Nurturing Your Highly Sensitive Child

 I'm gonna do a short little hiking class with you all on highly sensitive children. I personally have two and a half of them. What I want you to understand is that we are all wired with different sensitive levels in our nervous season, and the reason for that is because we need people in our species who are going to pick up on the slight variance in the wind and the nuances in the looks of a stranger.

Um, and are attuned to all of that. But if we were all like that all the time, nothing would ever get built or done. So it's in our genetic codes for 30% or so of the population to be highly sensitive. I am definitely one of those 30%. However, I think I fall somewhere on the side of the typical side of this bell curve spectrum.

So I'm still on the sensitive side, but I'm still maybe a little hugg into. Um, and I have another child who's like me, one who is absolutely in that typical, she probably is right at the tip of the bell curve, and then one who is hugging the Far Valley She is. Maybe one of the most sensitive souls I've ever met.

And I say all this because I think as a culture, we tend to idealize or value kids that are either right at the top of the bell, very typical, or even on the other side of the bell, who don't tend to have as many intense reactions to their emotional states. This is hard because then the very thing that our sensitive children need from us gets absconded from our fear that what they're doing is some reflection on us having not given them what they need or there being something wrong with them.

So I'm just gonna give you a few kind of brief things that you can do as a parent to understand and support your highly sensitive child. So the one is understand that a highly sensitive child is not choosing their emotions and their reactions to their emotions. They are occurring inside their body.

And what they need from you is to borrow your calmness. So they need you to stay empathetic and present, but also calm. So not to join them in their level of emotional excitement, but also not to dismiss them or ignore it or try to make it go away or try to. Fix it to simply teach them how to feel those feelings.

And as they develop, if they have the experience of a caregiver who is dedicated to remaining as calm as possible and as often as possible in the moments that their child is dysregulated and offering comfort and support, that child will eventually develop into being a highly empathetic human being who is capable.

Of great regulation in their own body and great co-regulation with others. They'll always be sensitive, but it won't feel so much like a liability as their brain starts to shift as they grow. So that being said, so tiring as apparent, because in my family, at least our most highly sensitive. Needs me more and more intensely and more immediately than my other children.

And it does create kind of an exhaustion and a dynamic in the family. So just know that you in your exhaustion are normal and what your child needs from you is to make sure that you take breaks and rest. I was gonna do some more work today cause I have a ton of stuff to. And instead, I took a nap and I went on this walk and thought about my child, and now I have all these things to say because I was thinking about her.

And when she comes home today, my nervous system will have more buffer to offer for her when she is going into that deep sense of feeling about, I mean, it could be anything. It could be like I gave her the wrong pair of leggings. Right? And then now we're set off into some. 20 minute long attempt to share what she's feeling and me attempting to try to help her co-regulate and all of us

feeling the intensity of her feelings. So I I, I also wanna say though, no. One of the things I've recognized about highly sensitive kids and highly sensitive adults is they feel love deeper. They really do. Like, there's something about the way that she engages and I mean, it is just true of me. Like some people are like, how are you like this?

And I'm like, well, there's two sides of this coin. Like, I love and think in deep ways all the time, but also I, when I feel pain, I feel deeply. And when I feel anxiety, I feel deeply. Right. So there's, there's two sides of every point of all of these strengths. Um, and the other thing is that, If you study you're highly sensitive child, there's often some form of, um, sensory intervention that you can use.

So some kids are really sensitive to light and you can kind of make sure the dim the lights are a little dimmer and that can actually help their nervous system. You know how as parents, when the kids finally go to bed and like, The bathroom fan is on and you like head to the bathroom and you like immediately turn the fan off.

You're like, like there can be no more noise. Well, your system's overstimulated. It's overstimulated because. You're a parent and children are loud and constant. The highly sensitive child's nervous system also gets overstimulated. And the thing about it is that every highly sensitive child is unique in what ways that happens.

So you wanna be thinking about textures, you know, how tight are their underwear? How loose are their underwear, um, foods. What type of foods help regulate them. I've noticed with one of, um, my kids who is, you know, probably right where I am, it's like, if he's really off kilter and I hand him a carrot, he, he starts to go down because there's something about that stimulation, that crunching that helps him feel calm.

So it could be about offering them sensory, sensory options. It can be about settling down sensory stimulation in the environ. Um, but what I want you to hear is that it's gonna take a while for this child to begin to regulate easier. And it's not because you're failing and it's not because you don't know some parent hack.

It's because they're wired that way. And we all live in these, in, well, we don't all, a lot of us live in these. Individual single family homes or we're in more isolation even if we are living with other people. Um, there is something about the village that we were supposed to have that we're missing and what that does to how our brain works.

Um, you know, I've noticed even with some of the most, Highly sensitive children that, like, if they're in a group of kids that they feel really comfortable with and their structure and predictability, they tend to regulate these easier because, you know, we're, we're wired for attachment, we're also wired for community.

So that being said, yes, some highly sensitive kids aren't gonna do well at school. Maybe because there's something in the environment there, whether it's the social dynamics, the teacher dynamics, whatever. Um, so if you have a highly sensitive child, I would definitely recommend reading Elaine Aaron's book, um, the Highly Sensitive Child and also, I can't remember the author's name, but the book is called The Orchid and the Dandelion, just to begin to kind of get your brain around understanding and accepting what sensitivity is and what they need from caregivers.

Love y'all.

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