Introduction
If you are the parent of any Highly Sensitive Children (or HSCs) you may be familiar with the frustration and mystery of trying to work out what your child needs. What are they trying to communicate with you and what do you need to do to help them develop? HSCs have very particular needs which we address here. This article is intended to guide and orient parents, school teachers and relatives to know where to start. It´s also a handy reference point to give to people who have never come across the term Highly Sensitive. It contains pointers to help you learn to feel and relate to your child, and to understand what their world is like from the inside.
In broad terms, Highly Sensitive Children often need help calming their nervous systems, processing emotion, and learning to name and express the wealth of sensations and emotions they are experiencing. They experience everything on volume ten and when it gets too loud they meltdown, just like a fuse. No two children are the same, yet this article contains the broader principles within which you as adults can work out the details by observation, trial and error.
Finding additional support
You may also find it helpful to work with a practitioner (like myself, most craniosacral therapists, and those who work with gifted/sensitive adults and children). Someone who is trained to focus on perceiving at a very sensitive level can be of great assistance in translating the child’s world and experience to you as the parents. This can facilitate an easier relationship between you and your child… S/he may be able to help you as parents or teacher adjust to the child’s needs and show you how to make more empathetic contact that will support the child’s healthy development.
What do Sensitive Children Need?
HSCs need to be taken more seriously, they need fast responses to their emotional needs. They also need more time and space to recover from activity and to figure things out for themselves. They need frequent soothing.
Sensitivity is not just an inconvenience or something that you can make disappear if it doesn’t suit you. One in five people have a much more sensitive nervous system than other people. This means that their experience is heightened – things are louder, brighter, faster, and much deeper for these kinds of people. Sensitive people are more easily overwhelmed and take longer to recover than others. They feel things more intensely, need to process events more thoroughly. Usually, they are very careful about making decisions to do things. In general, they only act when they are absolutely sure.
Such people also respond extremely well to craniosacral therapy or somatic experiencing because it is sensitive and does not overwhelm their delicate nervous systems. This is true for adults as well as children. However if parents can acknowledge and support their child’s sensitivity, an HSC can grow up healthy with their sense of self intact, rather than being heavily traumatised and having little confidence – so it’s well worth the effort.
How are HSC requirements different from those of other children?
They need more sensitive parenting! In practice, that means that attuned attention or precise emotional empathy is vital. Imagine a child with a highly magnified bubble around them full of their own experiences and thoughts and observations. Their nervous system picks up every nuance and change in the surroundings. They have a rich inner life and many beauriful things they want to share with you. Showing you a sesame seed on their fingertip for example. A caterpillar on a leaf. Chalkdust under the blackboard.
If you don’t make the effort to tune into their world as a parent, you will miss out on connecting with them. Meanwhile, they are left with the sense of being totally alone, unconnected, and ignored. They will try to make sense of this by assuming they are wrong and will think their needs are not relevant, which can be really crippling for such sensitive children. The cycle of self-criticism and self-denial begins and often leads to later depression, addiction and relational problems.
Importance of Attuned Attention and Emotional Regulation
More than other children, they really can’t exist without daily quality attention and feedback on their states. They require a more immediate response to their emotional needs than other children because their sensitivity means they don’t have as much tolerance. A small change in their internal environment may feel huge and very frightening. If left unattended it can lead to shock and then trauma as the nervous system overloads and shuts down.
To help you understand, HSCs react more intensely when their blood sugar falls and they get hungry. A Highly Sensitive Child can’t be asked to wait to eat when they are hungry. The resulting internal storm of sensation and emotion becomes so intense that the rest of the day is a wipe-out. This is not a dysfunction in the child, but rather the result of a highly sensitive nervous system with less slack or tolerance of extremes.
Getting present
So as the parent of such a child, you need to be present and connected with your feelings and sensations. It is not helpful to be lost in thought constantly. Your active presence will allow you to perceive what is going on with your child, and to respond instinctively through the connection you build up with them. If you don’t know how to do this, craniosacral treatments can be a huge support for you. They will help you to learn to sense, to connect with yourself, and to be able to connect with your child.
Since in-person sessions are currently not so accesible, I am also offering a limited number of sessions as 6 week programmes online. These provide a foundation of excercises on your own and with your child that will teach you tools to sense your body and stay present in any situation. You will see results in your child´s response and development from day one. And if you are an HSP parent you will feel far less overwhelmed.
How Craniosacral Therapy can help deal with Sensitivity
Craniosacral therapy also opens up blocks in your core energy and can enable you to be more present and freer with expressing your instincts. This will probably help you more than any parenting “technique” in accessing your instinctual response to your child. You will know how to help them develop, soothe them when distressed, etc. Even if you feel you don’t know how to parent, the thousands of years of human parenting are stored in your body. They will naturally come out at the appropriate time. All you have to do is allow yourself to set aside your thinking, your fear of getting it wrong, and the ideas you’ve been told. Everyone can parent, it’s literally, natural! Craniosacral therapy can help you get back in touch with that embodied nature…
Calm down before trying to relate
HSCs are usually very sensitive to sound and smell, and easily disturbed by abrupt movements, loud aggressive people, and hysterical or frightened behaviour. These are children who really need adults to calm down before they approach them. Their systems are so sensitive that they pick up and resonate with the slightest hint of emotion or nervous energy. They don’t have the capacity to get themselves calm again whilst that stimulus is still around. If you´re agitated they will be too. It´s good to check your own state first as a general practice.
If you as the parent are highly strung or nervous, then then your HSC(s) (and partner) are likely to suffer constantly… which is why working on your own calm as a priority is even more important for these children. Again, learning to regulate your own nervous system or self soothe through craniosacral sessions can be highly beneficial.
Your child may also need help calming down
Your child can also benefit immensely from having the chance to learn to feel sensation in their own body. A quiet, safe craniosacral session where they will not be overwhelmed or too frightened to cope can enable a child to sense inside. Craniosacral sessions can help them to begin to learn to name emotions, allow anger, and express their inner states and needs. In a normal family environment, this can be very hard for sensitive children. Often they just can’t seem to find enough space or quiet to get connect with themselves. Parents may simply not know or be able to tell what they need. They tend to end up rather quiet, lost, and ghost-like. This is a shame given the huge amount of felt experience and imagination they have to contribute to life. By paying proper attention as the parent you can help them connect with life more fully.
More rest and quiet time
Highly sensitive children also need more downtime to rest between activities. In general, it is not that they are anti-social, but they tend to enjoy their own company. HSCs need solitary time several times every day. Other people are so “loud” energetically and emotionally that they smother and squash them so they can’t feel themselves.
Once their nervous systems get aroused they take longer to calm back down to a comfortable state. HSCs are also more affected by eg. a visit to the swings, or a friend coming to play. They take longer to recover and come back to themselves. Similarly, if you give them strong or sugary foods, they may react more than a less sensitive child. This doesn’t mean they need to be sheltered from life but rather shown more tolerance in handling their experience. HSCs also need space to work out what they need for themselves without interference.
Above all, they need to be taken seriously. When a boy says he wants to play football for 5 minutes in the garage, then he really does want that, and out in the patio is not the same. A sensitive child will feel the denial of his wishes as an extreme hurt and rejection of his self, whereas a more robust child might be able to brush it off.
Shyness is not always what it seems
HSCs also tend to appear to be “shy” in that they pull away from new people and observe. It’s not actually the case that they are shy. It´s rather that they perceive a lot more than other kids, and take longer to process the information. They also test people carefully to see whether they are respectful of their needs and boundaries or not. They will physically run away from adults who unknowingly try to overwhelm them. This is a very healthy trait and should be respected and encouraged. Such children know what they can and can’t handle, and even at age 12 months are taking active care of themselves. If you can acknowledge this as a parent you will actively encourage your child to have very healthy boundaries.
Relating to sensitive children effectively
Parents of sensitive children need to be careful not to dominate them with their own emotions. They also need to learn to leave plenty of space and time in conversations for these children to form their own opinions and responses. This can be agonisingly slow and frustrating, especially when there are other children in the family who are not like this. However, if you don’t make these allowances you give the child the message that they should be different. Not only does this destroy their self-worth, but it is an impossible demand on their nervous system. They can only process things at the speed and volume that they naturally can. Pushing or rushing can create physiological problems, nervous system disturbances and eventually extreme trauma.
What does not dominating your children mean in practice? In practical terms, it means asking questions without expecting a particular answer. Emotionally it means listening openly without thinking, and experiencing the answers without reacting. Regarding parenting style, it means not forcing them to do what you want, but letting them be and negotiating a course of action. This can require a lot of patience and time! In energetic terms it means speaking only after you can feel your feet, are calm and with yourself.
In practical terms it works to check that you can feel yourself, and feel the child when you communicate. If you take the time to sense yourself, you will feel where the edge of your being or energy meets your child. You will notice whether you are meeting them at the right distance and intensity to make them feel comfortable and able to respond. When you do, you will see things shift.
To Conclude
If this is something that is unfamiliar to you or you would like to know more, I offer face to face sessions by zoom. I can show you online how to increase your awareness and ability to relate empathetically to your children. When you improve your ability to feel your own body and experience your emotions directly many of your parenting issues will evaporate. Most parents won´t be aware of these relational abilities consciously but may already be using them instinctively. Parenting gets so much easier when you learn how they work. In addition, having craniosacral therapy will support this process. These are some of the many simple steps that can help you to parent and relate to a Highly Sensitive Child.
Please feel free to share but always credit the author and source. © Mira Watson 2011
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