The story of 3 sensitive children

Here was a 4-year-old who was termed as too sensitive. And there was a 13-year-old, who his parents felt suddenly started becoming afraid of flickering lights. And a 10-year-old who couldn’t eat bananas.

All of them had something in common. Their parents believed the child was behaving badly quite often and was throwing a tantrum. But what was the real story?

Parents of the 13-year-old complained that the child refused to eat certain foods, felt too overwhelmed and suddenly started feeling afraid of flickering lights. He would go to the school and if a light in the library was flickering, he would need to sit down covering his eyes, unable to move.

So, they brought him to a therapist. And as the session would be going on, the child would say – ohh those damn Myna’s have returned. And then the therapist would notice that ohh outside the window couple of Myna’s were making some noise while playing. And then he would mention ahh the clock tick is too loud. And the therapist would notice the tick of the clock.

Over many sessions, the therapist found out that this behaviour of his was not as recent as the parents felt. It was just that now that the boy was 13, he was protesting loudly and his behaviour was just difficult to ignore. He hears the minutest things, he notices the smallest of flickers, the lightest of touch of wool makes him uncomfortable and that makes it hard to live life as another person. And this shows as a tantrum to parents and the people around him.

So she gave the child another way to look at himself: you are a more finely tuned instrument than the rest of the world. And she explained the same to his parents. And they understood.

So, the child who was made to wear all these clothes that he found uncomfortable now only wears a black T-shirt and cotton pants. He roams around with a headphone with no music on them but just to block out the sounds that otherwise anyways you and I don’t hear. More importantly, he understands that there is nothing wrong with him. That has been the gift of these sessions to the child and the parent.

In another such case, there was a 10-year-old who wouldn’t eat the banana. And he had been forced to eat bananas for the last so many years. It took a while for the therapist to help the parents understand that when the child is saying the banana feels slimy to him, he really-really means it.

And it does not leave him with a good feeling. The part I find interesting is that because now he has eaten it for the last 10 years we no longer know what percentage of this ickiness is because he has sensitivity towards the slimy feeling and what percentage of the yucky feeling is because the parents forced him to eat.

Oh, we mentioned a 4-year-old also at the start. Let’s talk about him as well. Here was a kid crying while going to school, refusing to talk to other kids, not making friends. Every new situation he would take a lot of time to adjust. He would cry and cry. His parents brought him to the therapist saying he’s too sensitive (saying so in front of the child). And well, a 4-year-old is too young to talk to the therapist so the therapist spoke to parents. And she found out that the parents had a lot of travel because of the work they did. They always took the child with them which was great but there was a lack of predictability of routine for the child. And on the advice of the therapist when the parents corrected that, the crying stopped.

Our brain’s need is to feel safe and in control. That is the first step for everything else (emotional regulation, development of IQ, more intelligence etc) to happen. For all these children, their brains did not feel safe, they felt overwhelmed.

The kids were not lying:

• they said I don’t like these clothes or I don’t like banana
• they started crying for what others felt was no reason whatsoever

Our senses provide input to our brains. And the senses of each child are differently calibrated. Some are more fine-tuned than others.

Which brings us to something we can do for our children.

Rather than calling our child ‘sensitive’ we can try to step back and wonder, why is my child saying this? Why is my child doing what he is doing?

Because our children are not idiots. If they are doing something there is a cause behind it.

And as parents can we pause?

Can we try and understand the cause?

Thank you for taking out 5 min to know more about your child.

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