S06|01 - Parenting Highly-Sensitive Kids and Parents

Welcome to season 6! In this season you’ll hear from experts in the motherhood and parenting sphere, along with support from me- to help you uncover your own inner parenting expert. I’ll be answering the most frequently asked questions on IG and my podcast, so be sure to reach out! Today we’re digging into highly-sensitive kids and parents, and how we can support ourselves in this journey.

Today you’ll hear:

• What a highly sensitive child (orchid child) might act like
• The power of our thought-stories in the labels we give to children, and making sure they are supportive for us and them
• Tips we can use to support ourselves if we are a highly-sensitive person/empath
• The best way to parent an empathic child
• Having compassion for US on our own healing journey, as we parent our children

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Episode Transcript

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hi, I'm Crystal The Parenting Coach. Parenting is the thing that some of us just expected to know how to do. It's not like other areas of your life where you go to school and get taught, get on the job training, or have mentors to help you, but now you can get that help here.

I believe that your relationship with your children is one of the most important aspects of your life, and the best way that you can make a positive impact on the world and on the future. I've made parental relationships my life study, and I use life coaching tools, emotional wellness tools, and connection-based parenting to build amazing relationships between parents and their children.

If you want an even better relationship with your child, this podcast will help you. Take my Parenting Quiz, the link is in the show notes. Once we know what your parenting style is, we will send some tips tailored to you and a roadmap to help you get the most out of my podcast. I invite you to help me spread the word by sharing your favorite episode on social media or with a friend. 

 

Don't forget to check out my new mindset journal for parents at www.coachcrystal.ca/shop, which will help you to parent calm, confident children that you love to be around.

 

Hello and welcome to the podcast. We have been gone for three weeks, and I've been considering what I wanted to talk to you about right off the get-go. And I'm going to talk to you a little bit about this season; and then I'm going to dig into today's podcast episode, which is going to be Parenting for Highly-Sensitive Parents and Kids because this is a question that I get asked about a lot. 

So, from this season, you can expect a combination of interviews with some amazing experts, episodes where I'm going to be supporting you through whatever challenges – whatever parenting questions you come up with. 

You can either email them to me at [email protected] or you can send me a DM on Instagram; and I'll be creating the podcast episodes specifically around the questions that come up often. 

So, I made a Reels a while back, it was a few months ago, about highly sensitive kids; and then I also made one about highly sensitive parents, and I got a lot of comments and a lot of questions about how to parent kids like that and how to parent if you are a highly sensitive parent.

And I thought it would make a really great podcast episode. So, that is what we are going to dig into today. 

But again, I encourage you to hop back into my Instagram, send me a message, send me an email, and give me some ideas around some questions or challenges that you're having and I will answer them here on the podcast. 

So, welcome to Season 6. I'm excited for you to be here. If you're new, welcome, welcome. Make sure that you check out those three seasonal break episodes that I put out if you're new because that will give you a great idea about what we do here. 

So, let's dig into first, highly sensitive kids; and then, we'll talk about highly sensitive parents secondly.

 

What a highly sensitive child (orchid child) might act like

A highly sensitive kid is basically just a term that people have put out there meaning kids that maybe are a little bit more empathic, maybe a little bit more emotional, maybe feel their emotions more strongly. 

I love Dr. Gordon Neufeld in Hold On to Your Kids, calls them orchid children; and he calls them orchid children because he's like, 'They're really kind of difficult to grow, but once they bloom they're like beautiful.' 

So, they're like a little bit hard to keep alive; and then once they bloom, they're like the prettiest flower and you love them so much and whatever. 

So, that's kind of-- that's kind of a good metaphor for what highly sensitive kids can sometimes feel like. I feel like there's a lot of highly sensitive kids around, and I actually think it's amazing. I think it's a superpower. We're going to talk about that too. 

But you may have a highly sensitive kid if you have a child who seems to go from 0 to 100, 0 to 100 really quickly; they just feel strong emotions, and they feel them quickly. 

Everything might be calm and quiet and seem normal; and then all of a sudden, it's like they're in their red zone out of nowhere and you're like, 'Whoa, where did that come from?' That can also happen to all kids too, right? 

You might not-- It's not like there's like a black-and-white; like this one's highly sensitive, and this one's not, and this one is this and that. It's not like a diagnosis. 

So yes, also these kids tend to be very creative and very innovative, have really interesting new different ideas. For my kids, they've also been really artistic, and I see this in a lot of other people's kids too. Like not necessarily like 'drawing artistic', but just like artistic in lots of varieties of ways – but creative, for sure. 

Another one, I think like the more general way of looking at it is that they feel their emotions really strongly; and this happens on both ends of the spectrum. So, both when they're feeling compassion and love and kindness, they're like the most empathic and the most loving and the most caring when they're feeling good. 

And when they're feeling bad, when they're not feeling great, then they're also a really strong; it's almost like they feel their emotions at a higher, a heightened level. 

Another thing that I've noticed with highly sensitive kiddos is that they're a lot more in tune with their shame. Like almost like they feel it more strongly or something and they just like hate that feeling because it's a pretty strong negative feeling to have.

And so, they do whatever they can to not feel that. So, they might blame other people or they might be really defensive or sometimes can be people-pleasing or perfectionist or whatever – all the things that are kind of connected to shame. 

So, that's kind of what a highly sensitive kid is; some people call them like strong-willed kids.

 

The power of our thought-stories in the labels we give to children, and making sure they are supportive for us and them

There's a lot of different terms kind of going around about what these kids might be like; and it could be that your kid has a diagnosis or maybe they don't, but one thing I want to mention is that how we think about our kids matters. 

So, our relationship with our children really boils down to our thoughts about them, how we think about them and how we treat them; and if we are--  

And also, not only how we're thinking about them, but how we think about the dynamic of the relationship and the dynamic of that child. So, I want you just to think about those terms and the phrases that we use to describe them. 

I read a blog post on the Neufeld website, and it had specifically been talking about strong-willed kids and how they didn't like the term strong-willed kids because they were like, "It already gives the parent an idea that this child is going to fight back, that they're going to be contrary, that they're going to be difficult." Right? 

And even the term "difficult", it brings up certain ideas in our head – it brings up thoughts in our mind; and if we have those thoughts about it being difficult and about it being hard, then we're already kind of primed for it to be difficult…our brain is almost kind of looking for that. 

So, I always go back to think, feel, do; our thoughts create our feelings, and our feelings fuel our actions. And it can even be our thoughts around these kinds of words like 'highly-sensitive kids' or 'strong-willed kids' or 'difficult children' or even your ideas around a diagnosis. 

Sometimes getting a diagnosis can be really eye-opening and be really helpful and supportive because we're like, 'Oh, I get it, I understand them so much more now…I feel so much more compassionate and loving.' 

But sometimes it can feel kind of like a sentence…like, 'Okay, this is it.' And now, the end (like period), there's nothing more that they can do or whatever. So, I really always go back to – not necessarily…is this true, is this factual, how many people will agree with me?, but, how do I show up when I think about this? 

And so, personally, when I think of strong-willed child, I think of like a fighter, like that they're just there to fight – to be difficult, to be hard, to make my life more difficult. I don't love that term. 

And I used to use that term regularly until I started thinking more about; how does it make me feel when I think I have a strong-willed child, when so-and-so is strong-willed, when so-and-so is a difficult child, when I have a difficult relationship with them, when they are just harder to get along with than their siblings, when they give me a hard time more often? 

All of those phrases are going to make me have a certain emotion in my body, and I'm going to show up a certain way because of that feeling. And for me, I'm already going to be like pre-frustrated, pre-annoyed, pre-ready for battle when this kid gets home and I know that he's going to be upset about something or she's going to be upset about something. 

So, I just want you to think about how you feel when you're using those terms. So, if the term 'empath' or 'highly sensitive kid' feels good to you and you're like, "Yeah, that makes me understand them more, I feel more compassionate, I feel more loving, I feel like I am going to parent them from a better space now because I understand them better," then by all means, go ahead and use that.

But if you feel like it feels heavy to you and you're just like, 'Ugh, I don't know what to do with this…I don't know how to parent a child like this, this is really hard,' then another term might be more useful. 

I had a past client reach out to me and she was like, "I'm so glad that you told me about orchid kids." She's like, "I just love that terminology, I love thinking about my child that way and it really helps me reframe just really quickly thinking about that." 

So, that can be something that can be helpful too. 

 

How to parent highly sensitive kids

So, one of the questions that people asked were, how do you parent highly sensitive kids? 

So, several of my kids are what people would probably call 'highly sensitive'; and that is what got me into this work because they were – in my mind at the time – a lot more difficult to parent, and I didn't know how to handle them and I didn't know how to parent them…and that is what got me into changing my parenting. 

So, what I talk about on this podcast – in connection and connection-based parenting, some people call it conscious or gentle parenting – all of that is how you parent highly sensitive kids because these kids are so much more sensitive, they're so much more emotional that they can even just, if you've noticed, even to like your tone of voice, your tone of voice switching or certain like, I don't know, eye contacts or not having eye contact or something…can set them off. 

They can be upset about something that you're like, "What? That was such a tiny little thing," or "That was just like a little phrase that I used or a little tone." 

My kiddos are definitely like this. They're so particular about tones and about words that are used. And so, lots of times my one daughter will come up to me and she'll be like, "Why are you so annoyed right now?" 

And I was like, "I'm not annoyed, I'm just putting you to bed, like I haven't even said anything." 

And inside I'm like, 'I do kind of feel a little bit annoyed.' Like I was feeling annoyed but I hadn't said anything and I didn't think I was even showing it, but she's just so good at being able to pull that out and know. 

And she's like, "I could tell by your tone of voice", or "I can tell by your eyes or whatever". 

And I think that kids are so much more emotional beings than they are thinking beings. I actually think this about every human, but I can pretend all day long that I'm compassionate and kind and calm. But if I'm not feeling that inside, that is what our kids are going to get, right? 

We can say what we want to say all day long, but they're going to-- they're going to feel what we feel. So, if I'm annoyed, they will also feel that. 

So, the best way to parent these highly sensitive kids is to, do connection-based parenting, is to focus on connection versus rewards and punishments and sticker charts and bribes and threats and all of those traditional parenting tactics. 

Because they're going to be so much more harmed by it, they're going to be so much more hurt by it because all of those little ways of interacting with them they're going to be really sensitive to. 

You know, so if we send them to their room or if we yell at them or if we use shame in our tone or if we ground them or whatever those more traditional parenting tactics are, they're going to feel that really deeply. They're going to feel that hurt deeply. 

And that's not to say, I know I've mentioned this in podcast episodes in the past, but that's not to say that we're not going to do those things because we're human and we probably will; we're probably going to resort back to those parenting tactics because that's how our brain has been on autopilot for so long. That's what we've known for so long. 

And so, give yourself some grace and compassion to go through this process, and allow it to take some time and to know that there are some ways that we are going to hurt our kids and that we are going to be unkind because we're also imperfect. And find compassion for you. 

And as you can find compassion that you are doing your best, it'll be a lot easier to find that for your kids too. 

 

So, that's highly sensitive kids. If you have any other questions about highly sensitive kids, I would love to hear from you too and we can dig more into this. 

But essentially connection-based parenting is the answer. Follow along for my podcast for more. You can go back and listen to Season 1 Episode 4, I think, it's called Radical Connection where I described this whole modality of parenting. 

And then all of the rest of the podcast episodes are dedicated to help you do your own healing so that it becomes a little bit easier, and we just do a little bit and a little bit and a little bit better over time.

 

Tips we can use to support ourselves if we are a highly-sensitive person/empath

So, what if you are a highly sensitive parent yourself? So, a lot of people said that they felt both; like that their kids were highly sensitive and they were highly sensitive – or even if their kids weren't, that they were. 

So, this might be the same kinds of things. Maybe you're really creative, maybe you feel like you feel emotions on both sides of the spectrum really strong. Maybe you feel like you go to 0 to 100 in no time at all. Maybe you just feel really emotional and you just kind of describe yourself as that kind of empathic person, right? Like you can feel other people's feelings, almost. 

You can almost feel what they're feeling when you go into a room or when you talk to somebody. So, you probably know if you're a highly sensitive parent, this probably makes sense to you. 

But a lot of the times, highly sensitive parents are a little bit more sensitive to like noise, touch, texture. I was just talking to a friend of mine who feels like this really describes her, and she was like, 'I just get like so touched out.' 

She's like, 'There's just a point during the day where I'm like, ugh, I just don't want anybody to touch me anymore.' 

She also feels like…even to like textures, clothing or whatever, that she is sensitive to that and to like noises, yelling, stuff like that. Like it's almost like it triggers her subconsciously instantly, just like all of a sudden. 

So, there's a few things that can be helpful;

 

1. Headphones

And this one is like super practical and might seem super silly, but it actually can be so helpful. And I've had clients in the past who did this and found it really supportive; this is getting headphones. 

So, it could be like Bluetooth headphones or it can be those noise-canceling headphones. You can actually still hear your kids through them. There isn't anything, at least that I've tried, that like entirely blocks out all noise. 

I have some for my kids, and they don't ever feel like it blocks out all the noise. And I've had clients in the past who have used this and felt the same way. So, you will still be able to hear your kids even with the noise-canceling headphones in. But it just kind of dampens all of that, all of that noise, all of that stuff going on around you so you don't feel so uptight about all of it, right? 

Because it's almost like if you're sensitive to the textures and the taste and the smell and all the things happening, it's you're already stimulated. And so, it's easy just to like tip over to overstimulation because those things are already kind of building. 

One of my friends described it like – one of my parenting coaching friends described it – like lava. It's like lava inside of a volcano; and it's like the lava's like building and building and building and building and building – and eventually, you explode. 

So, it's not like the explosion just like, all of a sudden, came out of nowhere; it was actually building throughout the day. So, if you're sensitive to textures, tastes, touch, smell, all the things…you're going to be building that throughout the day even if you don't really notice it. 

So, number one would be headphones.

 

2. Meditation

Number two for me has been meditation. Meditation has been so supportive. I notice a huge difference on the days that I meditate and the days that I don't. 

And I don't mean you have to sit down and like meditate for 20 minutes. Like, I mean like even giving myself a 60-second like taking deep breaths, focusing on my breath, clearing my mind…the thoughts will come back in again – that's still meditation, that's fine. And you just clear it out again. 

They keep coming in, and you just keep clearing them out, and just focusing on your breath and focusing on silence and stillness and space. The days that I choose to do that in the morning, go so much differently for me. I feel so much different when I do that. 

And it's interesting because I didn't even really notice that. I was like doing it sometimes and not sometimes. And then I started to notice, 'Oh there's some days that I just feel a little bit more agitated,' just like going into the day feeling that way; and that when I start out my day with meditation, it makes a big difference for me. 

If you have my book, Burn This Book – I've talked about it in the past, you can go check it out at the link in the show notes also – there's a whole list of emotional self-regulation techniques. So, there's more than just meditation there, and any of those practices are going to be helpful. But meditation for me regularly has been really helpful. 

 

3. Zones

Another thing has been zones. I'm not going to dig into this too much because I have talked about this a lot – but it's like red light, yellow light, green light…Red Zone, Yellow Zone, Green Zone.

And so, red is when I'm like, I've totally lost it and I'm feeling really strong emotions. This can both be like a positive and a negative energy state. And I don't mean positive and negative energy, like emotion, but I mean positive energy as in a lot of like anger or rage or like that energy that kind of needs to be used up like intense restlessness or frustration. 

And there can also be that negative energy where you're feeling lower, like really sad, really melancholy, really like withdrawn. 

So, there's different emotional regulation techniques you can use for both of those, that's also in the book. But your red zone can be either; it's just like an extreme amount of emotions in either direction. 

And when you're feeling red, I always say, "Don't parent in the fire, go find something to help yourself calm down and get back down to your green zone and get a little bit more regulated…and then you can be a little bit more logical in your response because when we're high on emotions, we're low on logic." It's like a teeter-totter that goes back and forth. 

So, we're just trying to find ways to support our nervous system so that we can go back down to that neutral space again, so that we can better use the tools that we already have because as parents, we already have parenting tools. 

 

4. Regulation ideas from my book

And so, then the last one would just be the regulation ideas that I talk about in my book. I'm just going to list a few off of them. I've listed a few off of these before that you can try and use. 

One of the favorite ones that I mentioned before was that like laying, like when your back is on the ground and then your legs are up against the wall; that's like a yoga position, but also good for regulation. 

You can do things like chewing gum or crunchy food or shaking a sensory bottle. A weighted blanket can be helpful. If you have kids that are highly sensitive, I highly suggest a weighted blanket; my kids love that. 

You can try prayer, meditation, counting down from 10, drumming, doing like a pushup against the wall. One of the ideas in here is breaking China, like throwing dishes into like a dumpster. Make sure-- My mom always says, "Make sure you're wearing safety glasses if you do that one." But like doing something to kind of just like let that out. 

So, there's a lot of different nervous system regulation ideas you can do.

 

Having compassion for US on our own healing journey, as we parent our children

But the one last thing that I'm going to leave you with and highly sensitive parents is that the biggest thing that we can do to change our parenting and to help parent highly sensitive kiddos and to help ourselves as a highly sensitive parent is to work on our relationship with ourselves. 

And I know I hammer this in in like every single episode I ever talk to you guys about, but it's because it's so true and it's so useful and it's so helpful. 

So, how I view myself as a person, how I view myself as a parent, that is where I'm going to make the biggest shifts and changes in my parenting. So, if I'm a highly sensitive person or if I'm parenting a highly sensitive kid, the biggest work that I can do is on healing myself. 

And for me, healing looks like things like meditation and thought work journaling and pulling some of those thoughts into the model and rewriting some of those thought stories that I have so that I'm treating myself better…so that I'm taking better care of myself, so that I'm meeting my needs better – that I'm that comforting and supportive person for myself. 

Some people call this like 'reparenting' or 'self-mothering', but the idea is that we can give ourselves what we need in that moment – that we can be a parent or a mother to ourselves in that moment because maybe it's bringing back something from childhood that was harmful or that was hurtful for us, or maybe we're just feeling really awful and we don't really know what to do about it. 

Whenever we're feeling in that, that moment really triggered and we dig down to like, what is this trigger all about? What am I thinking? What am I feeling? What's going on here? There's going to be some way that I'm viewing myself that is connected to that shame, that "I am not… enoughness". We all have some amount of "I am not… enoughness" in our life. And when we feel triggered, it always is kind of rubbing up against that. 

And so, the more that we can love ourselves and validate ourselves and be kind and compassionate to ourselves, that is how we're going to be able to move through that and move through that shame and be able to parent our kiddos no matter what our background is…and no matter what their background is and their personality and their temperament and our personality and our temperament. 

In fact, it'll actually become almost like a talent, almost like a gift because I really think it is. I see it in my kids, and I definitely see that in highly sensitive parents also. I think that as we can learn to harness that gift, that we can really use it for good. 

I was coaching a lady at the retreat that I was having and she was talking about just, you know, what parenting is supposed to look like and whatever…these kind of ideas in our mind about what we have. 

And she kind of felt like she wasn't doing it right because she kind of has like more of a goofy, silly, fun personality. And when she started to use more of that goofy, fun, silly personality in her parenting, she was like, "Oh my goodness, it worked so well…it almost instantly diffused the entire situation." 

And I was like, "Yeah, because that's like your secret superpower, it's like who you really are." 

So, the more that we tune into who we really are deep down, the more we're actually going to be able to use that in our parenting to create these amazing solutions, and just such a unique style of our parenting. 

I say connection-based parenting is, I think, the focus is on connection and relationship above anything else, but really, it's just like this unique approach of parenting where you get to decide how you want to respond to things based on your unique talents and gifts and abilities and personality and all of that. 

So again, one last little reminder that this is a healing journey that we're all on. We still make mistakes; that's going to happen forever and that's okay that we are still going to sometimes say things that are hurtful to people, that we're going to act in ways that are maladaptive…and we can still move on from that, and apologize, and reconnect, and just keep going.

And as we keep doing this, we'll just keep progressing; and it'll be like we're just going up the mountain, it's getting a little bit better each time…we're getting a little bit better at it, and we're progressing just step by step by step. 

 

So, thank you for being here, and I'm excited to hear from you and all the ideas that you may have for me for podcast episodes. Stay tuned for what's next.

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to help spread this work to the world, share this episode on social media and tag me – send it to a friend, or leave a quick rating and review below so more people can find me. If you'd like more guidance on your own parenting journey, reach out.