Holiday Magic or Holiday Stress?

0:00 Have you ever had that feeling in your stomach that you're worried about something, but you can't figure out what? Young children get that feeling all the time. They feel all the same big emotions that grown-ups feel, anger, fear, frustration, but they don't have the experience to name the feeling or figure out where it came from. So they tell us how they feel through the way they behave. Our job as grown-ups, then, is to figure out what their behavior is saying and help them learn to handle the difficult moments that are just a part of life.

0:33 Welcome to The Hidden Language of Children, a podcast devoted to helping grownups decode the meaning behind children's behaviors and respond to it in a way that is helpful and effective. I'm your host, Dr. Kimberly Bell, Chief of Clinical Practice, Training, and Innovation at Hannah Perkins Center for Child Development in Shaker Heights, Ohio. At Hannah Perkins, we understand a child's behavior as communication, and we work with adults to understand it too, so they can enjoy parenting more while helping their children grow into resilient, caring, and confident people.

1:07 I'm here with our producer, Bob Rosenbaum. What's our topic for today, Bob? Hi, Kim. Today, we're going to talk about that frenetic time of the year that's just getting rolling called the holidays. I want to emphasize that while Christmas gets most of the headlines, during this time of the year, we're not talking about a religious celebration. We're talking about the entire six weeks from Thanksgiving to New Year's. Depending on who you are and what you choose to celebrate, there's probably a dozen special occasions that come during the season.

1:44 And as much as anything, we celebrate them for the children, for the smiles, the wide eyes, and to make those lifetime memories. And from the developmental perspective of this podcast, it gives us a lot to talk about. I think a good place to start isn't really about any holiday in particular, but about the difference between excitement and fun. What do you think, Kim? I think it's an excellent place to start. And let's start by saying, in the case of excitement versus fun, it's a matter of this idea that more is always better.

2:23 Children instinctively seem like they want more, right? More attention, more fun, more toys. And then there's a breakdown. I saw this video. There was a celebrity talking about taking her kids to Disney World. And she said that she goes to Disney World knowing that by the end of the day, her children will be so overwhelmed that they will fall out into a temper tantrum. And she just goes knowing that's going to happen, right? That there's this threshold of excitement that leads to a temper tantrum.

2:59 And when I saw it, I was like, oh, maybe leave an hour before you know that that point of no return is going to hit. But that's very hard to do. And so the holidays are like Disney World in your home. It's about managing and modulating, like managing the volume, turning the volume up, turning the volume down relative to what remains fun and doesn't cross over into overstimulation. because then you get tantrums and you get sleepless nights and you get fun between kids that turns into arguments that turns into hitting that turns into wrestling.

3:44 It's like there's so much emotion and kids don't have the emotional nor the mental capacity to self-regulate. So when you completely change the environment for, let's say, if you start with Halloween, two solid months, if you come out of the holidays exhausted, just try to put yourself in the shoes of your kids who have to go through all of that and then transition back to school. Right? The first time somebody pointed out the distinction to me between excitement and fun, I remember it hitting me as a surprise.

4:23 I had kind of in my mind equated the two, but you could see the excitement starts out as fun. And over time, the smiles becomes kind of a toothy grimace and the wide eyes become wild eyes and fun stops being fun when it gets too exciting when it's gone on for too long. So Kim, in my notes, I put together a little list of some of the things that might be more exciting than fun. Number one, let's talk about TV advertising. It's there to excite. It's there to entice. It's there to make us want. And its effect on children, that's exactly that.

5:02 I know there's going to be a lot of people out there that are saying, my kids don't watch TV. But I think as we know, if you are on YouTube, even kids' YouTube, You're getting ads on there as well. And if you think about how an adult is influenced to buy something, oh, yeah, that would be cool. I don't need that, but I could want that. A child doesn't have as many defenses against that. And so when they start making their holiday list, their wished for gift list, especially the younger ones, pretty much anything they see that's bright and shiny and colorful becomes a want.

5:41 So let's talk about how to manage around creating a list of wants around the holidays. I think you need to set expectations up front, right? This is a holiday where you're going to get one big gift and maybe some little gifts. And this happens more with Christmas than with other holidays that are celebrated in these months. It's like the more boxes under the tree, the better the pictures. And so you see these pictures of these trees that are just overflowing with gift boxes. So having conversations and starting expectations early, and by early, I mean, developmentally early, like the younger the child, and managing it to those expectations so that you're not creating this field of open wanting and then the crash of disappointment.

6:43 You need to be having those conversations and managing them the entire time. What does that conversation sound like? And let's start with, say, a four-year-old. You can say, every family does Christmas a little differently. Here's what we do. and set up those expectations. What do you really want your family traditions to be? Maybe your family tradition isn't about shopping. Maybe it's about we do something every week. We do a holiday thing every week from November to December 25th. And maybe that's making cookies, not making 250 cookies, right?

7:23 Just making a couple dozen cookies And maybe we go see a light show once a week And these are the things that become the holidays so that it not as much as you possibly can and then a boatload of gifts, right? It's about spacing things out so that you're not constantly inundated with the media circus of it all, and then managing the expectations about gifts. And I don't know if you see this one coming down the train track, Bob, but we have to talk about Santa Claus. We're going to talk about that soon enough, but there's one other thing that you just brought to my mind.

8:05 You talk about the early conversations. Part of it is having a stronger voice within your household than the media and having something that counteracts the influence of the media. So the children are not only learning about setting expectations for the holidays, but they're also kind of learning the life lesson of the place of the media and the place of personal values in the way you set up your life, not just the holidays, but the way you behave anytime, all the time. Absolutely. When it comes to holidays, we have to remember that not everybody celebrates the holiday that you celebrate, and all of those families are just fine.

8:50 So not everybody celebrates Christmas. Feels like it at the time, but they don't, right? We all know that. there are kids who grow up never celebrating Christmas, and they're just fine. Because one of the things that I see from parents most is this idea that they want holidays to be big and bright and huge because maybe they didn't have that as a child. And so they want to provide it for their children. And so they're really living through their children rather than for their children. And so we have to make sure what's about us and what's about where the child is developmentally.

9:30 And it's a beautiful part of parenting is to be able to see your child enjoying something and taking just as much pleasure in seeing them enjoy it as they are in enjoying it. But you have to be careful, right, around where the boundary is between doing something because it's what you've always wanted to do and then losing track of how your child is responding. And overconsumption is certainly a part of that. And overconsumption is not necessary for childhood happiness. You know, it also raises another point that we've talked about.

10:05 We've talked about it specifically with respect to Halloween, that a parent's memories of Halloween aren't necessarily accurate and aren't necessarily set at the age of their children. And maybe part of it is a temptation to go overboard because our memories aren't really accurate. My children are now grown, and when I hear them play back the memories to me, I can hear them exaggerating what we did. I want to point out, too, that sometimes when we have these kinds of conversations, I worry that it can feel like we don't think parents know this.

10:44 I think we do. I think parents know that consumption isn't happiness. I think parents know that children will and won't remember certain things. And so I want to be really clear that when we talk about this, sometimes we're going to talk about things that will give you new information. And sometimes what we're offering, which I think is what we're really offering today, is validation of your gut instinct that is bombarded from the outside during the holidays. Your instinct might be to keep it small.

11:21 Your instinct might be to keep it contained. And that might be hard in the face of relatives and friends and media. We're speaking more to your parenting instincts because so many parents already know this. It's just that it's hard to keep it all under wraps under the scrutiny of the outside world. Thank you for making that point. So let's go to the next thing on our list of things that might be more exciting than fun. relatives coming into town, visits with aunts and uncles and cousins and all of that?

11:58 So there are multiple ways that this can be a challenge for kids. One is setting appropriate physical boundaries. Your child who is more introverted doesn't necessarily want a hug and a kiss and a pinch on the cheek from absolutely every relative that walks in the door. Assuming that a six-year-old or a five-year-old remembers Aunt Sally, who they haven't seen in two years, is going to be anxiety-inducing in an unnecessary way. Developmentally, we know that the brain changes a lot between, like, ages four and a half to six.

12:36 And by changes, I mean we lose some of our early memories for the sake of cognitive development that's happening. There's a technical term for it. It's called dendritic pruning. It's not important, but it's what's true. And so it's easier to say, I don't know if you remember Aunt Sally. You haven't seen her in a couple of years, but Aunt Sally remembers you. Would you like to give her a hug? Be on the side of your child. Now, are you worried about offending Aunt Sally? Maybe. Aunt Sally is a grown-up, right?

13:09 You have permission to worry less about the grown-ups and more about the child when it comes to these kinds of things. And I know that there's going to be like so much pressure. And when you say to family members, please only get them something small. And you have a family member that doesn't toe the line on that. Or, and here's another one that I know sometimes cannot be avoided, right? Some of these things I'm not saying, oh, don't do it. It's terrible. I'm saying do it with conscious understanding and conscious intention.

13:40 And it's this one. moving your child out of their bedroom to accommodate a grandmother, a grandfather, an aunt, an uncle, and creating this sort of brand new sleeping arrangement. And I mean at any age. This can feel so disruptive to the child's sense of space, ownership, and privacy. Maybe your house isn't big enough. Maybe you don't have a choice. I'm just saying, anything that can be talked about, kids can get through. And so you can say to a teenager, I know this is an imposition. It's only for this number of days.

14:22 During the day, this is still your private space. They're just going to sleep in there. Create a manageable situation around this kind of disruption. So let's go to the next one on the list. holiday movies. They frequently model behaviors that we wish they didn't model. That's part of the entertainment of the holiday movies. They often show the worst. I'm thinking about the one with Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to find the hard toy Yeah the Christmas movie the Christmas story right Christmas story with the BB gun We're not saying that those movies are inappropriate.

15:06 We're saying that they're not for 5-year-olds, right? They're for 10-year-olds. They're for kids who have a solid grasp on reality. You're much better off with cartoons for younger kids. I've even seen some very little kids be really scared by the live-action Grinch. Because sometimes live action is confusing for a child of four or five who hasn't quite made the leap into reality. So, you know, I keep sliding into it, Bob. We're going to get there. We have to talk about Santa Claus. I think we're there.

15:37 We just have to. You can look at years worth of pictures with Santa Claus at the mall. And there are certain years before the age of, say, six where the child is just sobbing, right? And we later sort of have a little bit of mean fun with that. But that wasn't fun. That wasn't fun for your child. That wasn't a memory for your child. That was you handing them off to a very big fuzzy stranger. And I think if you're honest, it probably wasn't fun for you either. But you really wanted to get the picture, right?

16:12 I'm not proud of it, but we have that picture. I have a picture of myself in that situation as well. It's like a rite of passage somehow. and I think there might be an internal instinct not to do it. Yeah, so in the early years, this belief in Santa Claus that this guy comes down the chimney and drops the presents off under the tree, it's kind of magical, and children get wide-eyed, and we have some fun with it. I'm going to interrupt you for a second. Okay. I feel like we need to put in a spoiler alert right here.

16:44 This is how serious a conversation this is. We're about to talk about something, and if you happen to be listening to this podcast, and you are an earshot of your children. Be aware of what we're about to talk about with regard to the magic of Santa Claus and maybe fast forward through this part a little bit or listen to it when you're in a private space. You are more considerate than I am. I would have gone right ahead. So at some point though, their brains develop. They start putting things together and the magical story just doesn't add up anymore.

17:21 And they start asking questions. How do you deal with that? It has to. It has to, Bob. It is developmentally necessary, right? Because we are going from a place where one plus one could equal unicorns and rainbows to a place where one plus one equals two. And all year long, we push for that. We push for understanding your limitations. You can't jump off of that bookshelf and fly. In our preschool and kindergartners, we're looking for this cognitive development that helps them accept the boundaries of physics and reality and science and all of those things.

18:02 Now, in their imagination, they may say, when I grow up, I'm going to be a princess and the president. And we're like, sure, right? That's a fantasy. But when we start saying to them that there are laws and rules to the world, except for the tooth fairy who comes into your room at night under the cover of darkness and takes your teeth from under the pillow. or with the exception of a jolly fat man in a red suit who comes down the chimney and secretly leaves you what you very much most wish for, which leads to all kinds of disappointments when Santa Claus doesn't give you what you wanted.

18:44 When you're in this time, you're on the one hand pushing for reality and on the other hand sabotaging that reality. And so there should be pleasure in figuring out what Santa Claus is all about. How do you do that? How do you make that pleasurable? Well, I have a way that I prefer to do it. And for me, it's not that there is no Santa Claus. It's that everybody is Santa Claus. And so there is a joy in giving anonymously. there's a joy in giving a gift watching somebody enjoy it without getting any thanks or gratitude and once you understand that there's no magical coming down the chimney santa claus you get to be in the santa claus club right that's a special thing to be especially if you have an older sibling with younger siblings you get to be in the santa claus club and it's a special thing to grow up and to figure this out and to be able to then become Santa Claus.

19:50 And it doesn't mean that you don't get gifts from Santa Claus because we all still can enjoy that part of the holiday. It's a more mature way of enjoying that whole conversation. It also encourages metaphorical thinking, which doesn't hurt anything. Yeah, and selfless service, which is not a bad thing to learn as a value. Yeah. Some parents are very quick to settle the issue once the kids bring it up. Other parents will hold on to the magic for way too long. And I think probably most parents are somewhere in the middle and just kind of struggle with it until it works itself out.

20:30 Yeah. I feel like I've said this in other podcasts, Bob, or maybe other people have interviewed me about this. I can't remember. But I've had kids say to me, don't tell my parents. They don't know. And I'm like, OK, everybody's just colluding with everybody. But that was a child with really good reality testing. Right. Like they were like, oh, my God, I guess my parents aren't aware of the rules of science like I am. And they don't want to ruin their parents' happiness about it. So I just think it's about deciding, genuinely deciding where the joy of the holidays come from.

20:59 Right. And that's and that can be applied to all. I know we always end up whenever we're talking about the holiday season, we talk more about Christmas. But the truth is that Christmas is the most commercial of all the holidays. And therefore, it is the most overconsumed. Yeah. The next thing on my list of excitement versus fun applies to Thanksgiving as much as Christmas. Travel. Packing is stressful. And when you're a parent with little kids, you have no choice but to pack for them. If it's stressful for you, how is it for the kids who are watching you get wound up and deal with it and pretending the whole time that it's fun?

21:39 I think most of the families I've met actually handle this better than they think they do. I think the instinct is there, giving kids the option of choosing some things that they need and want to bring. Anything that gives them manageable limits and boundaries, right? Let me tell you what I've observed out in the wild when I've been traveling. The families that seem to be having the most fun are the ones who are like traveling in their pajamas. It's better for them to be in their footie pajamas and boots than be all dressed up and looking snazzy.

22:10 The ones who are not rushing through things like security, Right. That aren't like, come on, pulling kids in one direction or another. The ones that can breathe through it and get there early enough so they not rushing know that everything is going to take four times as long And preparing for that and getting into the travel zone What do you have control over What do you not have control over This is the last one that I had on my list not necessarily the last thing that can be more exciting than fun, but counterintuitive.

22:42 Secrets, surprises, mysteries, presence. We love building up the anticipation. How much fun is it by the 20th day of waiting? what pulls the fun out of it, and people are going to disagree with me on that, and this is fine. That's fine. It's fine if you disagree. You start to build up this excitement for presence, and then you start to utilize the possibility of presence or the lack of presence as a means of behavior control. And that's not emotional modulation. That is the holidays are getting stirred up.

23:18 Everybody's experiences and emotions are getting stirred up. Kids are getting overly excited at a party and then you're saying if you don't calm down and take your shower or go to bed or whatever santa's not coming or he can see you or elf on the shelf i knew you were going is watching you these magical mystery eyeballs who that are watching you when you're sleeping and when you're awake you want them to enjoy the holiday but that's not enjoying it's not joy That's not enjoyable. That's leverage.

23:52 It's leverage. It's using it as a reinforcer and a punisher. And that's not an enjoyable holiday. And so I think there are other ways to manage kids' behaviors, even around the holidays, that don't include that. And so that's one thing about secrets and surprises. But also there are times where kids that are searching for their presence in the closets days ahead of time, those kids are not being bad or being naughty. Those are kids that are having a hard time with the anticipation and the not knowing.

24:23 And they're trying to alleviate that in the only way they know how. And maybe just decrease the amount of, I'm not saying to not have surprise presents. I'm saying maybe decrease the amount you talk about them. Oh, can I tell you the one that I really don't enjoy? The surprise I really don't enjoy? We didn't tell our kids that we're going on vacation over Christmas and we're going to surprise them with tickets in the morning. If you've ever watched those videos of parents surprising their kids like that, those kids start crying.

24:57 I think people decide to interpret it as joy, but that kind of crying is actually a sign of their system being dysregulated and overwhelmed because they have no time to prepare, even if it's a good surprise. I'm just not a fan of big things that kids don't get to prepare for. It makes sense. So what is it that children really remember? We're trying to make magic. We're trying to create lifetime memories. What are the things they're really going to remember? Anything that's in relationship. Kids remember the relationship.

25:37 They remember the look on mom's face when she opened a gift that dad or grandma or grandpa or aunt or babysitter took them to get. They remember traditions. They remember laughing around a table. They remember cooking together. They remember things that are in association with relationship. Yeah, closeness, not the stuff. And again, I think intuitively parents know that. Yeah. It's easy to forget amongst all the excitement. Yeah. And let's say they say, oh, my big Hanukkah gift one year was a bicycle and I learned how to ride a bicycle.

26:23 Is a child going to remember that? Yes, they're going to remember that. How do they remember that gift? It's not just the getting of the bicycle. It's riding the bicycle down the street in the middle of winter. in their pajamas and their boots, maybe. It's a whole sensory experience of the relationship, the excitement of the activity. Maybe it's playing Barbies with your friends or your cousins after everything is quiet. Those are the memories that stick, and they're all about relationship, even if they're tied to a particular gift that you remember.

27:05 We've talked about a lot. To bring this all together, do you have some takeaways that we can help people just keep in mind? Sure. And again, I think parents intuitively know these things, but at the holidays, it can get lost a little bit. Don't underestimate the impact that a break from routine has. Being away from school is not the great thing that you think it is. They're away from their friends. So maintain as much normalcy in your life as possible. Kids thrive with structure. So don't blow up your whole schedule in terms of sleep patterns.

27:44 Maybe there needs to be time with friends, connecting, keeping things a little bit calmer. So as much normalcy as possible. Make sure that if you are not having a good time, that you figure out how to make that better for yourself. because if you're cranky and you're screaming, get out of my kitchen, your kids are not also having a good time. Make sure you're spending time with your kids. Being away from them all the time during the holidays because you're so busy creating the holidays for them is not necessary.

28:20 So things that you do together are better and let go of whatever perfectionistic ideas you have. Things are gonna go wrong. Things are gonna be imperfect. It is not going to be what you see on social media. And intuitively, we all know that social media are people's highlight reels and not what's really going on in the background. But sometimes we can get lost in what we wish for it to be. Make our own highlight reel. Edit out the hard stuff. Because it's going to happen. You're going to have those moments.

28:54 Okay. Well, we've covered a lot. And that is all the time we have for today. As always, if you have questions about parenting or child development, we are happy to answer them. You can send questions by email to hiddenlanguageofchildren at gmail.com. Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this conversation and found something to take away from it. The Hidden Language of Children podcast is a production of the nonprofit Hannah Perkins Center for Child Development in beautiful Shaker Heights, Ohio.

29:23 Our producer, as always, is Bob Rosenbaum, and Dan Ratner is our consulting producer. If you like this podcast, please subscribe to your future episodes and share it with your friends and family. We welcome your comments and questions. Again, you can always contact us by email at hiddenlanguageofchildren at gmail.com. For more links and information about our approach to healthy child development, you can visit our organization's website at hannahperkins.org. I am Dr. Kimberly Bell, and we will see you next time.