What is a Highly Sensitive Kid?

Does your child fall apart over a sock seam? Have big meltdowns after things that seem little to you & everyone else? Feel everything — deeply, intensely,
loudly — and you can’t quite figure out why?

You might have a highly sensitive kid. In this episode, we break down exactly
what that means, what it doesn’t mean, and why understanding it could change everything about your homeschool day.

Maybe you're highly sesitive too, as the mom... and that adds a whole extra layer.

IN THIS EPISODE
• What a highly sensitive kid (HSK) actually is — and what it’s not
• Why HSK is a trait, not a diagnosis or disorder
• The signs your child might be highly sensitive 
• The “delayed meltdown” — why your kid holds it together all day and falls apart at the end.
• The real strengths of a highly sensitive child
• Why understanding your HSK changes how you design your homeschool day
• Shifting from "what’s wrong with my kid?" to "what does my
kid’s nervous system need?"

Need help sorting through the dynamic of being an overstimulated mom with a highly sensitive kid? Book your free consult call today and let's find one small thing you can do to feel less overstimulated.

Book it here: https://sensationalmoms.com/get-in-touch/

This podcast is not meant as medical advice or a substitute for any medical advice. Please contact your health professional with any mental health or physical health questions or concerns.

Transcript

 Hey there. Welcome back to Sensational Moms. I'm Whitney, a pediatric occupational therapist turned nervous system coach, and a homeschool mom of four kiddos. If you're new here, I am so glad that you found me. Today's episode is one that I have been wanting to do for a long time because if you're a homeschool mom and you have a kid who just seems to feel everything more.

More intensely, more deeply, more loudly, more everything, and you can't quite figure out why some days feel completely impossible. Schoolwork aside, this one is for you. I, I want to set a little scene for you. Let me describe it and see if it sounds a little bit familiar. Imagine with me that it is, I don't know, about nine, maybe nine 30 in the morning, and you're trying to get the school day started, and your kiddo, your bright, creative, big hearted kid is completely falling apart, and it's not because something terrible has happened, at least nothing that you've noticed.

They're not sick and you don't think that you've done anything wrong. Instead, this kiddo is falling apart because they don't have the right clothes for the day. They're wearing some clothes that don't quite fit right, and you're standing there. Already done for the day. It's not even lunch. You are already your own version of overstimulated and you're thinking, what on earth is happening?

Why is this so hard? And why does every single day feel like we are starting over again, even though it is over a halfway through our school year? Here's what I want you to know before we get any deeper into this. What you are seeing in your child is probably not a behavior problem. It's not a discipline problem, it's not a schedule problem, and it's not something that you have caused.

It might be that you have a highly sensitive kid. Now there is a lot more to being a highly sensitive kid than just the sensory stuff, but that's part of it. Today I'm gonna help you figure out a little bit more of what might be going on and more importantly, how it affects your family, and of course a little bit about how it affects your homeschool.

Today we're gonna chat about what a highly sensitive kid actually is. Some signs you can look out for and including some that might actually kind of surprise you a little bit. Understanding this really can change everything about how you approach your homeschool day. So let's get into it. Now, before I jump into more of the clinical type stuff, I just really want you to know where this comes from, from me personally.

I'm an OT and I've worked with kids and sensory processing as my specialty for years, like over a decade. Right? And I still remember a season really early in our homeschool, but really pretty early in motherhood in general, where I was completely losing it. Not because I didn't know what I was doing right, but because I was not really applying what I knew clinically to what I was actually seeing as a mom.

So I know that if I can have a hard time understanding what's going on, even though I have the lens and the understanding for this. I can still lose sight when I'm in those situations with my own kids. I know that if that happens with me, surely that happens with other people as well. So I don't wade into these waters lightly because I do know how hard it can be to work through situations like some of the ones that we're gonna talk about.

I knew it personally as well as professionally. I have had a kiddo who would fall apart after just a small amount of what seemed to me a small amount of sensory input, but just overwhelmed this child and it would affect our entire day. This kiddo couldn't handle loud siblings, couldn't tune out background noises.

It really affected her learning and made it very hard emotionally so that it would affect much more than learning. It really would affect our whole day. This child's nervous system was full and overflowing. And if I kept trying to stick with it and pour in more learning, it would only cause more pushback and more frustration for not just this child and not just me, but really the whole family.

So understanding really what was going on. With this child and ways that I could meet this child's needs really impacted the entire family, just like the difficulties impacted the entire family. So I think it's easy to, uh. Get stuck in the fact that the difficulties can affect everyone that one child or, or maybe your difficulties as a mom are affecting everybody and lose sight of the fact that the other side is also true.

That when we understand one person, whether it's you or your child, and know how to properly support that person, then it also has a positive effect on the whole family. That shift from what is wrong with my kid, to asking myself, what does my kid's nervous system need? That changed everything, and that is what I want for each and every one of you who is struggling in your home.

But it's easy to lose sight of the fact that being a highly sensitive person isn't just being sensitive to sensory input. It also has to do with processing things emotionally and mentally, and how we are making sense of the world inside of us and around us. Definitely beyond just our senses. And we'll talk a little bit more about that.

When we get into what a highly sensitive kiddo is. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about the elephant in the room, which is the sensory aspect of being a highly sensitive person. So in this episode, I might kind of go back and forth between highly sensitive kid or highly sensitive person. Um, that's just because well kids grew up to be adults, right?

And we see these differences continue. You know, really all throughout life, they just might present differently. I'm a highly sensitive person, and maybe you are if you're listening to this. So really understanding our kids better will help us understand ourselves better as well. And I'm gonna throw both of those terms around.

So bear with me. A highly sensitive kid is a child whose nervous system is processing sensory information more deeply and more intensely than. Most other people. So what does that mean in just plain language? It means that the senses that are coming in, the sounds, the textures, the lights, the emotions, the transitions, and even social cues, all of those things are gonna hit their nervous system harder.

They register more. And the effect of that sensory input or that experience is going to last longer. So understanding high, highly sensitive people, you know, it's not a diagnosis, it's not a disorder, and it definitely just sits on the range of human experience. It's estimated that 15 to about 20% of the population.

Kids and adults have this HSP highly sensitive person trait. So this sounds like your kid. Just know that really there's one in five approximately people who experience the world this way. And it's especially important if you don't experience the world this way to understand what's going on with your child.

So what it is not, let's just be really clear about what it isn't, because this misconception can come up a pretty good bit. It is not your kiddo being dramatic. Okay? I know that it can be frustrating because I've lived it and I've felt that frustration as the mom, even though I was also the kid who freaked out about the seams in my socks.

As a child, the kid is not. Being dramatic or putting on some sort of performance for you. Their nervous system is genuinely registering that sensation as intolerable and that sensation is real to your child. I. It's not a failure on your part. You didn't do something to make your kid this way.

Sensitivity is largely neurological and it is partly genetic. Which brings me to my next point that it is not something that you can fix and your kiddo, your job is not to toughen up your kid for the real world or to make them push through it. Your job as their mother or their parent is too. Understand their nervous system and work with it so that as your child grows and develops, they have self-compassion and understanding and can work with it as well.

So one more clarification to make before we go on. Highly sensitive kids can also have diagnoses. Okay? They can have a DHD or they might be autistic, or they might have sensory processing disorder or anxiety. These things can and often do overlap with highly sensitive traits, but. Being a highly sensitive kid is also just its own thing.

So, you know, imagine a Venn diagram where there's sometimes an overlap, but being a highly sensitive person kind of gets its own circle, and those other diagnoses kind of get their own circle and sometimes they overlap. You don't need a diagnosis to recognize sensitivity, and you definitely don't need to pathologize sensitivity to be able to support it in yourself or your kids.

It is a helpful lens to truly understand yourself and those around you, and having that lens is absolutely invaluable. What does a highly sensitive kid actually look like? Let's talk about some of the signs. I'm gonna walk you through what this actually looks like in a real home life, and I want you to notice as we go, how many of these things might be true for you and your unique family?

I. Let's start off with the first one, which I've talked a lot about already, which is big reactions to sensory input. It's the most obvious one, right? It's that elephant in the room, and it's what most people think of when they think of sensory sensitivity. Think clothing tags or socks schemes, or being a picky eater.

Loud noises, bright lights. Scratchy fabrics, strong smells. The kids that you feel like are overreacting to things, their sensory threshold is actually lower for those things, so the actual sensory input does hit harder for them. So what feels like something that would be a mild annoyance to you?

Something that you could look over, can feel really overwhelming. To them. And I would also add that the level at which things affect your child can vary somewhat day to day. So you might be able to generalize some sensitivity. Or some days you might even feel like, man, my kid must be making this up because yesterday it wasn't bothering them.

But that's because our sensory tolerance doesn't operate in a vacuum in and of itself. It's influenced by our ability to handle stressors. Other areas as well. So it could be that your child's less rested or experiencing more emotional stress. Sensory stress doesn't occur in and of itself alone. It's affected by all of these other things.

So yeah, the first one is having big reactions to sensory input. The second one is having sort of a delayed meltdown, and this can kind of throw parents off a bit because it can feel like your kid is holding it all together through the morning, through school, running errands, maybe even going on a play date or like my kiddo this weekend with some excitement and things out of the norm.

Doing fine for a few days and then. Waking up one morning and hits a wall and can't keep going because this child hasn't had enough time to be to herself and recalibrate and kind of reset that threshold so that delayed sort of meltdown can be something that might throw you off as their parent. So sometimes these kids spend a lot of energy trying to hold it together, especially if they are in those really stimulating environments.

And then when they're safe, they're with you, they're at home. The nervous system just releases its stress. This might happen a lot if you've chosen to maybe homeschool your kid after having some difficulties in a school environment. You come home and think, okay, everything should be. Because we're outside of that overstimulation and stress, why are things still hard?

Well, they've been working so hard to hold it together for so long, and they developed this pattern and they're exhausted. So that meltdown is not often about what has just happened. Sometimes a child might have a meltdown because of the cumulative load of all of that input all day long. So having delayed meltdowns is fairly common with highly sensitive kids.

So let's shift gears for a second and talk a bit about some emotional intensity, because highly sensitive kids. Will have big feelings. They will have. Joy that is infectious and then grief that seems like it is disproportionate to the situation. This kiddo might be very empathetic and have so much empathy that it catches you off your guard, but then the anger.

Comes out of nowhere and so you end up feeling this whiplash back and forth with your highly sensitive kid. But their emotional responses are often more intense than it seems like the situation would normally call for, and they would often also take longer to kind of come back down after that emotional response.

That recovery window is longer for these kiddos. A highly sensitive kid off. Hudson notices everything as well. These kids are gonna pick up on things that you would miss. They'll notice a shift in your vocal tone and might take it super personally. They might notice a refrigerator humming in the background and it's distracting to them.

Maybe there's a new smell in the house. Or a change in their routine that you didn't think was a big deal, this kid is gonna notice and it's gonna register for them. So in a homeschool setting, this could look like a kid who is having a hard time focusing because they are tracking every little thing that's happening around them.

And it might seem like just a simple distraction to you. Maybe it looks like some A DHD going on, but often it's hyper-awareness of the world around them. And I'll add sometimes the world inside of them. Sometimes these are the kiddos who every little ache, every little thing that's off inside their body, they notice and it might kind of throw off how they are able to participate in normal things that day.

And you might feel like, okay, this kid is a hypochondriac. What is going on here? Or why aren't they making a big deal about every little. Every little thing, every little cough or a cold feels like it's the end of the world, but these kids are often aware of not just what's going on outside of them, but what's going on inside of them as well.

Let's talk about some of the strengths of being a highly sensitive kid, because I really wanna make sure we don't end this conversation just talking negatively about the sensitivity because the negativity is not the full picture when it comes to high sensitivity. Highly sensitive kids are often some of the most creative kids in the room.

They are some of the most deeply empathetic people that you will meet.

The ones who notice the beauty around them, that is a highly sensitive kid. The ones who have these fine tuned sense of justice, who want things to be fair. I know that these things can kind of drive you crazy sometimes, but see how they can be strengths as well.

It's a beautiful thing and it will make them incredible humans and the world needs more people who are willing to embrace their sensitivity. People that are highly sensitive feel deeply because they're processing deeply. It's not something to fix, but it does come with its own set of challenges, especially if you are the mom who is also highly sensitive and your highly sensitive kiddo is maybe purposefully or not purposefully pushing your buttons, or maybe you're the opposite.

Maybe you are not highly sensitive and you're having a hard time seeing the beauty in any of this. There's one more thing that I really want you to understand. If you have been just nodding along the way to this stuff that I'm talking about and thinking that sounds like me too. Remember that sensitivity does run in families and highly sensitive kids will often have that highly sensitive parent, and that means that listening to this episode might help you figure out yourself a little bit better too.

That's the beauty of motherhood. We're able to grow right alongside our kids if we're willing to do it.

So here's the part that I really need you to hear, because understanding that you have a highly sensitive kid is one thing, but what does that actually change? When you don't have this framework, this lens of seeing things, you end up spending your day fighting your child's nervous system, trying to push through, trying to get more done before they crash and wondering.

Why your kid can handle something one day and completely falls apart over the same thing the next day, and then you're both exhausted and disconnected and you end up feeling like a bad mom when actually you just didn't have the right lens yet. So here it is. This reframe can change how you were interacting with your child.

Your kid's nervous system has a cup in. That cup fills up faster than the average kids. Noise fills the cup, transitions, fill it. Your expectations, fill it. Even exciting things that are happy can fill it, and it's your job as their mom, as the person who knows this child the best. Your job is not to make the cup bigger.

You can't do that. Your job is to help your child empty that cup throughout the day before it overflows. So what does that actually mean? It means building downtime into your day as a norm, not just a reward, but a necessity. It means reading the signs that your kids' cup is getting full before that overflow moment happens.

And it means designing your homeschool day around your child's actual capacity, not the capacity that you hoped or assumed that your child would have, not the capacity that their siblings have or their other parent has. Um. Or the capacity that the curriculum assumes a child should have. And here's the thing that really can shift things in your homeschool, as I know it did for me.

When I stopped trying to push through and started trying to work with my kids' nervous system instead of against it, we actually got more done with a lot less conflict. With more connection because we weren't spending our energy and recovery from dysregulation from both of us and all the other siblings that got to watch it happen.

And that's what I want. That's what I want for you and your family and understanding. This is just the beginning of that conversation. In the coming weeks, we're gonna go a little bit deeper into different things you can do to support highly sensitive kids, how to read their cues, and some small changes you can make in your day to support their regulation instead of depleting it.

So make sure that you've hit subscribe if you haven't yet, so that you don't miss out on any of that. Let's wrap it up with three things that we've talked about today. One, a highly sensitive kid is not a broken kid. They have a nervous system that processes the world inside and outside of them more deeply.

Number two, the signs are real signs, the big reaction, delayed meltdowns, the emotional intensity, noticing everything. If you saw your kid in any of that today. It's not all in your head, it's real. Third, understanding, high sensitivity can change how you homeschool, not in a, now I have to do everything differently kind of way.

Really, trust me. I know I hate change, but it can change things in a, okay, so now I actually get my kid, and we can start out of mutual understanding for one another.

If this episode resonated with you, I would love it if you would share it with just one mom who needs some encouragement today. Just text it to her. That's how a small show like mine grows. Just mom to mom, one voice to another saying, Hey, check it out. I can't tell you how thankful I would be. And if you're listening and you realize, okay, I've got a highly sensitive kid and you don't really know where to start.

And your kid's highly sensitivity is driving you crazy. That's exactly what my next best step consultation is for. It's free. We get on a call together, we look at what's happening in your home, and we pick just one thing. No overwhelm, just one thing. I promise you can sign up for that@sensationalmoms.com.

Until then, I promise you are doing better than you think. And may you find joy in connection, even in the chaos.