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Parenting a Highly Sensitive Child
Episode Number: #25
Description: In this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast, Jon delves into the world of highly sensitive children. He explains what high sensitivity is, how it manifests in kids, and shares practical strategies for parents to help their highly sensitive children thrive. Jon also highlights the groundbreaking work of Dr. Elaine Aron, who introduced the concept of high sensitivity, and provides insights into the emotional, physical, and social needs of highly sensitive kids.
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Key Takeaways: Jon's Three Practical Tips for Parenting Highly Sensitive Kids:
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Want to know if your child is Highly Sensitive? TAKE THE QUIZ!
Parenting a Highly Sensitive Child
Episode Number: #25
Description: In this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast, Jon delves into the world of highly sensitive children. He explains what high sensitivity is, how it manifests in kids, and shares practical strategies for parents to help their highly sensitive children thrive. Jon also highlights the groundbreaking work of Dr. Elaine Aron, who introduced the concept of high sensitivity, and provides insights into the emotional, physical, and social needs of highly sensitive kids.
Timestamps:
Key Takeaways: Jon's Three Practical Tips for Parenting Highly Sensitive Kids:
Links to Resources Mentioned:
What episode should you listen to next?
How to Connect:
Connect with Whole Parent:
Social Media Links:
Welcome to the Whole Parent Podcast. My name is John. Do you have a kid who seems to get really overwhelmed by things, who just absolutely melts down over really simple things? I'm not talking about just in toddlerhood, but it becomes a thing later in life. Anytime they get hurt, they just react emotionally huge, seemingly oversized reactions. Maybe they're sensitive to loud noises, maybe they don't like things like fireworks For those of you who live in the United States we're coming up on for the 4th of July they seem to have more emotional needs than maybe you expected for your kids to have.
Jon @Wholeparent:Or maybe you have other kids and they don't have those same emotional needs, educational strengths and sometimes some educational difficulties. Well then, you might have a highly sensitive kid, and this episode is all about highly sensitive children how we can help highly sensitive kids, how we can parent highly sensitive kids. What high sensitivity comes from? We're gonna define it, we're gonna get into it. So, yeah, stick around, we're gonna talk about kids. How we can parent highly sensitive kids. What high sensitivity comes from? We're going to define it, we're going to get into it. So, yeah, stick around, we're going to talk about some things. So, once again, my name is john. This is the whole parent.
Jon @Wholeparent:We are talking about high sensitivity today, and one of my great criticisms of many parenting authors, creators some of the big ones is that this high sensitivity thing has. There was somebody who really came up with this and we often do not give her the credit that she deserves. Her name is Dr Elaine Aron and she wrote a best-selling book called the Highly Sensitive Person and then some subsequent books, including the Highly Sensitive Child, which was my first introduction to Dr Aron, and she really is the groundbreaking mind, researcher, thought leader behind the concept of high sensitivity. There was a really weird documentary with Alanis Morissette and Elena Aaron about this, about highly sensitive persons. Maybe that's how you were first introduced to it, but before we go any further into the episode, it's really important to say and to give credit where credit is due, because oftentimes in the world of social media, I find myself doing this. I'm not trying to criticize anyone in particular, but in the world of social media we don't. We're so quick to want to tell everybody about what's going on and give people good advice, and all of those are good things, but sometimes we forget to share where we got that information, and so I wanted to do that right at the top of the episode.
Jon @Wholeparent:So if you're looking for more information, I'm going to have linked to the show notes additional resources. If you have gone and looked at the show notes and recent episodes, or even if you've gone actually, especially if you've gone on past episodes, we have really overhauled the show notes to try and make them more helpful. They give you some timestamps and additional resources. Some of those will be mentioned directly in episodes, like I am right now with her book the Highly Sensitive Child. Others will be things that I just think might help you on whatever topic that we're talking about.
Jon @Wholeparent:So highly sensitive kids, it's an amazing topic to talk about today, but I wouldn't be talking about it and I would not be half the parent for my oldest that I am today if it wasn't for the work of Dr Elaine Aron, who again gets so overlooked when people call it other things, not high sensitivity, right, because this can go by a lot of names. People often will say highly sensitive kids are explosive kids, referring to the work of Dr Ross Green, and while there is definitely some overlap and I would say an extreme amount of overlap, the Venn diagram of explosive kids and highly sensitive kids is. There's a big middle section. Highly sensitive kids are not explosive kids. Some people call this deeply feeling kids. Right, there's a very big author who uses that term. I don't know what that means. I'll let that author define that and share that. But this concept of high sensitivity this has been around a lot longer than the concept of anything other by any other name that I can find. And if somebody else came up with this first and Elaine Aron is the one who is building on that you know all research builds on past research If that's the case, please I would love for you to shoot me an email or just to hear your thoughts about the show in general.
Jon @Wholeparent:Just send it to podcast at wholeparentacademycom. That again is podcast at wholeparentacademycom, but if you have other sources related to this, please shoot them at me. So we're already pretty far into the episode and I want to spend this episode as kind of an introduction, because there's way too much to cover about highly sensitive children. If you have a highly sensitive child, this may be totally eye-opening to you, groundbreaking for you, and there's way too much to cover in one episode, and so I don't know when the next time I'll talk about this is. But I really think that this is required listening If you have a kid who, as I described before, is is has any of those types of sensitivity. So the first explanation that I would like to give about high sensitivity or the the place I think we should start in understanding high sensitivity is understanding what it is, because we're going to talk a lot about symptoms of high sensitivity and how those things manifest and how understanding the needs of highly sensitive kids and some practical strategies for parenting highly sensitive kids and I know that that's why a lot of people tune into these episodes is for the type of practical understanding type stuff.
Jon @Wholeparent:But before that, we have to understand first what makes a person highly sensitive, and according to Dr Elaine Aron, high sensitivity is not just a human thing, it's a nature thing and specifically, it is a thing within species of animal, of which humans are one, where they are pack or group species, and so this could be a herd of horses or deer. This can obviously be other apes like chimpanzees and bonobos, but it also is in humans, and the concept that Dr Aaron promotes or forwards is that they have observed this for lack of a better term eccentricity in about 20% of the members of any given pack species, so one out of five. So she would really argue that this is not a disability in any way, argue that this is not a disability in any way. She would say that this is not even an abnormality, because in order for it to be an abnormality, it has to be more or less common rather than 20%. 20% means that this is a feature, not a failure, right? And so because of that, we have to understand. Okay. So why would this be the case?
Jon @Wholeparent:And what Dr Aaron posits for us is hey, I think the reason why this is happening is because it was beneficial for the survival of the whole for one out of five of the members of the whole to have increased sensitivity to everything. That's the first step. It's everything Increased sensitivity to all of the world and the idea behind this is that then, in a pack environment, the strengths of the pack could be built by the diversity within that pack. And for anybody who understands genetics, which is something that I'm just learning about, this is like the next thing that I'm really getting interested in right now and relating to parenting and genetic traits and turning those on and off based on environment and all that. But anybody who understands genetics understands that there are certain genetic traits like where your nose goes on your face that are very, very resilient. Those are very kind of not diverse. So some aspects of genetics are pretty common and solid. Other aspects, like what foods you like to taste and how sensitive your sense of smell is and which colors look good to you and skin tones and things like that, are more diverse, and they tend to be diverse even within twin pairs, right People who are otherwise almost genetically identical. They'll still have differences there, and the idea that evolutionary biologists have forwarded for why that occurs is that that diversity allows for a greater chance of survival for the whole, that that diversity contributes to the pack. So if you have a bunch of different members of a pack that have different strengths, that that'll be better for the whole and that's a really beautiful thing to think about. And one of these strengths, according to Elaine Aron, is that the sensory input for about one in five of the members of that pack is just going to be higher.
Jon @Wholeparent:So the first way to understand this is just to say imagine if you're a not highly sensitive person and we'll get to identifying. Maybe you're a highly sensitive person because there is a definitely a genetic component in this, where it tends to be that children who are highly sensitive have at least one parent who is highly sensitive. Not always the case, but it's much more common to have a highly sensitive child if you yourself are highly sensitive, mother or father. It's not specific in that way. And so just imagine, if you're not a highly sensitive person I am not Imagine that the sounds that you are hearing when it felt like kind of a loud sound, a highly sensitive person, that would be 40% louder. Or when you hear a sound and it's loud if you are a highly sensitive person, to a non-highly sensitive person, it would be about 40% more tolerable. Strong smells the same thing about 40% more tolerable. Strong tastes same thing 40% more extreme or 40% more tolerable.
Jon @Wholeparent:So just imagine that if you had like a dial on all of your sensory input, you would just turn it up by a couple notches. That's what's happening in highly sensitive people. They just have that genetic trait that it turns up. It amplifies the experiences, the sensory input, and there's a lot of reasons why evolutionary biologists would say that a species may do that have certain members of the species that are better at smelling, better at tasting, have a more refined sense of taste or smell, and the reason is because then it allows for the pack as a whole to have a sort of canary in the coal mine, where, if one member is more alert to noticing abnormalities in change of routine, or more alert to noticing that, hey, like this smells a little funny, maybe we shouldn't eat this. Or this tastes a little funny, maybe this has gone bad, that the rest of the pack can respond to that and say, oh well, we don't taste the inappropriateness of this, we think that this is fine, and then the pack as a whole survives. So it's a strength, not a weakness.
Jon @Wholeparent:However, the way in which our society is set up is, generally speaking, for the masses. That is no matter how you slice the masses, and so if there's only 20% of people who are bothered by how loud something is, chances are society is going to keep making it loud, because only one in five people are experiencing that negatively. Similarly, because we are a deeply social species, the likelihood that a person says, when they're in a room full of people, for other people, let's say, who are not experiencing something as being overtly smelling oh man, this smells really bad. I don't really think it smells that bad Because we're a social species. The way that often we are conditioned to respond to that is oh okay, yeah, I guess it's not really that bad either, even though your experience of it might be that it's that bad. You may deny your own experience of it because the experience of the whole is greater in your mind, because you again are trying to fit in with your peers, even if you guys are having fundamentally different experiences, and so when we understand that our children may be experiencing this, it will explain a whole lot of things very, very quickly. So that's what high sensitivity is in the most basic terms.
Jon @Wholeparent:How does this manifest specifically in kids? Because we'll get into adults, maybe in a later episode. Maybe I'll do one on highly sensitive parents. My wife is highly sensitive, so I do have a window into what that would look like, but for now I want to focus in on what that looks like in kids. So here is your really quick test, and I want to make a test.
Jon @Wholeparent:By the way, this is a little bit of a brief aside, but I want to get really heavy into quizzes because I think understanding yourself and understanding your kid is one of the most fundamental parts of becoming the parent that you want to be and reacting and acting and responding in the ways in which you want to respond, and my whole punishment-free parenting paradigm, for parenting is much, much easier when you have more information related to okay. Well, this is not, for example, a character flaw, this is just or this is not my kid whining unnecessarily or my kid trying to get my attention not that those are necessarily horrible things all the time. Sometimes we need our kids to get our attention, but this is just how they're experiencing the world. I think that those are better. So I want to make a quiz that would be much easier than this, where it just says kind of like, how much agree, strongly agree, strongly disagree type quiz where I could take the work of Elaine Aron and I could basically make like a 10 to 15 question quiz where I was like do you have a highly sensitive kid? I think that that would be a really helpful tool. Hey, it's future John.
Jon @Wholeparent:Interrupting podcast recording John, to let you know that the quiz that I was carrying on about for a moment there, I actually did go ahead and create it, so I cut out the rest of me talking about how I should create the quiz, and I just actually did it. Well, after I was editing this episode, I realized you know what it would be so helpful ahead of time, before I'm going to talk about what I'm going to talk about next If parents who had highly sensitive kids actually knew for sure. Yeah, my kid is displaying these traits, and so I need to pay more close attention. And so if you found this episode because you already took the quiz, fantastic, I'm glad that you've taken it. But if you haven't taken the quiz yet and you don't know whether you have a highly sensitive kid, please stop right now. Stop listening't taken the quiz yet and you don't know whether you have a highly sensitive kid, please stop right now. Stop listening. Go take the quiz, find out if you have a highly sensitive kid, and then the rest of what we're going to talk about is going to be so much more impactful once you have that information. All information is good information. So go and take the quiz right now. It is going to help you immensely in your parenting. And, yeah, I'm glad that I was able to create it and put it out before this episode was finalized.
Jon @Wholeparent:Okay, back to what we're talking about. Here's how I would recognize if I had a highly sensitive child. Often in my membership, when we talk about this, with parents group coaching calls, which are basically these very small group calls, like usually between three and five parents who can just ask me whatever questions they want. Those are like a pre-scheduled time, so like anybody who shows up can just ask me whatever they want. We even did a whole workshop on highly sensitive kids. When people in those in those environments want to go back and forth, I'll just ask them questions like these and then we'll kind of say like, okay, does this sound kind of like your kid? Does he do this, do they do that? So here, so here are here are some kind of things that I will often talk to parents about.
Jon @Wholeparent:So number one is the is the heightened sensitivity to sensory input. So do you have a kid who just gets really bothered by the tags on their clothes? I'm not saying that that many kids get bothered by the tags on their clothes, but for your child is it something that they can't seemingly get past? They just it bothers them and they can't get past it. If so, you might have a highly sensitive kid. And if you're listening to this episode and you're going John, this sounds a lot like ASD or this sounds a lot like ADHD.
Jon @Wholeparent:High sensitivity and ASD are fundamentally different things. Yeah, there is. There's absolutely some some overlap in some of the things, but you'll notice really, really quickly. There are other things that are completely different. So scratchy tags on clothes. They do get really bothered when things are too loud. For example, my son absolutely. If I'm doing any sort of yard work with something with a motor, he wants to either leave me alone completely or wear ear protection. Too bright of lights Does that? Is that difficult for them, just in general bothered by their physical environment, and they can't seem to move past it.
Jon @Wholeparent:You may have a highly sensitive kid If they have no sensitivity to any sensory input. I would be pretty surprised if they are a highly sensitive kid. So that would be step one and part of the reason why they can't move past it. We'll understand the needs here in a moment and get into some of the practical steps of working with highly sensitive kids. But part of the reason why they can't get past those sensory things is because in their genetic coding, like if we take the example of the member of a species, let's just use a deer. I think that's the example from Elaine Aron's book.
Jon @Wholeparent:But if you have, like, a deer, and the highly sensitive deer is the one that goes up and sniffs the berries first and sees, are these poisonous or these not poisonous? And they're the ones with the highly tuned sense of smell. If they were able to just kind of get over it and just kind of move past it and just, ah, whatever, I'm just going to ignore the smell that I'm smelling because the other deer want to eat this and they're waiting for me to give them the all clear. If you had a deer that that did that, that that would not be good for the survival of the whole, right. So this highly sensitive kids have a much harder time moving past the overwhelming sensory information, not only because it's 40% more, but also just because something in them says no, stop, this is too loud, this is going to damage your hearing, stop now, stop now.
Jon @Wholeparent:So that's number one, the sensitivity to any sort of high sensory input. That's a big one, all right. Number two is, I would say, some behavioral stuff. How do your kids react when, for example, they get hurt, if they react huge, huge every single time, like it's the end of the world. When they stub their toe they just have a huge, oversized emotional reaction. That could be a sign of high sensitivity. So they're highly sensitive also to pain sensation, because that's a form kind of of touch right.
Jon @Wholeparent:But then other things unrelated to sensory do your kids have a really? Or what does your child, who you suspect might be highly sensitive, have a really hard time with changes to the plan? You suspect might be highly sensitive, have a really hard time with changes to the plan? And again, some of these things sound a lot like ASD but they're not. You could have a highly sensitive kid who also has ASD. You could have a highly sensitive kid who does not. So do they struggle with the concept of a change in the routine? That you know okay. This person said, for example, that they were going to be able to go to the park with me this afternoon, but now it's raining. Is that a huge disappointment or is that just like a seemingly? Oh, that's disappointing but we'll, we'll get through it? High sensitive kids often have a really hard time with changes to the routine.
Jon @Wholeparent:Third, does your child tend to be a little bit more? Wait and see before they just dive right in? That's another sign of high sensitivity, and this is different, by the way, from introversion. And so so, as we, as we talk about all these things, you go well, I just thought that was a trait of my kid being kind of introverted. You can have a very extroverted kid who still doesn't want to necessarily be the first kid to climb up on top of the tree or maybe wants to watch the game being played for a little while before they jump in and join. That wait and see approach before they dive headlong into something, especially something new, is very typical of highly sensitive kids. That's the kind of behavioral things that you're going to be looking for.
Jon @Wholeparent:The last one that I would say is just your own gut feeling and observation, right. So if you find yourself during social events, school activities, family gatherings, worried about how your child will react to changes, different things, then you may already be kind of acting in such a way as you know in your subconscious that there is something with your child where they require a little bit more of your involvement. And if that is the case and you've said yes to some of these other things, then I think that there's a there's a good chance that you have a highly sensitive kid, because the chances already were about one in five. If you tack onto that that you or your partner have a level of high sensitivity which we're not going to get into, are you highly sensitive? I think that can.
Jon @Wholeparent:That can be much more difficult to assess because a lot of adults, especially adults that were raised in the eights and 90s, have developed some coping mechanisms, because a lot of the manifestations and behaviors that come from high sensitivity are not socially accepted, and so people often have a hard time coming to accept that they in fact are highly sensitive. They will just tell themselves, no, they'll kind of deny their own lived experience of the world and oh no, this is kind of a dumb thing to be upset about, so I'm not going to be upset about it. Um, or you know, I just don't like pain, but, like you know, nobody likes pain, so like it's not weird that I don't like it. Being able to compare yourself comparison, by the way, is the thief of joy, so I almost never tell people to compare themselves, but being able to compare yourself to some sort of norm is the only real way to know am I more sensitive than the average person or not? And if you are and you combine that with the fact that you've answered yes to a couple of these questions that I've been asking about your kid or this sounds like we're talking about your child then I would say almost guaranteed you have a highly sensitive kid. So if you are highly sensitive and you're answering yes, a hundred percent, if neither you or your partner knows whether you're highly sensitive or expects that neither of you are and you're still answering yes, I would still treat your kid as though they're highly sensitive, because nothing that we're going to talk about in understanding the needs of highly sensitive kids or practical strategies for dealing with high sensitivity and coping with high sensitivity are going to hurt your kid if you're wrong. But if you're not doing these things and you do have a highly sensitive kid, then you're going to be fighting an uphill battle, right. So that's what I'll say about recognizing and again, I would love to have a quiz Maybe I will by the time this is even released, and not just your observations. If you're told by teachers and stuff like that or other family members hey, your kid seems to be really sensitive. Sometimes it's hard for us to see because we just know them as them For the teachers for the outside viewers. Sometimes they can notice especially teachers because they have a whole class full of kids. They can tell which one of these kids are a little bit more sensitive than the rest. You only have your kid sometimes to base it off of, sometimes to base it off of, and I will say that having multiple kids I was much more assured in my self-diagnosis of my oldest is highly sensitive when my next two kids came along and did not express some of the same signs that he did. So that's what I'll say as we move into understanding the needs of highly sensitive kids.
Jon @Wholeparent:I want to take a really, really quick break here just to say, if you haven't gone at the bottom of the show notes and subscribe to get updates on this podcast so that you can get emailed the moment that the new episode is released and you can go and listen to it and all that other good stuff, please do so. You do not want to miss it and so make sure that you do that. Also, I have not checked the reviews because this is a Tuesday episode. I try and give you guys some time, try and give you a week. This is a Tuesday episode and so, because it's a Tuesday episode. I have not checked the reviews yet on whether or not who's winning or who's losing in the age old battle of Spotify versus Apple podcast for the review games. If you missed last episode, the Spotify people even though there are fewer Spotify downloads and fewer Spotify listeners, they are doing a better job of rating and reviewing the show. So, apple listeners, you guys have to catch up. Spotify listeners, keep doing your thing, keep chugging on. I'm an Apple listener, so I would have. I would have said that I was going to be biased towards the Apple listeners, but man, the Spotify listeners are just putting up some numbers here. So you guys got to pick up your pace, apple listeners. Okay.
Jon @Wholeparent:So returning to our subject matter of highly sensitive kids, I want to break down the needs into three categories for highly sensitive kids emotional needs, physical needs and social needs. And when I'm talking about physical needs, we're talking more about sensory type needs, right? So the first category of emotional needs I want to spend the most time on and focus the most time on, and the first thing I want to highlight and point out is that highly sensitive people, and highly sensitive kids specifically, do struggle often with having a good internal sense of validation and an internal sense of self-worth. Not always, but it can certainly be the case, and so if you have a highly sensitive child, they are going to need a lot more processing on the front end than you might expect.
Jon @Wholeparent:It can be very taxing as a parent of a highly sensitive child, especially not being a highly sensitive person myself to constantly have to deal with the like overwhelming emotions related to any sensory issue, like the tag on the clothes is the one I keep talking about, but it's certainly not the most common Sticky hands, dirty hands, that's a big one. Or loud noises, fireworks, right. It seems a little bit kind of like overdone for me sometimes that my kid like, every single time he like bumps his shin is it feel it's like the world is ending. But as a highly sensitive kid, his experience of the world, he's not lying, he feels that way, he experiences the world that way. I think this is a Fred Rogers quote. But children, the way that children experience the world is deeply serious to them and we should take it very seriously. We should, we should take it with the same seriousness that it experiences to them, and so kids who are highly sensitive from an emotional perspective often need a little bit more reassurance, a little bit more like, hey, you're doing a great job, I'm not worried about it, and definitely a gentler hand of communication. And obviously I talk all about being a punishment free parent on this podcast and I talk all about being a conscious, thoughtful, effective parent. I will even use the word occasionally, gentle parent, although I don't love that term, as as I've kind of highlighted in other episodes. But you really have to communicate a little bit more gently, because for a highly sensitive kid, when you react emotionally because they reacted emotionally, it can immediately cause it to devolve into like a spiral, a doom spiral, and so you have to have a little bit more gentle communication with those kids on the emotional side and a lot of validation and that stuff.
Jon @Wholeparent:Number two their physical needs. So one of the really simple things the physical sensory need thing. Here it's actually much simpler than than a lot of the other things. Some of this is so, so unavoidable, by the way. So there are certain sensory needs that you're just never going to be able to handle or never going to be able to help them with. For example, if they get hurt, they get hurt Like there's nothing you can do about that? I'm trying to follow them around so they never get hurt. It's not good for them. So you're just going to have to learn to respond and this goes into the emotional category right, you're going to have to learn how to respond in an emotionally positive way when they get hurt. But you're not going to be able to prevent them from getting hurt, nor should you like that's that you can't.
Jon @Wholeparent:But there are a lot of other really simple things that you can do. For example, you can get a kid ear protection, like I said my son has, or even noise canceling headphones that just help to drown out if you're in a super loud environment. Drown that out. I'm not saying that your kid is going to then wear those around everywhere that they go, or anything like that, but in certain circumstances, if they know where to go to get those tools, let them have the tools. You may have to spend a little bit more time shopping for shoes. It may be very hard for them to pick out a pair of shoes that feels right. They may want to wear those shoes until they are long past their usable life.
Jon @Wholeparent:This is something that we've struggled with my son for his entire life. He wants to just hold on to his shoes and his coats forever. Why? Because they're comfortable, and he knows that many things aren't comfortable. But you can just spend that additional time to make sure you do. You can cut tags off of things very easy. We have never made my son wear what he calls crunchy pants, which are like jean denim material or khaki material. Just you know, maybe for a photo shoot or something he has to put them on for five minutes, 10 minutes or something. But we do not make him walk around in jeans. Why? Because he's just much happier, much more satisfied if he just is in sweat pant material pants. That's just what he wants to wear and it's not hard.
Jon @Wholeparent:The main thing here is just trust your kid. If they say that something's bothering them, trust them, fix it right Like it's the simplest thing in the world. But you have to trust them, especially as the not highly sensitive adult. If you are the not highly sensitive adult, they may be experiencing something. I promise you they're not just trying to pull your leg about it Like they may experience it in a really big way and you may well. Why does that bother you? Like it doesn't bother me that I have tags on the back of my shirt. It's like why should that bother you? Well, they're highly sensitive, so it does.
Jon @Wholeparent:And then the last thing is social needs, and this is a continuing struggle for any parent who has highly sensitive kids. And the reason is the world, again, is not set up for highly sensitive people. It is set up for people who are not highly sensitive because they are in the majority, and so understanding that your kid is highly sensitive in a not highly sensitive world may lead to social interactions that need to be processed in a different way. You may have to help them to be a little bit more assertive, especially if you have a highly sensitive kid who is also an introvert. Right, then you have the social introversion factor of like, I don't really want to be in this group anyway and I'm anxious about joining it. If you have an extroverted kid, you're just going to let them take their time, but for introverted kids, it may be that you have to kind of push them a little bit. Just realize that you're going to have to do that very carefully. So it's good to push your kids, it's good to help them to learn, but if you push them too far, too fast, you're going to wind up burning them out and in that case you're really not going to wind up in a good place with them.
Jon @Wholeparent:So that would be understanding those needs emotionally, physically and socially. And I know I didn't get into a ton of the social stuff but I don't want to go into too much of that, partially because I'm just not really, I haven't really thought about how I want to talk about that yet in any sort of kind of in-depth way, and partially because we just don't have the time in an introductory episode about high sensitivity, to get into the complex needs socially of highly sensitive persons, because they do also have a very strong sense of belonging, of wanting to belong to a group and so, as we said before, they may struggle a little bit more with internal validation. That was on the emotional needs side, but that may mean that they're a little bit more externally validated. And then if their high sensitivity leads to kids who are unthoughtful, who don't understand, leads to kids who are unthoughtful, who don't understand, being a little bit unkind or not being inclusive to them, then that can compound the issue because then it becomes you know, sometimes all of those a social wound, a physical I don't want to say a physical wound, but a physical sensory wound and also an emotional wound all at once. So that can be challenging, so I'll get into that later. But I do think that it's important just to understand that social interactions are going to present unique challenges for you as a parent of a highly sensitive child.
Jon @Wholeparent:Okay, so I want to kind of get to a conclusion here, because we've talked a lot about high sensitivity. You always can go back and listen to the rest of the whole episode again. Absolutely, go and get Elaine's book. If you have not done so, message me and tell me that this is something that you want to hear more about. Tell me that I need to make the quiz if I haven't made it yet, but I do want to leave you with three really key practical tips, strategies, whatever, when you have a highly sensitive kid. Number one tip routines.
Jon @Wholeparent:Routines are the bedrock of parenting generally, for kids in general, and this is because kids with an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex struggle to predict what's going to happen next. I've said this so many times. You're probably all sick of hearing it if you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, but really, if you want to break down the human brain into ones and zeros. It's just did I predict correctly or not? Over and over and over Some things you almost always predict correctly. The laws of physics right? You drop something and it falls. You can predict a thousand times out of a thousand times that when you drop something it's going to fall down in your brain. That's a really easy Yep, I predicted correctly. Everything in my life has always led to that prediction coming true.
Jon @Wholeparent:For kids it's much more difficult because they just lack the cognitive processing to be able to predict with any sort of accuracy, and so adults are much better at predicting the future than kids. Highly sensitive kids take this failure to predict accurately as deep threats to themselves often, and we can get into like why? Maybe you know the deer sniffing the berries? If they predict wrong, it could be bad for everybody. Right, but kids especially really struggle when they don't do this well, when they don't predict well, and so creating really established routines can provide a deep sense of security for kids who are highly sensitive, and then it can allow them to grow and change and build and have freedom outside of those routines because they have the structure of those routines. Without a predictable home environment, a highly sensitive kid is trying to play too many games all at once. Basically, they're trying to predict too many things and so allow them to have a very predictable home environment so that when they're out in the world and you cannot force the world to be predictable for them, you cannot force their school environment to be predictable for them. Although, if you're an educator listening to this and you have a classroom full of kids, all the more reason why you shouldn't be just springing things on them, because the highly sensitive kids in that class do not appreciate it.
Jon @Wholeparent:I'll give you an example from our life. My son does not like surprises. He does not like not knowing what he's going to get for his birthday. A lot of people are like John, that's terrible parenting. You should make him wait until his birthday to find out what you're getting him. Why? Because that's socially what we've decided about birthday presents, and then we don't always even do it in adulthood. No, that's ridiculous. He wants to know what's coming. That's part of his deep internal sense of coding. He, he, it's a part of his genes, if we're going to believe what Elaine Aaron is saying. And so we created a predictable home environment where we just said hey, look we're. We'll tell you what you're going to get. You can have it. You know, understand, so you can predict and know what's coming and then move forward appropriately. So that would be number one routines, routines, routines. Establish routines. Stick to the routines. If you move off of those routines, expect the meltdown, change of plans, expect the meltdown. You're going to be much better at handling it If you move off of those routines, expect the meltdown, change of plans, expect the meltdown. You're going to be much better at handling it if you know that it's coming. Okay, tip number two take breaks, take breaks.
Jon @Wholeparent:A lot of people think that you can just kind of drive kids, you know, thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, and you can just exhaust yourself. I call it Disney world parenting. Maybe this is just me and the way that I do Disney, but the moment I step out of that car I'm like agenda for the day, we're going to do this, this, we got to get to this line first. We're going to go to this. Well, I want to be there at 945. And like, and you make all these things and it can just be like you need a vacation from your day at Disney, because it's just like exhausting. If you do that with a highly sensitive kid without taking any breaks, without having any downtime, without having any chance for them to just pause and reflect, I promise you they are going to lose it. So set up good, consistent routines and then also appreciate that your kids are going to need breaks.
Jon @Wholeparent:My son has a break in the middle of the day every single day, every single day. I do not try and force him to do anything from like 12 to one, there's just no point. Or maybe 1230 to 130. There's just no point. Or maybe 1230 to 130. There's just no point. It's going to ruin the rest of the day. Or it's if he doesn't get that chance of downtime to process, to deal, to have some low sensory time right, this is a time when we're not listening to a lot of music and other things like that. He needs that. When you start to see the triggers coming, take a break right away. Take a break If you know that you're going to have, you know, an exhausting rest of the evening because you're going to go to your parents' house and it's just going to be wild all the time. Take some extra breaks, allow for additional downtime, because that is absolutely essential.
Jon @Wholeparent:And then the last thing is, as we've talked about emotional intelligence in a couple episodes ago if you haven't listened to that one, please go back and listen to it we talked about the importance of recognizing, labeling and expressing emotions. This is even more appropriate and more necessary when a kid is highly sensitive. Why? Because their reactions to emotional situations are going to be bigger and so they need additional help. Grounding, you know, deep breathing, exercises, just other emotional regulation skills. They're going to need additional frustration tolerance training. They're going to need additional ability to the labeling of their emotions is going to be paramount, because they're going to have all of these emotions and if they don't have anywhere to put them or how to express them, it's going to create issues. So emotional intelligence is key.
Jon @Wholeparent:So my three tips to you number one routines, routines, routines. Number two take a lot of breaks. Number three really focus in on that emotional intelligence stuff and coping skills. Strategies like deep breathing I have so many all of my tantrum hacks still work. I mean, in fact, they're even more important if you have a highly sensitive kid. So all of that, that's. That's what I would say about those, right? So those are my three tips and we're getting to the end of the episode and I'm not going to do like a whole long outro or anything like that. But before we do I want to.
Jon @Wholeparent:I want to say one really, really important thing, because the way I've just described highly sensitive kids makes it seem like it's a huge chore to parent a highly sensitive kid. That it's this huge like downer, like if there was a genetic test that they could give to you when you're pregnant and you're, you'd be able to tell if you're highly sensitive, your child's going to be highly sensitive, and you're like, oh no, my child's going to be highly sensitive. You know like this is not accurate. Highly sensitive kids are, I think, probably more challenging to parent in the early toddler years, maybe early grade school years, but you're just front-ending a lot of your parenting. I'm going to say that again You're just front-ending a lot of your parenting with a highly sensitive kid, because once they know the coping strategies, they'll just do them.
Jon @Wholeparent:Here's the thing that nobody talks about with high sensitivity, it has more benefits than drawbacks, because all of that extrasensory information that your kids are taking in is data. Your kid could be the greatest sales person in the history of the world as a highly sensitive person, far better than their nine highly sensitive peers. Why? Because they can assess the person across the table from them in a much more nuanced way. So I would argue that probably all of the great chefs in history, most of the great artists in history, these are all highly sensitive people. Why? Because it required that level of deep emotional processing and when that emotional processing happens in a positive way, when we build those skills, when we develop frustration, tolerance and resilience, those things can come to bear in these really, really beautiful ways, your child will be the most empathetic.
Jon @Wholeparent:I have watched my kids highly sensitive and not, but especially my not highly sensitive kids learn from their highly sensitive older brother how to be empaths, how to be deeply caring. Does he still pick on him sometimes? Of course he does. Kids are kids, but absolutely deeply cares about people, intrinsically loves people. My wife highly sensitive, intuitively parents in all of the ways that we talk about an whole parent. I had to know the data. I had to understand the psychology behind of it. I had to do all of this work to become the parent that she automatically is just by being highly sensitive. She just gets it. She gets what my son needs. She didn't need to know he was highly sensitive to know how to assess his needs. Why? Because she's highly sensitive.
Jon @Wholeparent:So highly sensitive people have a superpower. I want to say that again. Highly sensitive people have a superpower, but it's going to be a challenge to hone that superpower, especially in the early years, and you can stomp it out. That's why a lot of adults don't know if they're highly sensitive. Because their sensory processing, information, their empathy you know their deep empathy, their slow processing that's another thing that highly sensitive people can have. They can process things so deeply that it takes them longer to process them. They're not slower or dumber or anything like that. Lower IQ In fact, highly sensitive people tend to have higher IQ, as far as what I've been able to find, the research on that, although there's not a lot of good research on highly sensitive people and secondarily to that, there are highly sensitive people but basically, anecdotally, everybody in my life who is highly sensitive are the people with high IQs my wife, much higher than mine, I'm sure.
Jon @Wholeparent:So like that. All of that understand. It's not that they're dumb or anything, but they might be slower to process. Why? Because they really care. They can tend to be perfectionists. That's kind of another you know drawback I don't want to have a perfectionist kid. Okay, that's fine.
Jon @Wholeparent:But do you understand that many people who produce excellence it's because they care about the details. And highly sensitive people Sometimes they're the only ones who can see the details. I can't tell you what a nightmare it was to paint a house with me as my wife when she was just like I don't. I don't understand how you can not tell the difference between like four different colors. They're so different to me and I was like the amount of yellow paint in this one over the other one was like literally less than one drop before they shook this whole bucket up and that was the only difference. She's like, but I can see it, and I'm like, but I can't. It's going to prevent present additional challenges, but it comes with the additional positives. Again a feature, not a failure of amazing, amazing ability to go deep, to go into places that you've never experienced. So that's what I have. On highly sensitive kids.
Jon @Wholeparent:If you've liked this episode, if you think you might have a highly sensitive child, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast, get email updates. Again, that's in the show notes If you're not following me on all the social medias. Please go ahead and do that. I have had some real tough time getting my social posts to have any sort of traction, so you want to help me out with that. I'd appreciate it, but that's just a side note Until next time. This has been the whole parent podcast.