“Oh, I thought we couldn’t bring food in?” I naively inquired.

“That’s right, you can’t.” She said. “I’m talking about the goody bags.”

My mind was blown; I had no idea I was expected to bring goody bags into class in lieu of edible treats, which had long been rightfully banned due to allergy concerns. “Just make sure there are no choking hazards or button batteries,” she elaborated. I spiraled into a nearly week-long struggle to figure out what the heck I could bring 13 preschoolers that wasn’t a choking hazard or harboring a potential death button.

I combed the aisles of the local dollar store and decided on crazy straws. It seemed like an utterly ridiculous gift at the time, but nothing on those shelves wasn’t tiny enough for a preschooler to choke on or illuminated by contraband batteries. It was either crazy straws or a small notebook, but giving a notebook to a four-year-old seemed even weirder than a straw. So I bought some ribbon, tied it around the little straws, and brought them to school. When I handed them to the teacher, she looked at me like I was some sort of alien formation. I looked down at my fist clasped around the small bunch of unwrapped straws I’d brought in and understood.

Gross. Why had I brought in a bunch of loose straws for children? Even pre-pandemic-me knew that was pretty unsanitary. And odd. I broke eye contact and slipped out the door.

Goody bags have continued to haunt me, and my children are nine and 12. We’ve managed our kids’ expectations at this point (meaning they have none), but this is still very much a thing for their elementary school-aged peers. Except now, instead of bringing them to school, we’re furnishing them to children who show up at our kid’s birthday parties, and just why? They’re always filled with plastic, always contain a potential pet-murdering button battery (apparently OK since the kids are older now), and are always completely useless. No parents like to put them together, and kids don’t even want this crap.

Which begs the question… why do we do this?

According to Yale, 80% of toys end up in a landfill. “The importance of toys in child development is undeniable, yet play is never limited by number or intended use,” claims the research. “While excess toys are unnecessary to expand one’s imagination, keeping a smaller toy box can teach kids to be environmentally conscious in their future decisions.” Is it possible that many of us are just blindly continuing a tradition no one likes because we’re too busy to step off the hamster wheel of parental asks? Knowing even our child’s most precious toys will undeniably end up in a landfill makes the handfuls and handfuls of junk most of us have tossed directly into the garbage even more deplorable.

And where did the idea even come from? “The ritual dates back at least to the Stone Age as a way for clan leaders to cement the social connections made at important gatherings,” the New York Times explains. “The bags have a functional purpose too. Their arrival is an upscale version of flashing the houselights: a host’s polite but unmistakable signal to guests that it is time to leave.” While we can probably all get behind something that will signal to Becky’s newly divorced father that he’s not invited to dinner, might we be leaning into a tradition that should be reserved for more important functions than a group of children eating cake?

My last attempt at the goody bag was three years ago when my son turned nine. We were at a laser tag venue, and clearly, shooting lasers at each other in a dark room was going to overshadow anything I’d shoved into a bag for these kids to take home. Nevertheless, I hit up stores that week in search of stuff I thought nine-year-old boys would like: superhero erasers, monster fingers, Minecraft candy, and other assorted crap. I loaded all the trinkets into Minecraft bags I’d carefully labeled with each child’s name and proceeded to forget the entire box at home. When I realized what I’d done, I told the parents as they were leaving that I’d have my son bring the bags to school the following week. At least half of the parents almost instinctively shouted, “NO!”

Enough is enough. We’re composting, we’re making an effort to recycle more, we’re hauling reusable bags to the grocery store and buying electric cars. It kind of makes sense that we stop throwing a bunch of plastic in our kids’ faces every time a holiday pops up on the calendar.

It’s time.

Time to be done with goody bags.

This is not an easy time for parents. But you’d do yourself a favor to remember that it’s an even harder time for kids and be careful not to poke the bear. The tween years are a time when parents really need to be the adult in the room, and sometimes that requires disregarding your feelings and carefully communicating with your child. Here are a few things you should never say or do when dealing with a pissed-off kid.

1. Don’t tell them, “It’s not a big deal.”

Your tween should be given the space to have feelings and react to things. Saying “it’s not a big deal” invalidates those feelings.  According to Dr. Lauren Allerhand PsyD, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute, “The absolute number one thing is validation. Our emotions are a communication tool. They let the other people know how we feel and help us get our needs met.” Foster a safe space for your child to tell you what’s bothering them without feeling belittled or brushed aside. This is the kind of reinforcement we crave even as adults.

2. Don’t take things personally.

As our kids grow up, they grow into their independence, which is a good thing. But it’s totally normal for parents to feel rejected at times. When your child lashes out or needs their space, don’t take it personally. “All too often parents personalize some of the distance that occurs and misinterpret it as a willful refusal or maybe oppositional behavior,” says Catherine Steiner-Adair, a Harvard psychologist. “This is a time when children really start to have secrets from us, and parents who have a low tolerance for that transition—they want to know everything—can alienate their children by being too inquisitive.”

3. Don’t match their anger with anger.

It can be difficult when your child becomes angry at the drop of a hat or seems to overreact to the smallest inconvenience. But it’s super important to remember that your growing child is less equipped to handle big feelings than you, as an adult, are. “The prefrontal cortex, which is the part of our brains involved in problem-solving and impulse control, isn’t fully developed until your mid-to-late 20s. Adolescents are also flush with hormones like testosterone and estrogen, which can have a significant impact on mood,” Dr. Allerhand says.

4. Don’t try to control your child’s emotions.

Has anyone ever effectively been able to control your emotions? The answer is probably “no.” So why do we sometimes expect that we can control the way our kids feel? “It’s okay and natural for a child to be angry at times, as long as that anger is expressed appropriately,” advises Empowering Parents. “So, do not ask, ‘How do I prevent my child from getting angry?’ Instead, ask, ‘How do I get my child to behave appropriately when they get angry?'”

Related: 9 Tween Behaviors Parents Shouldn’t Ignore

5. Don’t tell them to “calm down.”

This doesn’t work with toddlers, it doesn’t work with young kids, and it doesn’t even work with adults. “It tells the child that expressing emotions is not accepted or appropriate. It tells the distressed child to stop because they are ‘too much,'” says Rachael Snyder, a clinical psychotherapist specializing in teen anxiety, depression, and trauma. “There are adults who hold in or bottle up their emotions because, at one point in their life, they were told it’s not OK to express those.”

6. Don’t center your own feelings.

Yes, your teen watched the entire season of The Baby-Sitters Club after repeatedly refusing your excited invitations. Then you may have said, “Why did you watch this without me when I’ve been begging you to watch it with me for months?” At which point your tween rolled their eyes at you, sighed like they’ve never been so inconvenienced, and marched back to their room. This could easily devolve into a fight, and it’s a good time to remember that your tween doesn’t hate you or hate spending time with you. Step back and resist centering yourself.

7. Let them vent.

As a parent, it’s hard not to try to make things right. We’re so used to tending to the needs of our infants, toddlers, and young children that we have a hard time recognizing when they’ve grown out of that necessity. Think about yourself here and how often you just need your friends and family to be a sounding board for what you’re going through. Give your kids the benefit of this—and allow them to vent to you without attempting to “fix” whatever is wrong.

Related: 9 Ways to Build Trust with Your Tween

All parents stress over how much time kids spend in front of screens. As our dependence on them grows, it becomes harder to set limits with our kids. That’s why it’s good to know which shows may actually be serving our kids more than others. You may be surprised by the results.

To try and figure out which children’s TV shows had the widest vocabulary, Business Name Generator looked at some of the most popular series meant for an under-14 audience since the ’90s. They analyzed the words in each show to calculate how many “unique” words appeared per 1000 used. In this case, “unique” meant those “that only appeared once in the entire sample of words for that show.”

SpongeBob SquarePants topped the list, with 21% of the words being unique. Four of the top 10 shows were from the ’90s and 50% of them were animated.

SpongeBob had 213 unique words per 1000 words used. Kinda wish they would have analyzed more shows from this decade, because not sure whose kid is watching 7th Heaven. Regardless, it’s interesting to see how rich the vocabulary of a show is because we know the importance of exposing kids to a wide variety of words from a very young age. Research has shown kids who are read to before bedtime have a million-word advantage over kids who are not by the time they get to kindergarten—the idea being “kids who hear more vocabulary words are going to be better prepared to see those words in print when they enter school.”

And SpongeBob himself is a dynamic character to get behind—no wonder kids love him. His favorite color is beige, his favorite flavor is vanilla, and he’s afraid of the dark. Some research conducted in 2015 said 25% of his viewers are adults with no children. That’s not weird!

One important thing to note is that for very young children, no amount of screen time is considered a positive. The AAP still calls for “no screen time at all for children until 18 to 24 months, except for video chatting, and says kids ages 2 to 5 should get an hour or less of screen time per day.”

We don’t need to solve all their problems or over direct them every, single, day. Some little phrases can make them (and us) slow down a little and remind our kids that nobody’s perfect, and sometimes a little kindness goes a long way.

“Oops”

“‘Oops’ is a very generous word. It erases blame. In a single syllable, it strengthens our relationship by affirming that we believe the other person has good intentions, even when they mess up,” says psychologist Eileen Kennedy-Moore, Ph.D. “‘Oops’ slows us down and reminds us not to jump to conclusions about someone’s personality when they make a mistake.” Mistakes happen, and the way we react to our children can teach them that the world isn’t perfect, and we don’t expect them to be.

“I trust you”

As our kids get older, they need to know that we recognize they’re growing into independent beings capable of making good decisions for themselves. This may be hard for us as parents because it signifies a time when we probably need to back off a little—a time when our “babies” no longer need to be babied. “I trust you to make the decision that’s right for you” empowers our children to grow more independent.

“You tried really hard”

By the time my child was three, I was already absolutely overloaded with parental advice. But one piece of that advice has always stuck with me: the directive to never tell kids they’re smart.  A Stanford psychologist concluded that when children are told they are smart, they cease trying as hard. They assume intelligence and think they don’t have to put in the work. That might be a little overboard, but the intention is there; we should recognize when our kids have put in hard work and reward the action. (I still tell my kids they’re smart, though, not gonna lie!)

“You are so kind”

Don’t forget to show your kid that you recognize the parts of their personality that make them a good human. When we notice things like kindness and empathy and point them out, our kids are taught that those qualities matter. And there has never been a more important time to teach our kids that those qualities matter. Our kids are growing up being taught more empathy than we ever were—and that’s a good thing.

“I’m sorry”

When we own up to our mistakes and ask for forgiveness, we teach our kids that their mistakes will be forgiven, too. And don’t forget to own up to whatever you’re apologizing for without emphasizing your kid being too sensitive. “Apologizers are not responsible for other people’s feelings, but they are responsible for their own actions, which may have triggered those feelings. ‘I’m sorry you feel__’ implies that the other person’s feelings are the problem rather than the apologizer’s actions,” Kennedy-Moore says.

“It doesn’t need to be perfect”

This is something adults need to hear often, too. Sometimes “finished” is more important than “perfect” and that’s perfectly fine. Think about the ways perfectionism makes your own processes more difficult. Perfectionism can be the enemy of creativity and impose all sorts of anxiety. “You can help your child learn to avoid overdoing by asking, “How much time is this task worth?” Whatever your child can manage to do in that time is probably enough,” advises Kennedy-Moore. “Time is our most precious resource because we can’t get more. We don’t want to give a task more time than it deserves.”

Absolutely nothing

That’s right—nothing. Sometimes what our kids need is for us to stop talking. Actively listening can be hard, but the more we try to do it, the easier it will be for our kids to trust that they can open up to us. “Active listening is a good way to improve your communication with your child,” advises the Centers for Disease Control. “It lets your child know you are interested in what she has to say.” This can be difficult for parents because we always want to “fix” everything, but sometimes the best fix is letting kids get whatever big feelings they’re having out. And they can’t do that if we don’t let them.

Related: The Most Important Things to Say to Your Tween (That Aren’t ‘I Love You’)

There are things you can avoid saying and some things you should lean into. When the child who used to tell you everything no longer opens up, when the child who used to be glued to your side doesn’t want to hang out, and when the child who used to smile every day seems more introspective, here are some ways to try to break through.

“I hear you.”

Many times, all any of us really want is someone to actually listen to us, and our tweens are no different. “Try to understand their perspective before offering suggestions,” the American Psychological Association recommends. “Sometimes your own anxiety can prompt you to try to fix everything. But in many cases, the best help you can offer is to listen attentively.”

“Is there anything I can help with?”

This ties into listening better, but as parents, we can’t always assume that we know what’s wrong. Ask your child for insight instead of meeting them with assumptions. “Do not assume that you know what’s wrong,” the National Health Service advises. “Rather than asking ‘Are you being bullied?’ try saying, ‘I’ve been worried about you. You don’t seem like your usual self, and I’m wondering what’s going on with you at the moment. Is there anything I can help with?'”

“I’m so proud of you.”

This is something we remember to say when our child lands on the honor roll or has a similar amazing accomplishment—but do you remember to say it when your child is just being themselves? I’ve raised an empathetic child, and that’s something I’m very proud of. When I see him saving snacks for his sister or telling me a story about talking to a child who was sitting alone at lunch, I make sure to let him know how proud I am of him and of his character. Pride doesn’t always need to be saved for measurable achievements—like trophies or wins.

“I’m sorry.”

Parents are human, and as such, will make mistakes. We can’t expect that we are always going to model perfect behavior to our children, and when we mess up—we should own it. “Apologizing to your children shows them that you as a parent are willing to take responsibility when you lose your cool or do something hurtful,” advises Sarah Epstein, a licensed marriage and family therapist. “When parents refuse to apologize, it shows the child that their parent is never willing to take responsibility simply because they are the parent. It erodes trust.”

Make it about them.

This isn’t a specific phrase; it’s rather the absence of a very specific word from time to time—”I.” Remember to center your child in the conversation. “Business people are often trained to say, ‘I understand you feel…’ This phrase doesn’t work with kids because it shifts the attention to ‘I’ the adult rather than ‘you, the child, who wants and needs to feel heard,'” says Eileen Kennedy Moore, a psychologist who specializes in parenting, child development, mental health, and social emotional learning, and the author of Kid Confidence: Help Your Child Make Friends, Build Resilience, and Develop Real Self-Esteem. “Use the word ‘you’ and avoid ‘I’ to keep the focus of your empathic comments on your child.”

“Can you show me how you did that?”

The tween years are about the time you start to learn there are things your child knows more about than you. Give your child a reason to get excited about telling you about new interests by showing them you are invested in the idea that they are growing and learning—and probably know more about fifth-grade math than you.

“No.”

The ability to say “no” is something that we can all learn from, and saying “no” to your child teaches them the importance of boundaries. “It does [a child] no favor to be taught that ‘no’ is the opposite of ‘nice,’ to be raised and praised as someone who is always agreeable, never complains, pleases at all costs, goes along to get along, bows to disagreement, and suffers dissatisfaction in silence,” explains Psychology Today. Your child is going to be up against so many situations in life that challenge their beliefs and surface the need to make important decisions. Modeling “no” as a healthy, normal response is critical.

But somewhere along the line, being open about one’s family and experiences turned into  putting children on full display to build a “brand.” The parenting bloggers of the past transformed into the Instagram influencers of the present—and so much of that world is based on how comfortable influencers are with letting their fans into their personal lives, visually. It’s a shift that many on social media are no longer okay with. And parenting influencers with very large audiences, built out of that willingness to share, are changing the way they do things.

“I literally think about it every single day,” Grant Khanbalinov, a TikTok personality with 3.2 million followers recently told The Washington Post. “Why we were doing it for so long and what impact this is going to have on the kids as they get older.” His TikTok profile now reads, “No longer a kids show.”

He’s one of the many parenting influencers who built a large online following by sharing day-to-day details of his kids’ lives—and now has some major regrets. “I went from this average person, this nobody, to getting brand deals,” Khanbalinov said. “All this money is coming in. People are inviting us to places and noticing us and our kids on the street.”

Then he became aware of Reddit forums accusing him and his wife of exploiting their kids, and he eventually started wondering if they were right. He told The Washington Post that his “breaking point” was when the family took a trip to Disney, and he noticed his kids weren’t enjoying it—instead, they were waiting for cues to pose for the camera. From that point on, Khanbalinov either made content that included his kids private—or stopped posting about them altogether.

Kristin Gallant, one-half of the duo behind wildly popular toddler parenting brand Big Little Feelings, has added herself to the list of influencers who no longer show their kids online. “Okay, so there’s going to be a little change here at Big Little Feelings,” Gallant shared to Instagram stories last year. “I don’t want to disappoint any of you… but I’ve taken a full year to weigh pros, cons, and do research. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to remove the girls’ faces from social media. I’m still going to share my real raw vulnerable life; that’s never going away. And this is no judgment on whether you share your kids on social media or you don’t, but sharing them with 2.7 million people is very, very different. And so now I have to consider their safety.”

Gallant explains that showing their faces and posting something as benign as their favorite snack or birth month could make it easy for a person they don’t know to walk up and start a conversation and establish a false sense of trust. Beyond physical safety considerations, launching this successful platform was Gallant’s dream come true, she says, not necessarily the path her kids would have chosen for themselves. She wants to wait until they get older to make that call.

As do plenty of celebrities who keep their children safely tucked away from the public eye. Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell are known for honoring their kids’ privacy. “My feeling is that I chose a career in the public eye. I chose to be quoted, I chose to have my picture taken,” Bell told Romper, about choosing to keep her kids off social media from infancy. “I don’t know them yet. I don’t know if they will want that. So I really don’t have the right to choose for them.” Even Mark Zuckerberg has decided to keep his kids’ faces off of social media. Might not be the worst idea to follow the lead of the person whose fortune was built off of the world’s willingness to share.

Respecting a child’s privacy seems like a good enough reason to question whether “sharenting” is appropriate for your family, but experts warn that there may even be larger dangers that lurk with the practice, as parents “unintentionally put their children at risk of hacking, facial recognition tracking, pedophilia and other online threats to privacy and security when oversharing on social media,” reports CBS.

Apart from those worst-case scenarios, though, is the everyday reality that parents are laying the groundwork for how to exist in a digital world that rewards over-exposure. “If we’re modeling appropriate use, as well as appropriate content that’s shared, how we share, and getting consent to share things, I think that’s going to… help children make that a part of their best practices when they’re using social media,” says child development and parenting expert Caron Irwin.

Social platforms have changed, as has our understanding of how to use them and what the implications of doing so are. If we equip our children with the knowledge that their image is theirs and they are allowed to decide how it’s shared, that has to be a step in the right direction.

“When we’re parents of young kids, it’s hard to see where they end and where we begin,” Stacey Steinberg, a professor at the University of Florida’s College of Law, who researches parental sharing and child privacy told The Post. “And as they get older, that becomes more and more apparent. But when we share so much about them in early childhood, it’s harder for them to create their own identity and become who they want to be.”

For those simply wanting to share moments with friends and family without making it a public display, there are safer options like the Tinybeans app (you can learn more and download it here!), which puts parents in total control of who can see and interact with photos and videos.

Do parents share too many images of their kids online? France thinks so. Last month, members of the National Assembly’s law committee unanimously agreed that new legislation that aims to protect children’s rights over their own images should be drafted.

A Member of Parliament from French President Emmanuel Macron’s party, Bruno Studer, put the bill forward. “The message to parents is that their job is to protect their children’s privacy,” he said in an interview. “On average, children have 1,300 photos of themselves circulating on social media platforms before the age of 13, before they are even allowed to have an account.”

The term “sharenting” has been circulating in the social zeitgeist more and more over the last few years, likely because it has become increasingly common for parents to document all stages of their child’s life on social media. The term is a combination of the words “sharing” and “parenting.” The intention behind sharenting may be a seemingly harmless and easy way to keep friends and family in the loop with a growing child, but what can result from not being diligent about privacy settings can have pretty awful consequences. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that 50% of the pictures shared by child sexual predators were found via parents’ posts on social media, a report that was mentioned in the bill.

“The first two articles aim to establish the protection of privacy as one of the responsibilities of parents as holders of parental authority, for which they must obviously involve the child,” explained Studer. “In the most extreme cases, it is provided that the family judge may, if necessary, make a forced partial delegation of parental authority for the specific case of an exercise of image rights.”

Related: 10 Things to Consider Before Sharing Kid Pics on Social Media

Studer said that by the time a child reaches age 13, they have an average of 1,300 images of themself circulating on the internet. That’s pretty daunting. And as many children grow, they become less and less comfortable with being documented online. It may be hard for parents to reconcile that the once smiling, chubby baby they loved showing off online no longer wants their image out there. The fact is, when we put something online that’s not protected for privacy, it lives on the internet for a very, very long time. Even after you delete an image, something like the Wayback Machine, which archives contents on the internet, means it can still be found. And any image that someone can access can also be screenshot and kept indefinitely.

There are a lot of parents becoming savvier about ways to share fun moments of their children, without making it a public display, through the use of private image-sharing apps (like Tinybeans!), or by keeping their social media profiles protected instead of public. Children do have a right to privacy and a right to their own image, especially as they grow cognizant of that image. If passed, it will be interesting to see how something like this can be enforced.

The big kid years are difficult—and not just for kids themselves. The grade-school/tween age encompasses kids between 8 and 12, the bridge between childhood and teenager-dom. One day your kid is playing with Barbies, and the next day everything you say is boring and they want you to buy them makeup. It’s not easy to make this transition with your child, and communication can definitely suffer.

Below, we break down some of the more common phrases used by parents trying to connect with kids at this age—what works and what doesn’t—with the help of Eileen Kennedy-Moore, Ph.D., a psychologist who specializes in parenting, child development, mental health, and social-emotional learning, and the author of Kid Confidence: Help Your Child Make Friends, Build Resilience, and Develop Real Self-Esteem. 

1. “You always/you never”

Allow your kid the space to grow out of behavior you may view as problematic without constantly reminding them that they once engaged in it. “Young adolescents are changing so rapidly, anything they did last month was done by an entirely different person,” Kennedy-Moore says.

“Try to start every day with a clean slate for your child. One of the most loving things we can do as parents is to develop amnesia for the mistakes and struggles our kids have had in the past. This gives them room to grow instead of anchoring them to the past, and helps us be open to embracing the new people they are becoming.”

2. “When I was your age”

You may think you’re being relatable, but trying to convince your kid you know how they feel because you were also a kid once is probably not going to work. “Tweens will instantly tune you out if you start talking about ‘ancient history,’ especially if they’re talking with you about a problem,” says Kennedy-Moore. “And they have a point: the world has changed drastically.” We didn’t live through a pandemic as a kid or even imagine a world where everyone would have a cell phone in their pocket.

Give kids the space to explain themselves without weaving your own life experience into the equation. That’s not to say you should never talk about yourself—just be sure to center your child when they come to you with a problem.

3. “You should just…”

Be aware of language that immediately belittles your child’s experience. “Your tween’s dilemmas may not seem difficult or important compared to adult concerns, but they matter to your kid,” Kennedy-Moore reminds us. Work with your child to unpack their own feelings about what is going on in a given situation, rather than trying to resolve the issue for them—and in doing so, maybe inadvertently making it seem like whatever they’re going through “isn’t a big deal.”

4. “I miss the age you were when…”

One day you have a child following you around everywhere and hanging on your every word, and the next day that same child would rather do anything else than hang out with you. That’s tough! But we have to remember that developing independence during the tween years is normal, and not an attack on who we are as parents or people.

“This stage can also be difficult because we may feel a new distance separating us from our young adolescents,” Kennedy-Moore explains. “It can be confusing and hurtful when our beloved children suddenly seem to view everything we say or do in the worst possible light.”

So what do we do? Kennedy-Moore says this is the perfect time for you to move toward greater independence, too. “Developing interests and enjoyable activities beyond your role as a parent is satisfying, and it helps you keep things in perspective.”

Related: How I’ve Managed My Newfound Freedom as My Kids Become More Independent

5. Extended nagging [insert any phrase here]

This is probably the hardest one because as parents we know that there is a lot to remind kids of at this age! But are we being excessive? Couple this with the fact that their stress tends to rub off on us, and you may find yourself in an environment ripe for nagging and power struggles. “Nagging irritates teens,” says Kennedy-Moore. “If you have an important point to make, compress it down to one sentence, say it, and then get out of the room. The parent-vs-kid battle is too easy for teens.”

And of course, be gentle with yourself. This too shall pass, and it is really difficult to witness the transition from an ever-dependent child to an increasingly independent tween.

Some of us had our formative years in the ’80s, and let’s just say it was a different time. There was no such thing as helicopter parenting or attachment parenting or any other parenting “style”—there was a whole lot more freedom and a whole lot less of any real exploration into the kind of media we were consuming. This is why there are a ton of nostalgic kid movies that may not really, actually be for young kids.

You may have some great memories of some nostalgic kid movies from your childhood—from ET to Gremlins to My Girl. But in case you’ve forgotten how disturbing scenes from some of these movies are, here’s a list of reasons why you may want to think twice before letting your kid (at least the littler ones) enjoy a movie night featuring one of them. And yes, some of the below were rated R, but that did not stop our parents.

Gremlins

Rated PG

A dad brings home a special gift for his son after last-minute shopping in Chinatown. He ends up with an adorable little creature called a Mogwai and is warned very sternly not to feed him after midnight or let him near water! Of course, he gets fed, which turns him into a terrifying creature called a Gremlin. Water multiplies the creatures, and all hell breaks loose. You may remember the adorable Gizmo, but let me remind you of the way some of the Gremlins perished in the movie: one mom chops up a Gremlin with a kitchen knife, another dies by blender, and yet another dies in a scene that has stayed with any kid from the ’90s or early ’90s—death by microwave.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Rated G

This nostalgic kid movie from the late ’60s was still very much in circulation when we were kids in the ’80s. It told the story of a family with a magical car, and honestly, it’s pointless to even get into the plot because it is wildly confusing. But the one thing that stayed in my mind after all these years was the villainous “Child Catcher,” which is honestly probably where the warning “never take candy from a stranger” comes from. This man skips around town with lollipops in an attempt to trap children, all while wearing an incredibly suspect outfit and top hat. I realize this does not sound terrifying, so just watch the YouTube clip above to understand why under no circumstances you should give your young children this nightmare fuel.

ET

Rated PG

I recently convinced my nine-year-old to watch ET. It’s one of the first movies I remember seeing in the theater, and I was nine at the time, too. Well, it turns out that we must have been exposed to a lot more movie “death” back then because she was absolutely destroyed by the scene where everyone thinks ET is dead. I mean, not just upset, but actually angry at me that I let her watch it. I believe her exact words were, “How could you?” So maybe rewatch the near-death scene before you let your kids watch. Oh, and that first scene where all the tweens are sitting around the table playing cards? There’s a smoking cigarette sitting in the ashtray in the middle of the table—implying one of them was smoking. Ahh, the ’80s.

The NeverEnding Story

Rated PG

The NeverEnding Story starts out as a relatable tale of a young boy (Bastion) ducking into a bookstore to avoid bullies. There, Bastion finds a book called The NeverEnding Story, and for some reason reads it in his school’s attic. The lines between fantasy and reality become blurred when Bastion reads a description that sounds eerily similar to himself and begins to believe the magical land in the book, Fantasia, needs him to survive. There is an impending dark gloom that acts as the villain in this movie, which is basically just a dark cloud that envelops everything it passes, called the Nothingness. If that terror wasn’t enough, Bastion’s beloved and gorgeous white horse Artax dies, and no child of the ’80s has ever recovered from that scene.

My Girl

Rated PG

“Do you want to go tree climbing, Thomas J?” Oh my god. The 1991 movie My Girl destroyed kids everywhere. Destroyed them. Vada is a tomboy whose mother died while giving birth to her, and if that weren’t morbid enough, her dad runs a funeral service out of their house. She’s an outcast with only one friend (MacCauley Culkin). They have the sweetest little friendship, and a lot of other things happen, but the main thing is that he runs into the woods to find a mood ring Vada lost and gets swarmed by bees and dies. Vada sees him in his casket and has a breakdown because he’s being buried without his glasses on, and “he can’t see without his glasses!” Ugh. I’m crying just thinking about it. Never let your child watch this movie.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

Rated G

Ok, hear me out. The scene on the boat in the tunnel when they leave the wonderland of the factory entrance to go into the different parts of the factory is the most terrifying one-minute of film I saw my entire childhood—full stop. It was the point of the film where you realize the children are definitely not safe in Mr. Wonka’s hands—and their parents wouldn’t be able to help them either. And there’s a worm crawling all over someone’s face. No thanks.

The Wizard of Oz

Rated G

Okay, why is this Rated G, and is this considered a nostalgic kid’s movie again? Side note: The Wicked Witch from this movie was so terrifying that when she visited Sesame Street in character, the episode that featured her was banned from syndication for frightening children. So, yes, the Wicked Witch is terrifying. But she doesn’t hold a candle to those flying monkeys that haunted my dreams for years after I saw them—with their creepy vests, coifed mohawks, and eerily stiff tails. Don’t even get me started on the noises they made.

Stand by Me

Rated R

I was 13 when I saw this in the theater, and I’m still scarred. It was such a great movie, though, and therein lies the difficulty in making some of these decisions; our kids are so much more sheltered than we were in so many ways. After finding out a stranger has been killed near the town where they live, a group of tween boys set out to go look at the body. Wil Wheaton, Jerry O’Connell, River Phoenix, and Corey Feldman played the group of friends who go on an adventure that ends up totally changing the way they look at life. There’s so much swearing in this, and the matter of the dead body, but this is one that is so, so good—as long as you think your child is mature enough. Watch it again first before you decide.

If you’re a parent with an Instagram account, you probably follow some celebrity or influencer parents, just by nature of the beast. You may have noticed over the last few years that children’s birthday parties are taking on the extreme planning and expense usually reserved for landmark milestones like weddings or… weddings.

“It used to be that over-the-top was looked down upon, but now over-the-top is applauded,” Leesa Zelken, the founder of Send in the Clowns, a party-planning service in Los Angeles, told the New York Times. The recent NYT article uncovered the extent to which Los Angeleno parents are going to make their kids feel extra special on their special days. And it’s pretty ridiculous. Zelken tells the NYT that her packages for children’s parties start at $14,500. “For an event that I just booked, we’re doing furniture rentals, a performer, a glitter tattoo station, a craft station, a pancake artist, a party manager, and a lifeguard—because there’s a pool and we need to make sure no one falls in,” she said. “That’s a very midsize party.”

If you follow any of the Kardashians, you know this isn’t an exaggeration. One of the most recent parties they hosted was for Khloe’s daughter True’s fifth birthday. Apparently, this child likes The Octonauts. There were performers dressed as the Octonauts, actual stingrays, a dessert station that dreams are made of, and an elaborate balloon-arched entryway. Khloe shared the celebration in her Instagram stories.

Imagine being a part of this friend group (I realize that’s a stretch; just pretend you somehow scored an invite.) How do you follow up a party like this with a sleepover and Netflix?

The bash followed in the outrageous footsteps of Khloe’s other sisters. Kim’s eldest, North, turned nine last summer, and she and a group of friends took a trip any adult would covet. Guests (including Jessica Simpson’s daughters) took a cashmere-lined private jet to Wyoming for a getaway that included ropes courses and rafting. The kids got their own private indoor tents.

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Yes, these are celebrities and rich Los Angeles parents, but the excessive planning and expense are leaking into the mainstream, too. A 2013 study found moms were facing increasing birthday “DIY” stress to make their child’s parties as extravagant as possible. But the thing about this “stress” is that we have the power to dial it back whenever we want.

In my childhood, every birthday party followed the same itinerary: a group of kids would come over, we’d play some games, we’d watch some present opening, we’d eat some cake, and we’d leave. If we were lucky, maybe someone’s mom would invite us all to a roller rink for a few hours. And it didn’t matter where we were, we were just thrilled to be together.

If we don’t start to course-correct ASAP, we risk children everywhere thinking this type of spectacle is the norm. And yes, we normies obviously aren’t inviting the Octonauts over for a birthday bash and buying balloon sculptures that cost more than our first car. But the act of going over the top (whatever that means for our budgets) is what may be convincing our kids they need a ticker tape parade for existing. Or that these outlandish events are something they can expect, in smaller form, from their own parents.

I am a parent who delights in being “okayish,” and even I fell victim to the extravagant party trend once. For my daughter’s sixth birthday, I decided to go for a princess theme. We rented out a place that had “princess makeovers”—little salon seats where the girls got their nails and makeup done. Then women dressed like Disney princesses galavanted around the room and took pictures with everyone. There was a perfect tier of cupcakes with little tiaras sitting atop each one. Did the girls have fun? Yes! Did they also have fun the following year, when we scaled everything back and had a low-key sleepover? Yes!

The expense, the stress, the planning—we’re doing too much. There are so many ways to chill out and let our kids have fun. Have you ever given a tween a roll of quarters at an arcade? They’re in heaven. Have you ever thrown a bag of cheap drugstore makeup at some nine-year-olds? There was a game that made the rounds at every birthday I went to during my ’80s childhood, which involved sitting on a balloon until it popped. The glee! The sheer horror! The loud noise! Children are simple, really.

If you ever find yourself planning a pizza party in your backyard only to suddenly wonder should I be doing more?—the answer is no. No, you shouldn’t. The best part of a birthday party is the togetherness and joy it brings, and regardless of how many ridiculous parties we witness on social media, nothing will change that.