Navigating the Holidays as a Highly Sensitive Parent
COST: FREE
After you register, you will receive a link to join the event via Zoom.
Two sessions: November 14th and 28th, 2023.
EVENT:
According to research, 20% of people are considered “highly sensitive people,” or HSPs. (Within the respectful parenting community associated with NUR Space, this number may be higher!) This is an adaptive, non-pathological way to be – researchers suspect it has served our species well for millenia, to have community members that are more attuned to nuance, change and sensation than others. Yet it can feel especially uncomfortable to be an HSP during the holiday season.
Why?
While spring, summer, and fall can be more tolerable for highly sensitive people, during the wintertime and holiday seasons, the tensions between the world’s expectations of parents and the capacities of highly sensitive people are at an all-time high.
In wintertime, we’re stuck inside all the time, in an environment that is more likely to be overstimulating and loud in comparison with our backyards or local parks. There are less opportunities to rest and re-set while children play at the playground; kids seem to “need” us more.
The holiday season (encompassing Halloween, Native American Heritage Month, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s) comes with additional demands on our energy and executive functioning as HSPs, leaving us prone to loudly melting down or quietly burning out.
We’re invited to socialize more often, at events that take place in the evening, when many of us are used to having time to re-charge. These events are often disruptive to our children’s routines as well, involving shifted mealtimes, more sugary treats, and delayed bedtimes, during a time of year when we’re all naturally more tired. If we have highly sensitive children ourselves, they may be impacted more by this and be more prone to tantrums, which are more draining for HSPs.
We’re expected to have a beautifully clean and decorated home, which is a gendered expectation that disproportionately impacts parents who identify and are socialized as women. Meeting this expectation — shopping online or offline in overstimulating spaces, scrubbing bathrooms to prepare for visitors when we’d rather be resting – carves away even more of our precious down time.
This added sense of pressure and compulsory gender performance of the season drains the joy from the things that would otherwise fill our bucket. For example, a highly sensitive parent may love spending a quiet afternoon at home carving a pumpkin or decorating a tray of cookies, but dread having to provide said cookies for half a dozen different school-related events on a deadline.
Clearly, no one consulted the research, nor did they consult highly sensitive parents, when they decided that this is the way the majority of us would be expected to spend these months. Yet to push back against these expectations is all too often to feel like the family Grinch.
The solution? We band together. We look at what the research says about how highly sensitive parents can show up as their best selves, and how this differs from cultural expectations. We discuss things like:
How can we come up with strategies to accomplish the things that actually matter to us? (For example, I really love wrapping presents and making them beautiful. My highly sensitive friend Shannon loves making Christmas cards. We’re also busy people who can’t do it all. How can we protect our time for the holiday activities that play to our strengths as HSPs?)
How can we come up with strategies to help us push back against the expectations that really aren't realistic for us, or that don't align with our values? (For example, if we have a more extroverted spouse, could we deputize them to attend the events, while we send the cookies? Could we use tools like Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play to re-allocate some of our regular ongoing responsibilities as parents to our other family members, in order to clear our plates to make the holiday magic happen?)
How can we make these best practices work for us all year round?
If you’re interested, please sign up! This will be a two-part workshop.
FACILITATOR:
Ryan Cherecwich
I’m a parent, educator, writer and consultant based in the NYC metro area. I am also a highly sensitive person who is married to a fellow HSP and a mother to a highly sensitive child! I began my career as a journalist, then became passionate about education following a stint teaching abroad in Asia. After I earned my M.Ed, I then went on to design community-building and educational materials for a wide variety of organizations, from foreign and U.S. state governments, to influential startups like Yelp, Readworks, Tinkergarten and Breathe 4 Change. I have also taught hundreds of children and adults across NYC, across a wide variety of public, private and charter schools, with a particular focus on learners with high sensitivity and neurodivergent learning styles. I continue to love creating community and learning spaces that increase our sense of compassion for ourselves and others, whenever I can.
For more information: https://ryanroseweaver.substack.com/about & instagram.com/ryanroseweaver
