Parenting the Highly Sensitive Child by Julie B. Rosenhein is one of the best books I have read on the subject. Some of the reviewers I read were put off by the author’s spirituality and I can understand that. Reading a book that starts off with some New Age ideas like indigo children isn’t certainly everybody’s cup of tea and may make you easily lose your faith in the author’s credibility. However, the author, an HSP and therapist herself, does a fantastic job in describing highly sensitive children and giving some good advice for parents.
Having been a highly sensitive child myself made it much easier for me to understand my four HSCs, each of whom is different in their own way. The rage is much wider than in the autism spectrum, which I would include as a part of the HSC spectrum. It’s hard to predict a HSC’s behaviour: some of my children have more tantrums and meltdowns than the others, some find it easier to make friends, some are more picky eaters, some struggle more with authority (in school), and some have more traits of ADHD whereas some have more ASD traits. While all are different some common traits remain: all of them startle easily (even as a baby, say when someone had to sneeze), they are highly sensitive to pain and going to the dentist often is a tough struggle, and they are often socially awkward and shy.
Like all children, HSCs can be a joy and a pain to parents, only more extreme on both ends and that can make life feel more like survival than living. An estimated 20% of all children are HSCs and understanding them is the first step to avoid pain and misunderstandings for both the child and the parent. The first step is identifying a child as HSC, which is often not difficult as they tend to be difficult already as babies and are what psychologists call “highly reactive babies”, i.e. they startle easily, cry frequently, find it hard to fall asleep and often wake up at night. As toddlers they have frequent temper tantrums and meltdowns due to sensory overload.
Julie B. Rosenhein distinguishes four types of highly sensitivities with most children having
1. Physical or environmental sensitivity (noise, textiles, food, touch, etc.)
2. Emotional sensitivity (high intensity, sensitive to criticism, high empathy, etc.)
3. Spiritual sensitivity (spirituality, authenticity, honesty, nature and animals, idealism, etc.)
4. Social or transition sensitivity (sense of justice and fairness, aversion to authority, need to be alone, avoiding social gatherings, hesitant to meet new people, socialising with kids during recess, etc.)
My child and I easily ticked 80% of Rosenhein’s sensitivities. I was a shy, withdrawn child. I spent most of my time with books, in my own dream world, and my cats rather than my peers. Not for a lack of want for friendship, it often just didn’t work out. Two of my children had imaginary friends, which seem to me a pretty sure giveaway of a HSC.
It’s often really hard to give some generic advice for HSCs, understanding them, taking them seriously and a lot of patience helps. Above all, avoid authoritarian parenting. The reason is that HSCs are most likely to have an evolutionary hunter-gatherer rather than farmer/herder programming:
This idea may seem somewhat bizarre, however, it has helped me a lot in understanding my own children and works well in practice as lots of people on the web have confirmed (even if they didn’t really know what to make of the hunter-gatherer hypothesis).
The hunter-gatherer hypothesis has also provided me with a lot of insight about the whole HSC complex, e.g. why HSC children not only have difficulty with authority in school, but often also with the sequential way of presentations. HSCs would much rather learn the things that are relevant to them, in a non-linear way and very often on their own rather than following instructions.
For more on the hunter-gatherer neurotribe idea check out my book
https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B0836LW5QV/
or
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KTH8V2F
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