Highly sensitive children are wired to process and react to their experiences in the world more deeply than other children. A highly sensitive child is sensitive to their environment, relationships, and expectations. A child's high sensitivity is about their temperament.
A highly sensitive person is very in tune with their environment. They are often deeply empathic, intuitive, and good at reading others. They are highly observant, thoughtful, and intentional.
Children are born emotionally sensitive, but their behavior may not seem out of the ordinary until age 5 or 6 when their peers cut back on tantrums and meltdowns. Although kids won't outgrow these feelings, they can learn to control their reactions -- in essence, toughen up.
A child counselor can help your child better understand her strong feelings. In therapy, highly sensitive kids can learn how to cope with the day-to-day situations that lead to stress. They can also learn ways to self-soothe and deal with overpowering feelings when they happen.
HS kids can be very inflexible. They come up with rigid rules to organize a world that can feel very overwhelming. HS kids are amazing and also exhausting. Their outsized reactions can be very triggering and hard for parents to understand and manage.
Anatomy of a Sensory Meltdown
Sensory sensitivity to noise, lights, crowds, or touch can cause children and adults who have sensory processing disorders to become confused and frightened.
But, despite those similarities, autism and high sensitivity are two different things. Not only that, but a recent study shows they are profoundly different—and that high sensitivity is also unrelated to various disorders, such as schizophrenia and PTSD.
Gifted people are usually also highly sensitive and intense. They are more aware of subtleties; their brain processes information and reflects on it more deeply. At their best, they can be exceptionally perceptive, intuitive, and keenly observant of the subtleties of the environment.
Most parents of gifted children won't be surprised that research supports what they can see for themselves: gifted children are highly sensitive to their environment and react with heightened emotional and behavioral responses, more so than do children of average intelligence.
Hypersensitivity, also known as being a “highly sensitive person” (HSP), is not a disorder. It is an attribute common in people with ADHD.
Hypersensitivity — also known as being a “highly sensitive person” (HSP) — is not a disorder. It is an attribute common in people with ADHD.
Signs that a child may be overstimulated include displaying tantrums, irritability, and fatigue. Emotionally reactive and high levels of empathy: These children tend to feel their own emotions and those of others deeply.
A tantrum is usually when a child wants something. They often present themselves as outbursts of frustration. It can be attention based, with children even pausing to check if anyone's watching. A sensory meltdown is when a child has too much sensory information to process.
Mental health conditions such as generalized anxiety disorder and PTSD can also trigger sensory overload. Anticipation, fatigue, and stress can all contribute to a sensory overload experience, making senses feel heightened during panic attacks and PTSD episodes.
The sensitive period of development is the overlapping periods of child development in which children are sensitive to specific stimuli or interactions and is a critical period in child development. The sensitive period occurs between birth and six years of age.
Because of their sensitivity, HS children get triggered to experience stress more quickly. They get overwhelmed by their big emotions and outsized reactions to sensory input which naturally results in more frequent and intense meltdowns.
Stress & Sensitivity Can Worsen With Age for HSPs. Here's How to Prevent That. If you are a highly sensitive person (HSP) you might be growing larger stress centers in your brain without even knowing it, and if you don't do anything about it, they will become even bigger.
HSPs are typically highly intelligent, and seek out opportunities to do deep work. Many HSPs are academics, artists, researchers, scientists and technicians with high level proficiency. HSPs are deep learners, and so enjoy going deep on their chosen subjects, and often gain proficiency early in life.
Although high sensitivity is genetic, there's not just a single gene that causes it. In fact, scientists have increasingly found that personality traits are based on a whole collection of genes, not just one or two. That's true of traits as different as introversion and intelligence.
For example, we know that sensitivity seems to run in families – if someone had one highly sensitive parent, they are more likely to be highly sensitive. However, this doesn't mean we've found a specific gene that is linked to sensitivity.