When did you suspect that you and your child may be more sensitive than most?
Perhaps it was right away when your newborn would cry after being passed around the family gathering so you could get a touch break. You both were feeling overstimulated. A few years later, you’re out on a walk when you find a wounded bird together. Feeling sadness and compassion simultaneously, your child asks with tears in their eyes if you can help the bird. You know that feeling of deep empathy and compassion well; it was never a question. Fast forward to their high school days when you noticed your teenager fretting with anxiety, asking lots of “what if” questions, before heading to their first dance, just like you did at their age. You both needed time to acclimate to new experiences and wanted to know what to expect ahead of time.
Many parents find the root cause of why they’ve always felt different after having a child. As you attempt to understand your child’s personality and emotional needs in a way that wasn’t available to your own parents, you accidentally discover a missing piece about yourself. Having a highly sensitive child, when you’re easily overwhelmed and empathic yourself, can be difficult, but as therapist and highly sensitive parent Amy Lajiness, LCSW, PMH-C says, “It's so important to notice and celebrate how your sensitivity benefits you and your child. Your awareness of their needs, ability to understand them emotionally, and deep dedication to their wellbeing is an immense gift!”
What is a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)?
Emotional and sensory sensitivity shows up in many forms, including ADHD, Autism, and other forms of neurodivergence. How do you know if you or your child are one of the 20-30% of people born with the highly sensitive trait (otherwise known as sensory processing sensitivity)?
While every highly sensitive person is unique, there are six shared characteristics among all HSPs, which can be seen from birth:
- Observant: notice the little details that others miss
- Responsive: gets easily overstimulated by their environment
- Compassionate: empathetic and enjoy helping others
- Heartfelt: feel all emotions, high to low, more deeply
- Impressionable: impacted by negative and positive experiences more than most
- Deep Thinker: take extra time to make decisions and transition between activities
Now that you know what high sensitivity is, let’s look at three strategies to care for yourself and your child to reduce feelings of overload so you can both enjoy the best parts of being highly sensitive.
Being a Self-Care Role Model for Your Child
Growing up, who was your role model for self-care and were their needs compatible with your own? Children learn how to pace themselves, set boundaries, and regulate emotions from the adults in their lives. Highly sensitive children being raised by non-HSP parents (or HSP parents who attempted to push away their sensitivity) inherited an ill-fitting template. If that is the case, you might be missing out on much of the downtime and rest your finely tuned nervous system needs to thrive.
Thankfully your child will have a better fitting model than you did because of your shared experiences. Practicing your own self-care will teach your highly sensitive child that it’s okay to take care of their needs and not feel pressured to look outside of themselves for answers.
"One of the most important things that we can do as highly sensitive parents is to take great care of ourselves. Not only will this help us to be the best version of ourselves for our sensitive child, but we will also be teaching them to do the same by modeling and normalizing self-compassion, self-trust, self-love, self-care, clear boundaries, and taking kind gentle care of ourselves so that they will have a template for what that looks and feels like.” says therapist and highly sensitive parent, Louisa Lombard, MA, LPCC, LCPC.
Invite your child to join in on a moment of self-care: “One practical piece of advice I would offer HSP parents of HSP kids”, says Amy Lajiness, LCSW, PMH-C, “is to take time to be cozy and regulated at home. Read books side by side, take individual quiet time as you're able, and do your best to set aside the "shoulds" of parenting. Show yourself love and your sensitive child will learn from you how to love and care for themselves too."
Helping Your Child Feel Supported in Their Big Feelings
When you were growing up, were there other highly sensitive people in your family or community? If not, you may have felt misunderstood and tried your best to squash your big feelings down in an effort to be accepted by those around you. Feeling like an outsider can lead to issues with self-doubt, anxiety, and loneliness that persist into adulthood.
Children have a developmental need to see their inner worlds reflected within the adults around them. When you see others who think and feel deeply as you do, you experience safety to be your authentic self. For highly sensitive people, being encouraged to express your full range of emotions and nuanced observations of the world increases emotional safety, self-esteem, and resilience.
There couldn’t be a better gift for a highly sensitive child than a parent who understands them. As Jerrica Danhoff, LMFT, therapist and highly sensitive parent, says “You often understand each other in a way that doesn’t require a lot of explanation, but it also means that your child’s emotions can bring up your own. When that happens with my daughter, I remind myself, “I’m going to love her through this.” That simple reminder helps me come back to myself, soften, and be a steady presence while she’s moving through whatever big feelings she’s having. I want her to know that her feelings don’t scare me, that I’m not going anywhere, and that she doesn’t have to make them smaller for me to be okay. I can stay close, stay grounded, and trust that we’ll find our way through it together.”
Work through emotions together: As children learn how to regulate their emotions and put language to their rich inner worlds, movement and play can be a helpful outlet. Join your child for 10-15 minutes of activities that naturally shift their mood such as blowing bubbles, digging in the dirt, or imaginative play.
Gifting Your Child with a Compassionate Inner Voice
Your inner voice is inherited alongside your self-care practice. How you talk to yourself during times of stress or triumph is often how you heard your parents, caregivers, or teachers talk to themselves or to you during similar moments. If you were called “too sensitive” when feeling anxious about performing in the school play or “lazy” for needing rest after a day of exams, you probably now beat yourself up when you need care the most because that’s what was modeled.
Teaching your own children self-compassion from an early age may invoke worries of fostering low resilience, fragility, or lack of motivation because that’s often what was believed by parents from previous generations, but actually the opposite is true.
Self-compassion reduces stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, helping calm your highly sensitive child’s nervous system. Being more emotionally regulated will allow them to fall asleep more easily, feel less anxious about new experiences, and be more emotionally resilient to handle setbacks. “When we foster these tools within our own children, we set them up to thrive right from the start while healing ourselves” says Sarita Fichtner, children’s book author and highly sensitive parent.
Validate your child’s experiences: You can speak to your children the way you hope they’ll talk to themselves. Try one of these scripts the next time they come to you with a worry:
- “That makes sense. I would feel that way too.”
- “It’s okay to take a break.”
- “Take as much time as you need.”
- “I understand. I’m here for you.”
Having a highly sensitive child as a highly sensitive parent is a gift in disguise because you both understand each other at a deep level. Taking care of yourself models self-compassion and instills emotional regulation skills that will benefit your child well into adulthood. And when they’re less overwhelmed, you’re less overwhelmed.
For more support in living a more fulfilling life without the overwhelm, pick up my book: Big Feelings, Big Joy: The Essential Practices to Reclaim Your Strengths as a Highly Sensitive Person. Inside you’ll find an HSP Essentials Checklist to help you and your child tend to your overwhelmed nervous systems and nurture your inner worlds to quiet your overthinking and welcome all your emotions with open arms.
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