365. Q&A: How do I start making meaningful holiday traditions with my kids when all they want is presents?

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):

Hello. Welcome back. We are here with Dr. Emily Upshur and Dr. Rebecca Hershberg, and we are going to answer a listener question. So good to see you guys.

Dr. Rebecca (00:54):

Always So fun. It’s like, yeah, so good.

Dr. Sarah (00:57):

Are you guys in the holiday spirit? Are you feeling festive?

Dr. Rebecca (01:02):

Oh

Dr. Emily (01:02):

Man. Is that a trick question? Can I tell you something really cool that happened to me?

Dr. Sarah (01:07):

Yes.

Dr. Emily (01:07):

We were driving up to, I was driving upstate and we saw the Rockefeller Tree coming down, driving into the city.

Dr. Rebecca (01:17):

How did you know it? Was it because it literally says Rockefeller Tree.

Dr. Sarah (01:20):

You didn’t have to guess.

Dr. Emily (01:25):

I was literally like, there’s a giant tree on this, and it was escorted and all the things, and then I was like, I wonder if that’s the Rockefeller, and then we were like, it says it.

Dr. Sarah (01:33):

Oh my God. That’s cool. That’s like a celebrity sighting.

Dr. Emily (01:38):

I thought so.

Dr. Rebecca (01:39):

That’s awesome.

Dr. Sarah (01:41):

Yeah. The perks of living near New York City.

Dr. Rebecca (01:44):

So, you are feeling festive. Is that an affirmative?

Dr. Emily (01:46):

I feel like that was my, it was like, oh, be festive. The trees here. I don’t know. Just felt, it felt like…

Dr. Sarah (01:50):

An invitation to enter the holiday season.

Dr. Emily (01:52):

Exactly. It was like, don’t be curmudgeon this year. Be festive. Here’s your reason. It’s an omen.

Dr. Rebecca (01:59):

I went to our pediatricians the other day, our home away from home, and it is all fully decorated. It’s fully decorated. It’s like there’s a Christmas tree and a menorah, and I’m like, wait guys, you’re in the spirit. I said, really? We’re not even waiting until after Thanksgiving. It’s hard. And then the receptionist was like, if it were up to me, we would do it November 1st. I was like, okay.

Dr. Sarah (02:27):

I went into Starbucks on November 1st and they were decked out with reindeer headbands and little elf bibs, and I was just like, you poor. Oh, you, oh man. You are required to get into the spirit on November one. Yes, I would take my holiday mug. What?

Dr. Rebecca (02:46):

I’m going to say, I’m not in the spirit. I’m not feeling grinchy.

Dr. Sarah (02:49):

Well, you’re our kind of resident curmudgeon. That’s okay.

Dr. Rebecca (02:52):

I’m not feeling grinchy, but it feels too early. But I’m a little bit in the Thanksgiving spirit except then I go back to like, okay, but then we’re celebrating smallpox blankets and that feels not quite right.

Dr. Sarah (03:07):

You are our resident curmudgeon. You are.

Dr. Rebecca (03:10):

Yes, exactly.

Dr. Sarah (03:11):

You know too much. You see too much.

Dr. Emily (03:13):

I’ll will tell you that I love Thanksgiving. I forget all about the historical context and it’s about food and gratitude. Then I’m like a hundred percent it.

Dr. Sarah (03:22):

Right, and full disclosure to everyone who’s listening, Thanksgiving has passed, but we are recording this before Thanksgiving and you are hearing it before the other holidays, but that’s because we want to take care of ourselves too and have some holiday time off.

Dr. Rebecca (03:38):

And because we don’t believe in the time space continuum here.

Dr. Sarah (03:42):

Right. Welcome to our vortex.

Dr. Emily (03:45):

I think if you have a young family, you don’t exist in it.

Dr. Sarah (03:49):

That’s a perfect segue to this listener’s question because this is written by the mother of a toddler and a new baby asking about holiday related questions. So I really wanted to get this to you in time to get this out to her right before the holidays. So yes, when you are postpartum or just any, if you’re, I think parenting is a time warp period, but certainly if you have a toddler and a new baby.

Dr. Rebecca (04:17):

Absolutely.

Dr. Sarah (04:19):

So I don’t know if this mom is feeling particularly time. She actually sounds quite excited, but she writes in, she goes, hello. As a mom of a toddler and a new baby, I’m really excited to start creating some special holiday traditions for our family. Do you have any favorite holiday traditions that you do with your own families? I’d love to get some inspiration.

Dr. Rebecca (04:41):

That’s so nice. Inspiration. Wow.

Dr. Emily (04:43):

The first thought I thought was like…

Dr. Sarah (04:47):

No, say your thought.

Dr. Emily (04:48):

Okay. The first thought I thought was I had lots of ideas of holiday traditions that my children thought differently of, and so I think it’s really important to manage expectations here. It might change and morph over time because what you imagine it to look like, baking cookies with your kids can turn out to be maybe more spilled flour and stuff.

Dr. Sarah (05:14):

I mean, if you’re baking cookies with a toddler, this is now sensory play and you should not expect to have edible cookies after that. And that’s okay.

Dr. Rebecca (05:22):

I feel like this entire episode could be like, here’s what I thought it was going to be like and here’s the cold hard truth. Avoid that tone. But yeah, the first thought that I had was because we’re Jewish and my husband and I are very thoughtful about what that tradition means to us in terms of all the ways it does resonate and doesn’t resonate, and we were like, we are into music and we’re into nature, and so maybe we’ll celebrate the solstice and whatever. It all went by the wayside. It was due for the conversations that you have before you have kids and then you’re like, celebrate the solstice. What we thinking anyway?

Dr. Emily (06:03):

I feel the same way. Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca (06:05):

I was growing up. Go ahead and say one tradition we have, which is not particularly unique, but I think it is useful is so we celebrate Hanukkah at this season and we’re not so good at what I wanted to do, which is not give presents every night of Hanukkah. We just turns out aren’t that good at it, so I’m going to let the shame of that go. But we do, every year we talk about giving back and have the kids think about, we’ve exposed them to what are different kinds of charities? What are the places that we go to that are organizations that we could donate to? We really do try to make it about not only getting but also giving. I think there is a thousand percent room for improvement on that front. I am not going to pretend like we have mastered that equation, but it’s something that we’re conscious and intentional about and each year really try to work harder to make it more meaningful.

Dr. Sarah (07:07):

Yeah, that’s awesome. I like that realism, right? It’s hard earned. Sure. But if you’re doing a little bit, I think we’re really quick to criticize ourselves to say, well, I had this idea in my head kind of like, to your point, Emily, earlier, you have this idea in your head of how you think it’s going to go and then what you actually do gets compared to that benchmark. And so we’re kind of setting ourselves up to feel not so great about the things that we do when objectively when we do something that’s pointed in that direction, even if it’s one little thing that’s objectively fantastic, but if we have this idea in our head that it’s supposed to be 10 x, that we’re going to feel kind of crappy about it.

Dr. Emily (07:47):

I also think being open to changing it, we might have an idea of what we wanted and it might not work for our particular kid. When I was growing up, my mom brought me to the Nutcracker and I was like, oh, I’m so going to do that. And then I had two boys that were two thumbs down not doing the Nutcracker. So I think that that is also part of, okay, so what can we do that aligns better with the energy level or interest of the family that you’ve grown? Being flexible about that is important. I like Rebecca, you’re giving back my, we did not start this, but their grandmother started with giving each other these kind of donation gifts. So my kids get really into it. They’re like, I got you a pig. It’s really cool. And one up each other. They’re like, well, I got a flock of chickens. Yeah. But my mom really consistently in her lovely way, really made that a tradition amongst my kids. And so that’s what they do.

Dr. Sarah (08:53):

Wait, your kids were giving each other farm amimals. Explain.

Dr. Emily (08:57):

Well, it’s a donation, so you’ll buy a farm animal for somebody in a different place.

Dr. Sarah (09:03):

That part was unclear. I mean, I know you do not have pigs and chickens running around your house. So I was a little bit like, is this imaginary?

Dr. Emily (09:11):

Yes, sorry.

Dr. Sarah (09:11):

Like a UNICEF sponsor, the animal. Got it.

Dr. Emily (09:15):

Totally. So you sponsor an animal to sort of feed a community or sort of be donated to a community in need and you get to pick though your animal to be

Dr. Sarah (09:27):

Sacrificed.

Dr. Emily (09:28):

Yes.

Dr. Rebecca (09:28):

It’s like you can donate.

Dr. Sarah (09:31):

It’s so morbid.

Dr. Rebecca (09:31):

But it’s interesting at one year with giving back, we talked about, I don’t dunno, one of them was really enjoying their music classes at school or something. So we specifically looked for an organization that provided the arts to a school that wouldn’t otherwise get, it’s trying to match…

Dr. Emily (09:49):

Interest.

Dr. Rebecca (09:50):

Interest, with and things they wouldn’t necessarily know about. And it’s hard, frankly, sometimes when they choose things that you’re like, really? But yeah, no, I think that’s been good. But it’s interesting also just, I mean this is not, I suppose directly related to the listeners’ question, but it’s related to the realism. So we got tickets this year for the first time. I think my kids are old enough and vaguely regulated enough to go to The Big Apple Circus.

(10:19):

And so we were able to get not crazy expensive tickets because whatever. Anyway, we got tickets and it turns out we got them for the first night of Hanukkah. And so I said, and it’s in the city and my parents live in the city. And so I was like, you guys, do you want to hear something cool? It turns out that we got circus tickets the day of, the first day of Hanukkah. So afterwards we’re going to go to grandma and grandpa’s and the candles and order in dinner. Literally the very first thing, one of ’em is like, well, so wait, are we going to bring the presence with us? And so again, I’m used to this because I give myself this speech every year that they are present focused and that’s the way kids are. And I am sure are going to have a whole episode about this. So maybe we did last year, but it took everything not to feel like I was the worst mom in the world because here I was talking about this amazing experience. We paid money to get for them coupled with time with grandma and grandpa coupled with the Jewish ritual of lighting candles. And the first thing they needed to know about was like, what about the logistical challenge of we’re not going to of my present?

Dr. Emily (11:24):

But you didn’t scream at them. Your present is the circus. So I think you won. Right?

Dr. Rebecca (11:29):

Right. It took everything I had not to. Right, exactly. And so I mean, I’m trying to think of how I responded. If I was listening, that’s what I would want to know. I think I said something like, you know what, we’ll figure that part out later or something. I didn’t get mad at them, I just said, I haven’t actually thought about that part. It was all I could do not to be like, and by the way, you’re not getting that many presents this year.

Dr. Sarah (11:53):

If it makes you feel better usually. So we will often go and visit my parents in Florida over the holidays and this year our trip is going to be over Christmas. And that’s a whole other challenge in my family because I’m Jewish, my husband’s Catholic ish, but we celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah. So we’re going to my parents’ house and my mom is so sweet. She obviously loves Hanukkah and has always just has 400 menorahs. Most of them made out of Lego. She made herself, and mom loves Lego, but she goes and gets a Christmas tree for my kids because she knows that’s what they want on Christmas. And it’s the saddest Charlie bound Christmas tree I’ve ever seen in my So sad. And it’s, but it makes you so happy. It’s so sweet. It’s like my mom embracing my husband’s traditions in the way that it’s so sweet.

(12:57):

But I gave her so much crap for this Christmas tree, but my kids, back to the point that’s related to what you were talking about, Becca. As soon as I told my kids we were going to be going to see Deedee and Zadie for Christmas, they were like, but what will happen to our Christmas tree and presents that will be there. Right, they will be there. Right. And I wasn’t as good as you. I was. I was super overindulgent. I was like, no, no, no, don’t worry. You’re just getting two Christmases. Don’t worry. Santa just comes to both places. He doesn’t know where you are. He’s just going to, if someone’s got a chimney and a tree, your good.

Dr. Emily (13:38):

Oh my God, you were like, you are double dipped.

Dr. Sarah (13:41):

I know. I’m just very, very, I’m very bad at this.

Dr. Rebecca (13:44):

In fact, lemme just go get you some presents now.

Dr. Sarah (13:46):

Lemme, would you like to look at Amazon right now? Just shush.

Dr. Emily (13:49):

Every day from now until Christmas.

Dr. Sarah (13:51):

I’m a very indulgent, permissive person when it comes to presents, honestly, because I just really like to buy the presents for my kids.

Dr. Rebecca (14:00):

It’s so funny. That’s how we ended up not being as disciplined as we want it to be. And just to be clear, at least from our end, these aren’t fancy presents, but they’re also not just chapstick and socks, which is what I got some nights for Hanukkah, but it’s too much.

Dr. Sarah (14:16):

I did, I am proud of myself. I have a hundred percent, and maybe it’s because Christmas is just a little bit shinier and more exciting than Hanukkah in my house. But I definitely did not set myself up to have to give presents every day to Hanukkah. Frankly, my kids just don’t care that much about Hanukkah. So because Christmas just beat it in the game of which holiday makes you feel more happy about the presence you’re going to get, what’s got more show?

Dr. Rebecca (14:46):

Which wait, I have to be the Ian, which capitalist interpretation of totally commercialized holiday makes you feel more excited.

Dr. Sarah (14:55):

And Santa won every time dying. I probably could have done more to make Hanukkah magic, but I think my point is I did not want to fall into the trap of having to do nine nights of presents, right. Eight for Hanukkah and one for Christmas. I guess two because Christmas Eve and Christmas day, it’s just so much. So I was like, Hanukkah is kind of like, yeah, it’s okay if we just light the menorah and you associate presents with Christmas. So I did save myself a little bit of pain on that front.

(15:24):

We’re really, I feel so bad. We’re like, what traditions do you have? And we’re like…

Dr. Rebecca (15:29):

Well, speaking of traditions, which maybe this mom doesn’t have and I hope to goodness she doesn’t because Zeke’s birthday is December 24th.

Dr. Emily (15:39):

Yeah. You win.

Dr. Rebecca (15:41):

For sure. Such a bummer in every which way. And last year Hanukkah was on his birthday. It overlapped

Dr. Sarah (15:50):

Why did you do that to him, Rebecca?

Dr. Rebecca (15:51):

Right, exactly. Oh, and how about this being at the, it was a weird year. He’s turning.

Dr. Sarah (15:56):

I had to give birth on Christmas Eve.

Dr. Rebecca (15:57):

Well, not only that, he was turning 10, and you may remember it was like there was this one weird Christmas Eve and it happened to be when he was born, it was like 75 degrees and everyone in the hospital again, I’m Jewish, is everyone from the tech to the nurse to the doctor, whatever. Everybody’s wearing Santa hats.

Dr. Emily (16:15):

Oh, yeah.

Dr. Rebecca (16:16):

And it’s like this is already, giving birth is already not my favorite thing. You birthed your Christian Santa hats. I can’t, anyway.

Dr. Sarah (16:25):

Did you want them to give you a little dle and a bag of guilt?

Dr. Rebecca (16:28):

No, I wanted them to get me the epidural.

Dr. Emily (16:29):

Exactly. I want them to give me the baby.

Dr. Rebecca (16:32):

I didn’t need any extra holiday spirit.

Dr. Emily (16:34):

The baby. That’s when they all yell at you. The baby’s the present, Rebecca the baby.

Dr. Sarah (16:41):

Get the baby out and give me some eggnog please. Right, baby.

Dr. Rebecca (16:46):

Exactly. Exactly.

Dr. Emily (16:47):

I’ll say that. My kids do, we do make cookies and they do love that. They also do love making biscuits, which is part of just the food we make at that time of year. I know that’s sweet. But it’s funny that I couldn’t have the cookies, but some of the traditions or some of the things we do, it’s like when you’re like, what did you like? And they’re like, I love the blah blah. And you’re like, what?

Dr. Sarah (17:12):

Yeah, they remember the most weird things and you’re like, that’s, you think that’s a tradition. That was like a mistake that whatever.

Dr. Emily (17:21):

But kids naturally grab on traditions, which is nice too. So for this listener, your kids will gravitate towards traditions and you can nurture them. You don’t have to invent all of them. They are little now, but they’ll sort of start to…

Dr. Sarah (17:36):

Well, one thing, especially with a toddler and a new baby, one thing that my mind goes to also is like, okay, so this toddler has been through a lot of new stuff recently and even a toddler probably doesn’t have a deep, like…

Dr. Rebecca (17:52):

Maybe she should just tell the toddler that the baby was the present.

Dr. Sarah (17:57):

But even a toddler probably isn’t like, oh, I have learned that there’s been so many repetitions of these holiday traditions. Everything’s still pretty…

Dr. Emily (18:07):

New.

Dr. Sarah (18:07):

First time for this little one. But helping the toddler think one thing we do in my family, because we do have a Christmas tree and as someone who didn’t get a Christmas tree growing up, I really love the Christmas tree.

Dr. Emily (18:21):

I think you’ve discovered in this episode that it’s really, Christmas is for Sarah.

Dr. Sarah (18:26):

I think I’m the one driving the Christmas love. I was like, yeah, you’re right. A hundred percent.

Dr. Rebecca (18:31):

Well, if you grow up not being able to celebrate Christmas as I did too. It’s like Christmas is great.

Dr. Sarah (18:39):

Oh, I had only, it’s so crazy. Both my parents are Jewish and all of my cousins are Catholic. So I had so much Christmas. I got Puerto Rico Christmas, which is really fun because my…

Dr. Rebecca (18:51):

I didn’t have any Christmas. And then I married someone Jewish and I feel like we can’t, I mean we can do whatever we want, but we don’t want to decide to have Christmas. But both my brother and his brother married someone non-Jewish. So now all my kids’ cousins get both. So we have to make Hanukah like a frigging…

Dr. Emily (19:06):

Winner winner chicken dinner. They totally.

Dr. Sarah (19:10):

Going back to my holiday tradition that we’ve been doing since my kids were really little is we get them an ornament each year until their first ornament was your first Christmas 2017 or 2019. And then each year we get them a new ornament. And so they have this sort of collection of ornaments, that’s their kind of thing, and they get to put it the things on the tree, but they know which ones are theirs and all their ornaments kind of tell a bit of a story, which is kind of cool. Something from the year if we went on a trip or if we did something kind of cool or if they’re really interested in something that particular year. I try to find an ornament that tells their story that year or that it’ll just make them laugh.

Dr. Emily (19:52):

I will say though, that I want to encourage people to just decide to do new traditions whenever they feel like it. I feel like, and you can change them or you could forget a year to get an ornament and you could still go back to that the next year. I feel like some of the traditions can feel like pressure.

(20:09):

So I definitely want people to be able to be like, you know what? This year I’m going to get an ornament for my kid. You can change it and you can have new family and as your family changes and grows and you’re allowed to just restart, start a new one. And I think that actually has helped me not feel so much like, oh, I didn’t do that or this didn’t, didn’t match my family, but I’m pushing it. I’m pushing it up the hill saying, you know what? We’re going to do something different. Let’s just see what it is.

Dr. Sarah (20:42):

Yeah. And honestly, we will do one of our traditions is when we are home in New York for Christmas, we’ll do a white elephant party because also a lot of our friends, our rabbi comes to our white elephant party. Most of our friends are not actually, they’re Jewish, or at least a lot of them are. And we invite a lot of people to the white elephant party to do Christmas that might not otherwise due Christmas. And it’s so fun. And we are not doing that this year because we’re going to Florida. So I think it’s also totally okay to have a tradition that isn’t annual or it comes and it goes based on what you’re doing that year. And I think that’s true for any holiday.

Dr. Emily (21:27):

I think that helps.

Dr. Sarah (21:28):

It takes the pressure off that it doesn’t, you’re not beholden to uphold it every single year. And then you’re just accruing new traditions and the list is growing and the pressure’s mounting. So by the time everyone’s 10, 15 years old, you’re really putting on a show. You don’t have to do that at all.

Dr. Rebecca (21:42):

Right. And you don’t have to think if you’re like, oh wow, we’re doing a lot. What if we can’t keep it up? Fine. I just think the word tradition even in and of itself, can there some stress because it’s like, oh gosh, by definition we then have to do it every year or there’s a heaviness attached to it. It’s like have a joyous holiday, whatever that means for your family this year. And then next year you can make a different set of decisions and you can say, oh, we did this thing last year that was really fun. Or Wow, nothing we did last year. Stuck. And again, hopefully, and presumably that won’t be the case. I mean the one tradition other than the one that I’ve mentioned that we’ve stuck with every single year is lighting the Hanukkah candles, which is the Hanukkah thing. It’s like saying having a Christmas tree, but that seems tried and true. So there isn’t some special little hirshberg thing that we also do.

Dr. Sarah (22:39):

We do. Yeah. I mean sometimes that is true. I mean, we’re talking about family traditions and things about present giving and giving back, and all those are wonderful and no one should feel bad about them. But they’re also like most holidays, not all, but most holidays, wrap around some religious traditions as well and being able to introduce those to your kids if that’s important to you. Or making sure that people are talking about whatever the meaning of those holidays are to you as a family that have maybe a deeper meaning. There’s a balance. I think there’s space for all of that. I think you can have silly, maybe a little indulgent traditions that are more capitalistic and you can have meaningful intergenerational sort of spiritual traditions and your kids may care much more about the present ones and you may care much more about the meaningful ones. But when they’re older, they will remember these things too. So also your kids might not care about the more sort of deeper meaningful traditions now, but holding them loosely with less pressure, but loosely holding them and revisiting them and returning to them year after year when your kids are older, they do still remember that stuff. And so they might not be as verbal or explicit in how they’re excited and looking forward. They might not name that. That’s the thing that they’re most looking forward to, but they feel that too.

Dr. Emily (24:12):

My kids are so funny. They’ll be like, yeah, don’t you? They reminisce fondly about even the bumps. They’ll be like, yeah, isn’t that, and you get upset mom every time. Every year. You get annoyed by that.

Dr. Sarah (24:25):

You yelling is a family tradition.

Dr. Rebecca (24:26):

Family holiday tradition is mom pulling her hair out.

Dr. Emily (24:30):

But it is funny. They definitely remember, but not in a bad way. Just sort of like, oh, that’s, here we are. The deal.

Dr. Rebecca (24:38):

Right, exactly. And there’s something, as we’ve talked about many times on many episodes, predictability in and of itself can be really anchoring for kids and lead to feelings of safety and security, even if what they can predict is that this particular thing will lead mom to be in an irritated mood.

Dr. Sarah (24:58):

Maternal irritability when predictable is very, very stabilizing.

Dr. Emily (25:03):

Stabilizing. It’s not scary.

Dr. Sarah (25:06):

So please enjoy the holidays really though. I love that this was kind of light and funny and I hope you guys laughed along with us. I would really love to know your guys’ listeners like special holiday traditions. Please email us, tell us your holiday traditions. You clearly need some inspiration. Clearly we could probably use a little help. I want to leave with one closing thought, which was, I remember this coming up once in a mom’s group that I ran, but someone was telling me they were feeling really a ton of pressure because they really wanted to make this holiday magical for their kids. And they felt really, they just were a little stressed out about how do I make it magical for my kids? And we ended up talking a lot that day about instead of trying really hard to make something happen, to reverse engineer a bit of like, what’s the mood I want this holiday to sort of represent for me?

(26:08):

I think the mom had said something like, I want it to be, I want be joyful. That’s the mood. And I was like, so reverse engineer that. Start there and go backwards. And you might find that what makes something joyful or magical or peaceful or loving is not actually all the stuff we do to make it magical or peaceful. It’s like sometimes it’s like, oh, I’m going to make sure I have a little bit more space in my schedule so that I can have a slow wake up with my kids one morning. Or our own bandwidth sometimes allows us to create the magic without actually doing more stuff. So also be willing to peel back what we say yes to and do a little bit less and reverse engineer the feeling you want to have and then work backwards from there instead of trying to add on more and more and more to make something feel magical or fill in the blank.

Dr. Rebecca (27:11):

Agreed. I think that’s perfect. Perfect.

Dr. Sarah (27:14):

I wish you guys such a happy holiday and I’m really grateful for you.

Dr. Emily (27:18):

And everybody wish Sarah a Merry Christmas.

Dr. Sarah (27:20):

Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanza, happy all of the holidays.

Dr. Rebecca (27:25):

Wait, can we confuse everyone again and say Happy Thanksgiving.

Dr. Sarah (27:28):

Happy Thanksgiving in, what is it our time warp, retrograde or whatever. Happy solstice of all kinds. Yes, exactly. Alright, I’m thankful for you guys. I can’t wait to see you again soon.

Dr. Rebecca (27:46):

I want to come to the non-existent white elephant party.

Dr. Sarah (27:49):

Yes.

Dr. Emily (27:50):

Oh my God. So be there.

Dr. Rebecca (27:52):

Next year. For sure.

Dr. Sarah (27:53):

It’s wild. It is a time.

Dr. Rebecca (27:57):

I want to hang with the rabbi at the white elephant party. You’re hearing it here first.

Dr. Sarah (28:02):

I love it. Okay, you’re all invited. Happy holidays.

Dr. Rebecca (28:06):

Happy holidays.

Dr. Emily (28:06):

Bye.

Dr. Sarah (28:08):

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.