The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping our children thrive when the world overwhelms them

Insulate your child from undo attention, praise, or pity. On rare occasions certain people may find your child’s sensitivity in and of itself to be extraordinary. But your child did nothing special to be born sensitive and should not be overly praised for that in itself or allowed to feel superior to others. Treat pity the same way, except that it is even more uncalled for. HSCs are not to be pitied. And even if they were, what counts is what we do with the cards we are dealt.

THE JOYS THAT ONLY PARENTS OF HSCS KNOW

Naturally, a book like this devotes the majority of its pages to identifying and solving problems. But that truly does the HSC an injustice and does not prepare you, the parent, to recognize and revel in all the joys involved. So let’s take a moment to count your blessings.

Even the problems have a bright side. By providing the understanding and help your child needs, you will be deeply appreciated by your HSC. Your child may even promote you to others as a saint among parents. And as you deal successfully with tough issues, in the family and from outside, you and your child can have moments of deep mutual appreciation. You will share electrifying success when you help your HSC master a fear, coming out of it even more confident than another child would. You will feel like comrades when you figure out together how to respond to teasing or prejudiced comments.

Your child will make you more aware of everything, introducing you to beauty, nuances, social subtleties, and questions about life that you would not otherwise stop to consider. Even if you are highly sensitive, your HSC brings a child’s fresh and highly receptive outlook on the world. You will be looking up the answers to all sorts of questions, or looking inside for those that are only answered there.

The two of you will connect in a deeper way. Of course, a connection requires two people—you will have to learn to be receptive to those moments when your child wants to be especially close and also to those times when she needs her separateness.

You will have a child who is aware of you, both the conscious and unconscious parts, which will force you to be more aware of yourself. “Mom, why did you tell that lady you like her when you told me you don’t?” “Dad, you said you’re so tired you could drop, but now you’re sweeping the floor.”

You will see your well-raised HSC grow up capable of amazing depths of feeling and of pleasure from the full range of beauty to be known in the outer and inner worlds. He may even express it in ways that allow others to see the treasures he has brought up from these depths.

You will see your well-raised HSC make an exceptional contribution to the world, whether backstage or front and center. Because sensitive people are such keen observers and thinkers, they are traditionally the inventors, lawmakers, healers, historians, scientists, artists, teachers, counselors, and spiritual leaders. They are the advisers to rulers and warriors, the visionaries and the prophets. In their communities, they are often the opinion leaders, the ones others seek out on how to vote or solve a family problem. They make extraordinary parents and partners. They are compassionate and care deeply about social justice and the environment.

I am sure that you can add points that I have forgotten, that are the special joys you receive from raising your HSC. Quite a list, yes? So keep our motto in mind: To have an exceptional child you must be willing to have an exceptional child. And let’s get to work.

Chapter Three

When You the Parent Are Not Highly Sensitive

Blessings in Disguise

This chapter should be read by sensitive as well as non-sensitive parents. You begin by taking a self-test, for high sensitivity in adults (and discuss another important temperament that you and your child may have—high novelty seeking). Then we concentrate on both the advantages and problems you may encounter raising an HSC if you (or your partner or the other adults helping to raise your HSC) are not as sensitive—with plenty of suggestions for handling the problems. (Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo) looks at the advantages and problems to expect if you are highly sensitive.)

HIGH SENSITIVITY AND YOU, MOM AND DAD

Even though high sensitivity is an inherited trait, it is quite possible for one or both parents of an HSC to not be highly sensitive themselves. (Some close relative probably is, and that person and your child probably even have similar physical features.) To find out if you are, take the self-test now at the end of the chapter.

This chapter is important for all parents to read, since even highly sensitive parents will not always be sensitive in the same ways or to the same degree as their child. This chapter will also help you advise the nonsensitive people around your child. And you will definitely want to read it if you are just discovering that you are highly sensitive yourself, since up until now you may have had the perspective of a nonsensitive parent, as Sharon did in the previous chapter.

(Please note: For brevity’s sake I will often say “nonsensitive” rather than “non-highly-sensitive,” but I never mean it as “insensitive.” Rather, I mean it very technically: not having this particular inherited trait.)

A SPECIAL NOTE TO FATHERS

Fathers especially need to read this chapter, whether they are highly sensitive or not, because men in this culture are more likely to have the perspective of a nonsensitive parent. That is because our culture tends to equate being a man with insensitivity—with not noticing subtleties and being able to “take it like a man,” whatever the level of stimulation, stress, or pain, even though just as many men as women are born with this trait. (By the way, if you score only in the medium range on the self-test, you may still be highly sensitive.) In my research, fathers turned out to be unusually important in the adjustment of HSCs, since traditionally they teach children how to manage out in the world.

HIGH SENSITIVITY AND NOVELTY SEEKING

High novelty seeking is the term for the trait created by having a very strong go-for-it system (described in Chapter 1 (#u2c350c1f-8031-5bc5-a82c-020789fc2afe)). High novelty seekers often like physical thrills, are bored easily with “the same old people,” and love to explore. (In Thomas and Chess’s terms, they are “highly approaching.”) For example, they’d rather go to a new place than back to one they know they like, and if they’re traveling, the more foreign the foreign country, the better. They often experiment with drugs at some point in their lives and they dislike routines.

As said before, it is possible to be highly sensitive and also high on this trait. But even if you are both, your trait of high novelty seeking will have some effects on you that will make you similar to a nonsensitive parent. The reason is that both high novelty seekers and nonsensitive people will enter into new situations more readily than their HSC, although for different reasons. Novelty seekers will do it because they want the fresh experience; nonsensitive types will simply not be so concerned about pausing to check.

In spite of the similarities, there is one situation where we need to discuss novelty seeking separately. That is when both you and your child are both highly sensitive and high novelty seekers. (I have not done enough research on novelty seeking to provide a child’s test for it, but I think you can estimate your child’s novelty seeking fairly well.)

The problem for types like you two is that you are easily bored, always craving fresh experiences, yet easily overwhelmed. Your optimal range of arousal is very narrow. You can seem almost self-destructive in that you will plan a day or an entire lifestyle that overwhelms you, then be exhausted, distressed, or even fall ill. When you consistently fail to contain your novelty seeking, you are inviting chronic illness because of your equally high sensitivity. And, of course, our culture supports the novelty-seeking side of you more. For example, corporate cultures often require or certainly encourage top managers to travel all over the world for their work. And high novelty seekers love all that travel and seeing new places. But if they are highly sensitive, they also burn out from it.

I say all of this because it will be your responsibility to figure out how to manage these two traits in yourself and then to teach your child how to do it. (Since this is not a book on that subject, I can only refer you elsewhere—to volume 4, issues 2 and 3 of The Comfort Zone, a newsletter for highly sensitive people—see Resources.)

WHEN YOU AND YOUR CHILD HAVE QUITE DIFFERENT TEMPERAMENTS

If you are all one way (a nonsensitive novelty seeker—and perhaps an extrovert, too) and your child is all the other way (an HSC, not a novelty seeker, and perhaps an introvert) then this is a very serious difference between you. Everything I am about to say is very, very important for you.

First, be assured that nonsensitive parents and HSCs can do extremely well together. In Chapter 2 (#u66ec15dd-083c-5ff8-9090-9d6373b6c81c), I described “goodness of fit” and emphasized that it does not at all mean that a parent and child need to have the same temperament; indeed, we will see ways where differences in temperament are an advantage. A good fit refers to the fact that some environments—cultures, families, and parents—support a given temperament especially well. If parents realize that there has been a lack of fit up to this point, they can adapt.