Navigating the holidays as a highly-sensitive parent

Plus: A Zoom-based community circle and discussion, coming up

Crafting meaningful rituals and milestones that don’t look like the neighbor’s next door is what this newsletter project is all about. This feels especially important as we begin to rebuild our post-pandemic routines — or, for new parents, to build them for the first time — around the holidays.

Around here, we are focusing on quality over quantity. One reason is simple preference: we like being intentional about what we buy and what we do. It is better for our budget and makes our parental mental load more manageable. Another reason, however, is a bit more scientific: all three of the members of my family are also what researchers would call Highly Sensitive Persons, or orchids — people who take in more stimuli, feel higher highs and lower lows, and require more time to process information than the rest of the population.

After that first hit of shopping-related dopamine, even a very focused hunt for holiday cheer ‘n’ gear can all too often derail the rest of the day, for us three HSPs. By the time December rolls around, if we’re not careful, we’re too utterly depleted to enjoy it. This, to me, defeats the purpose of rituals.

Photo by Kyla Flanagan on Unsplash

Dr. Elaine Aron, who developed the notion of the “highly sensitive person” (HSP) and the criteria for it in the early ‘90s, describes “high sensitivity” as an adaptive and non-pathological trait. In her many books on the topic (including The Highly Sensitive Parent), she posits that it’s helpful to have community members that are more attuned than others to nuance, change and sensation than others. To have, for example, some deer that notice the subtle differences between one patch of grass and another. Not the whole deer population, because then there would be no competitive advantage, but enough that some small minority of deer would benefit from being able to find the most nutritious or hard-to-find plants in seasons of scarcity, and give rise to offspring who can do the same.

In the age we live in, however, it is not always easy to posess the widest possible aperture for taking in nuance and sensation. This has been a highly polarizing and deeply disturbing time in the news, and I know it is impacting many of the HSPs in my life to the point of paralysis, even though sensitive folks can be some of our most effective leaders and healers when they are resourced and regulated. (Just ask New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Acern.)

It can also be a tall order simply to sort through the textures, colors, smells and sounds that surround you during daycare pickup, holiday parades, or trips to the store, with all of this occupying your mind. Nor is our HSP superpower of putting thought and care into everything we do something that easily scales, if our plan is to send everyone in our address book a personalized, handmade card or to become involved in every charitable or political cause.

It feels more essential than ever at this time for highly sensitive people to have a space where they can safely process all of this incoming stimuli, and then make a plan to act in alignment with their values. To focus on the quality vs. the quantity of our actions.

This topic recently came up at a gathering of my local moms’ group, which is run out of NUR Space here in NY. Our fearless leader, Caryn, does not identify as an HSP, but many of us do. This is one of my areas of professional expertise as an educator as well as a parent, so she invited me to take over her typical book club gathering for the month of November, to create a space for us “orchids” to connect, reflect, and plan a better way through the holidays. One that allows us to live our values without sacrificing our sanity. We’ll be meeting for the first time on Nov. 14 (info below.)

One tweak to the traditional book club model, though: While we will look at Elaine Aaron’s body of work on sensitivity for tips, we’ll also review updated science and resources that incorporate new insights on sensory processing issues, as this is a quickly-developing arena of research. We’ll also look at anti-racist, anti-bias approaches to the holiday.

I’ve included some free resources from our upcoming live session below for those who want something to use tonight, to help us navigate the delightful-but-often-overstimulating occasion of Halloween.

Keep scrolling for more info!

Why is this time of year harder for HSPs?

• 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. 

• 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. 

• As in the shopping example above, we find ourselves more often obligated to hunt for holiday cheer ‘n’ gear — not to mention back to school or spirit week supplies — in overstimulating spaces HSPs often try hard to avoid

• In wintertime, we’re stuck inside our houses more of the time, in an environment that is more likely to be overstimulating and loud in comparison with our backyards or local parks.

• The above means there are less opportunities to rest and re-set while children play at the playground; kids seem to “need” us more, resulting in more HSPs who feel “touched out” sooner in the day or week.

• 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. Meeting this expectation — shopping online or offline in overstimulating spaces, scrubbing bathrooms to prepare for visitors or setting up the lights outside when we’d rather be resting – carves away even more of our precious down time. 

• This added sense of pressure 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 in America 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. She’s incredible at it — this is the bright side of being an HSP! But, 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? Could Elaine Aron’s work on this support us in brainstorming some personal best practices to ground us from season to season?

• 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 book and task deck 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? Could we support each other in giving less f@#$s about everything else?

• How can we make these best practices work for us all year round? 

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If you’re interested in discussing ways to navigate the holidays as an HSP, please sign up here! This will be a two-part FREE discussion series, hosted online by NUR Space, on Tuesday, Nov. 14 and Tuesday, Nov. 28, from 8-9pm.

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For those who are new to the newsletter, a bit more about me and why I like doing things like this:

Photo credit: the delightful Liz McCrocklin

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.

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A few resources for Halloween to get you started:

• Parenting expert

  Melinda Wenner Moyer
  on how to survive Halloween

• Kate Lynch
  of
  Atypical Kids, Mindful Parents Blog
  on 7 Sensory Friendly Halloween Hacks from Sensational Neurodiverse Families

• My colleague and fellow Bank Street alum Stefanie Paige Weider on Making Holidays Inclusive for All Children

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Do you identify as a highly sensitive person? How does this trait show up for you around the holidays? What is one aspect of the season to which you are excited to apply your highly sensitive strengths? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!