, they grow into different interests and then things that you all kind of connected around when you were younger, maybe you don’t have in common anymore.

Dr. Rebecca (18:48):

Yeah. You keep dropping your fidget. Is that going to happen in class? Keep dropping it.

Dr. Emily (18:56):

When a fidget becomes a distraction is a common theme in my household.

Dr. Rebecca (19:04):

Is there anything else that feels kind of important while you’re on this?

Dr. Emily (19:09):

Or any questions for these other moms that are psychologists? Like your mom?

Henry (19:16):

No.

Dr. Sarah (19:22):

Do you have a phone?

Henry (19:24):

No, but I have an iPad.

Dr. Sarah (19:27):

Okay. And do your friends have phones?

Henry (19:32):

Yeah, we all have a group text. Well, we actually have 20 group texts chat.

Dr. Emily (19:39):

I bet.

Dr. Rebecca (19:40):

On mean on the iPad, not on phones, on iPad.

Dr. Sarah (19:44):

Your friends talk to each other on group chats, group text chats.

Henry (19:48):

All my friends are friends with each other. I basically developed a group of friends that all live generally close to each other. Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (20:01):

So that’s nice. Do you get to see each other outside of school a lot then?

Henry (20:04):

Yeah, one of them lives right up the street and I’ve known him since I was, how old was I?

Dr. Rebecca (20:13):

Your friend Gabriel?

Henry (20:14):

Yeah

Dr. Rebecca (20:14):

Like 18 months.

Henry (20:16):

18 months.

Dr. Sarah (20:19):

That’s like a serious lifelong friend there.

Henry (20:21):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (20:23):

How do you guys manage when you hang out together? Obviously it sounds like you have group texts when you’re not together, but when you’re together, do you have screens with you or are you playing in real time?

Henry (20:38):

Well, we all really like the same sports and we all really like baseball, so two of my friends are on my baseball team and one of them was in the, and two other ones were in the league and the other two are still on my team. And so we play baseball and other sports and then sometimes we have sleepovers, like group sleepovers and do games and mafia and that kind of stuff.

Dr. Sarah (21:20):

Sounds like you guys have a really creative, fun time

Dr. Rebecca (21:24):

Together screen sometimes with each other, right? Yeah, but it’s not the main thing. Yeah.

Dr. Emily (21:31):

You do a little bit of both.

Dr. Rebecca (21:33):

Like on sleepovers. Yeah. You’ve been using a screen quite a great deal today. Am I right?

Dr. Sarah (21:41):

No shame in that game.

Dr. Rebecca (21:42):

Yeah. Outside playing baseball all day long.

Dr. Emily (21:46):

Yeah. Well that’s nice about the summer, right? Henry is like, you might be playing a lot more, but then maybe since you played outside so much you get a little bit more screen time.

Dr. Rebecca (21:56):

A day off from camp.

Dr. Sarah (22:00):

Well, we got lucky that you had a day off from camp.

Dr. Emily (22:02):

I know. Score for us.

Dr. Sarah (22:05):

This was so interesting and helpful and I imagine that any parent listening took some notes. Are there any other things? Is there any one last thought if you want, if there’s one thing you’d want parents of 10 year olds moving out of summertime, getting ready for school to know.

Henry (22:28):

No.

Dr. Sarah (22:30):

You covered it all.

Dr. Rebecca (22:31):

What about in general, anything parents you think should just keep in mind? Parents these days in 2024, parents should just think about more when it comes to kids or know more about kids.

Henry (22:47):

Sometimes kids need some alone time and you need to let them have that and not just go up and ask what happened.

Dr. Sarah (23:07):

When you say not just go up and ask what happened. What would be an example of that where parents could pause instead?

Henry (23:20):

You could let your kid have a little alone time and then after 15 or 20 minutes you could go up and ask. And if they say they need a little more, leave them alone. Go and check on them again after 15 or 20 minutes and yeah.

Dr. Emily (23:42):

I love that. My 11-year-old says that same thing too, so I think it’s really important that you can have alone time. And also I like the check-in occasionally with me and see how I’m doing part.

Dr. Rebecca (23:58):

I think what you’ve noticed and what I think you’re saying is sometimes I or dad as your parent, if we can tell you’re upset, we want to know so badly what happened and we want to jump, right? No, tell us. Tell us, tell us. We can tell you you’re upset, tell us. And you’re like, you’re not necessarily upset with us. You just need a little bit of time to yourself first. And if we just give you that time, then we can usually have a better conversation. Is that kind of what you mean?

Dr. Sarah (24:27):

Can I ask one more question about that, Henry?

Henry (24:29):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (24:30):

When you’re having your alone time, when you get it, what are you doing in that alone time?

Henry (24:37):

I’m normally on my bed reading or something and just thinking about how I could fix it and yeah.

Dr. Sarah (24:54):

Okay, so that alone time is really important so that you can do that thinking.

Henry (24:59):

Yeah. I also just cool down.

Dr. Emily (25:05):

It’s hard to cool down when your parents are asking you all the time reminding you of the thing that’s helping you not cool down. Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (25:14):

Henry, thank you so much for coming and talking to us. This is by far the best podcast interview I have ever gotten to give, so I really appreciate it.

Dr. Rebecca (25:28):

It was all your idea, just to be clear.

Dr. Sarah (25:31):

Oh yeah. This was volunteered.

Dr. Rebecca (25:34):

I was not like, Henry come be on our podcast. This was me saying I was going to do it and Henry saying, can I be on it? Please, please. So I’m so glad that you were able to.

Dr. Emily (25:42):

That was so good. Nice. Advocating for yourself. I like it. Can’t always say yes, but this was a win for everyone.

Dr. Rebecca (25:50):

Absolutely. And you can listen to it when it comes out.

Dr. Emily (25:53):

Nice. You can tell all your friends. Tune in to wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Dr. Sarah (26:00):

Yeah. Alright, Henry, this is what I want you to end this one with for me. Can you give our listeners a lovely gentle reminder that if they liked this to rate and review the podcast wherever they get their podcasts.

Henry (26:19):

Please rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Dr. Emily (26:25):

Yes. You nailed it.

Dr. Sarah (26:27):

You nailed that. Awesome. Thank you Henry.

(26:30):Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.