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.

(00:41):

Welcome back. We got Dr. Hershberg in the house. Hello.

Dr. Rebecca (00:48):

Hello, hello. Always a pleasure.

Dr. Sarah (00:51):

We have a really good question and I know you’re going to have a lot of thoughts on it. Hot takes you ready?

Dr. Rebecca (00:57):

You got to hit me.

Dr. Sarah (00:58):

I feel like I could have written this question because this is my child. It seems like we have a birthday party every weekend these days. My 4-year-old seems to get overwhelmed and really struggles with all the chaos that naturally comes along with these parties. Are there any strategies I can use to help him enjoy birthday parties more? I feel like this was also your kid when they were little. Did your kids like birthday parties when they were four?

Dr. Rebecca (01:29):

Part of my little one being four was covid. So which I found there were all these amazing correspondences and social media posts during Covid about all kinds of things. But one of them was a lot of times parents relief that there weren’t birthday parties, parents of birthdays to birthday parties to attend and or birthday parties to plan. And so I was actually hoping I was one of those parents. And it did last for a little while post Covid where it seemed like people were doing much mellower parties and fewer people. But it seems to be back, like the big…

Dr. Sarah (02:11):

It’s back. It’s back hardcore. It’s back.

Dr. Rebecca (02:15):

So I was sad about that, which I guess is a good jumping off point because, in terms of my own kids’ experience, but also a lot of my clients’ kids’ experiences, I think there’s a lot of undue weight put on birthday parties at these young ages both to plan the perfect birthday party and to go to every single birthday party. And so I would actually say, I know this parent’s question understandably, is how do I make birthday parties easier? And I have certainly recommendations for that. And I think there’s different ways that kids can have a hard time with birthday parties. Sometimes they get overstimulated and aggressive. Other times they just stand and they clinging to parents the whole time. So I don’t know what this parent’s experiences, but before even getting into that, I would really want to start this episode by just giving permission to not go to so many birthday parties. I mean, if they’re really hard for your kid, four is an age where I really understand parents are trying to teach kids about commitment and kindness and thoughtfulness.

(03:18):

And if you say you’re going to do something, you are. But if you’ve noticed as a parent that bringing your child to these kinds of birthday parties just kind of sets them up for failure again and again and again and to kind of have a lousy afternoon, it’s okay to say we’re not, we’re not going to do this for a little while. I think these birthday parties are set up. There’s the way that birthday parties, at least where I live and kind of the general population that I work with in New York and the environ, they’re all kind structured for kind of really extroverted, active, well-regulated kids, kids, kids who want to run around and be with really loud music and jump up and down but then can stop jumping up and down and move to cake and move. And that’s awesome if that’s your kid. But if that’s not your kid, and I think the Knot encompasses a lot of different kinds of kids and a lot of kids, it’s not so much that your kid needs to change, it’s that the birthday parties aren’t set up for your kids and it’s okay to kind of sit that one out.

Dr. Sarah (04:22):

Yeah, yeah. It’s funny. And I also think when I was saying my kid really doesn’t like doesn’t birthday parties, they think they love birthday parties. The idea of a birthday party is so exciting and she’s like, oh, I get a goodie bag and I get to get my dressed up outfit on and I’m going to draw a card. She loves the idea of birthday parties and every time we would get there when she was four, it was immediately like, oh wait, hold on, I forgot. I do not like this. Oh wait, this is too loud. There’s way too much going on. She would literally cover her ears and cry when everyone sang Happy Birthday to the other kid or even at her own birthday party. Remember one year, I think it was her, it was her third, I think it might’ve been her fourth birthday or her third, I don’t remember.

(05:13):

But she was old enough to sort of say to me, I don’t want people to sing Happy Birthday to me. And I was like, why? It’s too loud. I don’t like it. And so we talked about asking. We were like, what if we ask people? It was a small birthday party, so it was a little bit more manageable, but I was like, what if we ask them to sing it quietly? And she was like, I think I could handle that. And so when did, when I brought the cake out, I said, Hey, Sadie was wondering if we could sing Happy Birthday quietly. And they did and she stuck through the whole song and she really felt really good about herself for doing that. But she was able to say she needed, I mean, not a lot and probably only because I’m constantly focused on helping her do that, but a lot of kids are not able to put that together and say, this is the thing that is hard for me about this. And so it’s a very overwhelming.

Dr. Rebecca (06:13):

Or they go to birthday party and it’s singing too loud and there’re the kid that’s covering there, you’re screaming saying, be quiet. It’s too loud. It’s too loud.

Dr. Sarah (06:21):

Oh, that has definitely happened.

Dr. Rebecca (06:23):

So embarrassed that my kid is ruining this other kid’s birthday and parents get all understandably moralistic, don’t you understand this is Caroline’s birthday party and you can’t act like this. I mean it’s like, yeah, it’s hard. Second episode we’re doing today that I’m getting very emotionally invested in, but I really feel like I watch parents in these scenarios or I hear clients telling me the level of weight and guilt they’re putting on their kids for not being able…

Dr. Sarah (06:56):

It might be also connected…

Dr. Rebecca (06:58):

My little one could not jump on a trampoline and then be told immediately it’s time to stop without pushing six other kids in that level of dysregulation in the transition, whatever. It was like, this is so much fun and now I have to stop. And that’s a lot. And so you’re going down and you’re going down and you’re going and it was just sort of like, what? This isn’t fun. This isn’t good. This just isn’t working. And that’s okay.

Dr. Sarah (07:25):

And add to that, this other layer as the parent, not just like this is a very, you are in a fishbowl, right, of people who you actually really are invested in their opinion of you. These are your kids’, classmates, parents or your neighborhood parents. You usually are like, it’s not like you’re the grocery store and it’s a bunch of strangers watching and you’re like, it’s a little easier to be like, all right, whatever, we’re going to deal with this and we’re going to just going to pretend everyone else disappears. Which is obviously still how I would recommend parents handling these moments at a birthday party. But it’s harder for the parent because you do know everybody here and you do want to be invited to the next birthday party and you do want to have the group of parents look favorably upon your child. And this is an in-group, high stakes. It could feel like an in-group, high stakes kind of thing where…

Dr. Rebecca (08:26):

And parents will often say that to me when I suggest maybe that they don’t go to a birthday party. It’s like, but I want my kid to be invested and I don’t want to be the family that doesn’t go. And I usually ask a couple of things. One is I say, if someone didn’t come to your birthday party or your kid’s birthday party, what would you think? And most of the time they’re not like, oh, I would think that they hate me, and I would never invite them to anything again. They would think like, oh, they couldn’t make it.

(08:57):

And so recognizing again, the distortion that we sometimes put ourselves through, you also when you don’t go, don’t have to disclose the whole, you don’t have to call and say, birthday parties are really hard for my kid. And you can call and say, first of all, no one’s calling. I’m stuck back in 1992. But you can say, I’m so sorry, we can’t make it. We’re out of town that weekend or we have something going on. I mean, it doesn’t have to be, not that I’m saying go out and lie, but you don’t have to disclose personal things about your decision for you and your kid in these RSVP moments.

Dr. Sarah (09:33):

And something you said earlier that I think is worth circling back to in the same vein is we want to put our kids in situations where they’re going to thrive versus where they’re going to constantly be having to climb Everest to succeed. And we also want them to be invited and involved in their community of friends, and those aren’t mutually exclusive. You can decline birthday party invitations and set up a play date with the birthday kid, a one-on-one, or maybe a smaller thing that’s a little bit shorter, more structured in an environment that’s familiar to your kid. We’re scaffolding our child so that they can practice having these opportunities to build relationships and have social skill building moments and stretch their tolerance for birthday adjacent to levels of stimulation that aren’t full-blown, bouncy house, birthday party, chaos, pandemonium, sticky finger noise, clowns, bells, all the stuff. This is my nightmare. I hate, I am so overstimulated by birthday parties.

Dr. Rebecca (10:45):

I don’t want to make this episode by the way, never go to a child birthday party again. But I think that’s kind of what we’re saying.

Dr. Sarah (10:51):

I literally have to decompress in. I wish I had a sensory deprivation chamber in my home after birthday parties that I can literally lock myself in. I get so overstimulated at these big, big places where there’s 15 birthday parties happening at once and you’re just like, oh my God, I can’t breathe.

Dr. Rebecca (11:08):

There’s a bounce house place near one of those places with a gazillion bouncy things. And I was there with my son a few years ago and they also, have you seen one of those booths where you pay extra? Of course you do to, you’re in a hurricane simulator.

Dr. Sarah (11:24):

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca (11:26):

So I’m in the hurricane simulator with my kid at the birthday party. I was like, I am in literally the third inner circle of hell that is what this is.

Dr. Sarah (11:35):

And you have to pay $10 extra to get in there.

Dr. Rebecca (11:38):

I was like, anyway. So yes. But I do think this is a good segue because you basically just hit on some things for how to, if we do decide to go to the birthday party for whatever reason, God knows why, but if we do, then there are things we can do to make it easier. You mentioned, is it a setting that’s familiar to your child? If it is, great, if not kind of outline. You may have never been to this gym or bouncy place or whatever, but kind of prep your kid. What is this?

Dr. Sarah (12:12):

Yeah, I will literally pull up pictures and Google Maps.

Dr. Rebecca (12:15):

Exactly.

Dr. Sarah (12:15):

Or whatever and show them what they’re going to see and they can expect.

Dr. Rebecca (12:18):

What the routine is going to be, right? We’re going to go in, we’re going to hand the present. We could do a whole episode on presents, maybe we will but hand the present to this and then we’re going to have you take off your shoes and then you’re going to do really going through trying to help your child understand as you clearly did a great job with your daughter of what is the thing. So is it singing happy birthday? In which case for the singing happy birthday part that’s too loud, you say, maybe that’s a time that we’ll take a quick break. And certainly taking quick breaks with your kid during a party, that is a great idea that can help them regulate going out to where it’s not as loud, not as chaotic. I think there absolutely are. Again, if you know that, okay, when have they move you to different rooms? If you have a sense of, you can ask, when are we moving to the next room? And you can give your child a little bit of a warning, let’s say, or there’s ways you can scaffold it to make it easier for your kid if your kid is a kid who has a hard time.

Dr. Sarah (13:20):

And I think thinking, trying to figure out with your kid or just in your own sense of things like where are the points? Is it transitions, is it noise? Is it the size of the place? Is it the familiar? What can we prep them with? Another thing that I think is often forgotten about birthday parties is what happens before and after the birthday party. Feed your kid, even if they’re going to be fed, the second they get there, feed them full bellies and pre regulate them. Pre regulate, try, and this is hard for me. I have terrible time management skills, so we are always running late to every birthday party. So there’s always this sense of chaos and urgency right before we get in the car to go to a birthday party, which is my bad because that does not do well for my kids. Even my kids, one of my kids has struggles with this kind of scene. The other is that extroverted jump around can stop on a dime and switch sets kid. He also doesn’t do well when I am urgently running, everybody late, running around before and he’ll get really yuck with me.

Dr. Rebecca (14:39):

Then the flip side of that is when, sorry, again, we’re back in the nightmare birthday party scenarios, but when you get there too early and there’s literally nothing to do.

Dr. Sarah (14:52):

Yeah, don’t get there too early, don’t get there too late.

Dr. Rebecca (14:55):

So it’s like our advice is we’re like the white rabbit and Alice. Make it or no, no, Goldilocks make it just right.

Dr. Sarah (15:02):

Right. No pressure. No pressure at all. It’s not a lot of work at all to get your kid to a birthday party.

Dr. Rebecca (15:08):

The other thing I was going to say about making it easier for kids I think is, and I’m just thinking before I say this to make sure that it’s what I want to say I think it is, although I’m sure point out if I’m missing anything, if your kid is having a day where they’re clinging to you during a birthday party, let them clinging to you. I just think parents, parents put a lot of pressure on their kid. You want to go out there and play. Look, all those kids are having so much fun. And I’m not saying don’t give it a shot. By all means you can encourage your kid and then if they’d rather hang out with you, even if I get it as a parent, you’re excited to maybe have a half an hour where you’re not. But I think I’ve seen a lot of birthday parties, kids’ birthday party experiences go south where parents get very, very pushy probably for all the reasons we said before, the best of intentions, wanting their kid to have fun, wanting their kid to seem like they’re having fun, but they get very, very pushy and they make it clear that this is very high stakes.

(16:04):

This becomes a very high pressure situation for a kid. So if a kid’s already feeling like, I’m not really in the mood, I kind of am overwhelmed. I want to be near mom or near dad, and then mom or dad is like, you can do it. You can do it. Go, go, go, go, go. It just escalates and tends to end pretty poorly. So I would say let them, if they’re happy being quiet near you, you can stick it out. Otherwise, if they say they want to leave, it’s also okay to leave. I mean, again, there’s no formula. We talk a lot on this podcast about not rescuing your kid. It doesn’t have to be like they want to leave. And so you’re like, okay, we’re out. Unless of course, you yourself are dying to get out, in which case you can have a conversation. You can try to encourage one way or the other, but there’s no harm in just this isn’t the day for it. Or we’re going to wrap up earlier, we’re going to skip the cake part or you know.

Dr. Sarah (16:57):

Right. And I think this is where we’re starting to step into in a helpful way, a different conversation about scaffolding and over accommodating and the difference between the two.

Dr. Rebecca (17:10):

Ooh, that should be its own episode. Let’s make a note of that because that scaffolding, when does scaffolding become over accommodating is a genius idea for something.

Dr. Sarah (17:22):

Done. Well, okay, stay tuned guys. That’s coming down the pike ready. But this is a situation actually where I do not think it’s over accommodating to over a accommodate at a birthday party because the setting is incredibly novel, atypical and it, it’s manufactured, it’s an artificial environment like yes, birthday parties are real parts of our day-to-day life, which is why we are literally having this episode because it’s a challenge that we all have to regularly kind of confront, but our child’s ability to build self-regulation skills to build distress tolerance skills, to build separation skills, those are better practiced if your child needs practice in those areas. Those are better practiced in more real life every day scenarios. It’s like the best metaphor I can think of is if you’re learning to ride a bike, you’re going to do it in a parking lot in a really safe and quiet and contained space. You’re not going to practice in times Square birthday parties are like Times Square. You don’t go to Times Square very often. You really don’t need to learn how to ride a bike in Times Square. You can just avoid riding bikes in Times Square and just do Times Square like a pedestrian.

(18:51):

Let’s let our kids build these skills. They’re important skills, no question, but build them in real life scenarios and not these sort of artificially hyper stimulation bomb places. So yes, if you need to help your child build skills around separating from you, do that scaffold, that practice that. Try not to over accommodate around that chronically, but birthday parties don’t count. It’s like travel days don’t count. Birthday parties don’t count. That’s not the place to be practicing these skills.

Dr. Rebecca (19:26):

When they’re sick. It doesn’t count, right? It’s all these things also that we can relate to. It’s like, have you ever, of course you have been at a party and you just hit a wall and you’re like, I have to leave this party. Not a kid’s party, regular party, an adult party.

Dr. Sarah (19:39):

What do they call that? An Irish goodbye is, is that PC incorrect right now?

Dr. Rebecca (19:44):

No, you can have fun. Come on. You’d be like, no, I cannot have fun. I have to leave right this second. And you’re like a well-functioning adult. So I think again, just…

Dr. Sarah (19:54):

Yeah, one might even argue that the people who say I can’t handle is I got to go are actually highly self preservative. Self-regulating people.

Dr. Rebecca (20:04):

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. No, I think we’ve kind of said all there is to say on this, although I get this as we could both talk about it.

Dr. Sarah (20:10):

And you have total permission to not go to the birthday parties. I do think it is important to say, because I’ve actually sort of heard this piece to this type of a conversation before, which is we’re saying we’re giving parents a free pass to not go to birthday parties, and I stand by that. I also think then there’s this other piece which we should probably also do an episode on, which is the kid who’s not having people attend their birthday party. And I think it’s one thing if you’re like, okay, this is too stimulating for my kid and it’s not going to be good, and so we’re going to pass, or I recognizing there’s too many this week or weekend and I have to kind of just titrate. But I do think there’s this other piece of how do we address the other side of this conundrum of what happens when no one comes to your kid’s birthday party and how do we be a good citizen, a birthday party citizen without also not abandoning our own kids’ needs? It’s tricky.

Dr. Rebecca (21:18):

Yeah. The only thing I would say there, I’m just thinking, to me, it doesn’t feel like the flip side. It feels like a different question because there’s just no way that every kid is going to not show up to a birthday. What we are talking about is if you have a child that doesn’t like birthday parties and has a hard time that you have permission not to go or to leave early or whatever it is, that’s not every kid. There’s a lot of kids that love birthday parties and have a great time. And so if you’re making that decision as a parent, there’s really not a concern of like, oh, but what if no one goes if there is a kid for whom that’s a concern. There are other things going on, and that’s awful. I mean, I feel for that kid, I feel for that family, and we should definitely do an episode on it, but to me it’s a different, it opens up a different set of questions than this one does, if that makes.

Dr. Sarah (22:19):

I fully agree with you, but I do think the parent who worried about not taking their kid to the birthday party might be worried that, oh, what if nobody shows up? And I think to your point, no, if you are the parent of a kid who struggles with birthday parties, but you’re like, I’m not allowed to not go because all the reasons, all the anxieties, all the guilt, and one of those guilty thoughts is what if no one else shows up and this poor kid’s all alone, and I want everyone to come to my kid’s birthday party and this is the way we reciprocate and this is, and you’re not wrong, and that’s totally fair. But if, to your point, Rebecca, if you know that the birthday party that you’re invited to that you’re worried that your kid’s going to have a total meltdown at is for a kid who actually maybe nobody else going to show up, that might actually be a good birthday party to go to for your kid because it might be a small group of kids. It might allow for deeper connection. It might be, it’s a totally different situation that I’m talking about here. But there are certain kids in a cohort, maybe in a class where you might know and have some insights into the fact that some kids are not going to want to go to that kid’s birthday party and that if your kid’s invited, it might be a good thing to show up to that party. Do you know what I mean?

Dr. Rebecca (23:35):

I do know what you mean, but I’m going to go ahead and say we should do a different episode on social dynamics in preschool because they do exist.

Dr. Sarah (23:44):

That is a very fair point, and I think we should definitely circle back and follow up. So stay tuned. We have so many episodes that are going to blossom out of this episode, so stay tuned for at least two or three we’re going to talk about what was the one we came up with? Oh, scaffolding versus over accommodating. Stay tuned for that episode and then also stay tuned for a follow-up episode on how to handle these social dynamics when we’re really talking about kids struggling to get other kids to come to their birthday party and how do we support that kid because a real thing in and of itself.

Dr. Rebecca (24:19):

Yeah, and to have friends in general. A birthday party being a proxy for just to make social connections. And I would invite listeners to write in with follow-up questions about birthday parties. I mean birthday parties are for this age group a really big thing and I feel like we’re hitting on the ones that occur to us, but if other listeners have questions about general birthday party scenarios at these general ages, we’d love to hear.

Dr. Sarah (24:47):

I echo that, especially because this is really, we are really talking about younger kids, I think in this episode. This is a 4-year-old we’re speaking about, and frankly, I think a lot of things we’re talking about are might shift as we have older kids. So if you have older kids and you want to have more conversations around birthday parties and the social stuff and regulation stuff for some older kids, right in, let us know right in a question and we’ll see you soon.

Dr. Rebecca (25:15):

Awesome. Thank you as always.

Dr. Sarah (25:18):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.