Cranio Healing with Mira

Somatic Solutions for Highly Sensitive Adults & Children

sensitivity

Parenting Highly Sensitive Children in COVID19 times

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Supporting Highly Sensitive Children during COVID19

Introduction

If you as adults are finding these times a strain, you can assume its probably worse for the highly sensitive children. Many are feeling the whole COIVD19 saga unfolding but unable to rationalise or put words to the experience. The tension children are picking up may play out in many ways. It’s very common for there to be meltdowns over seemingly unrelated minor events. Disturbed sleep, heightened clinginess and anxiety, and physical symptoms like stomach cramps, headaches, asthma, and diarrhea may also occur. In this article we will look at each aspect to find practical solutions to minimise disruption to your child and preserve your sanity. We want you as the parent to be able to cope whilst you maximise your child’s resilience.

The key factor is YOU the parent

Probably the most important factor for your child is how you as parents are handling the whole situation. Children’s nervous systems mirror their parent’s in the same way that the bottom guitar string resonates if you pluck the top one. So getting your own fear and stress under control has to be the first priority. This is easier said than done especially if you are a highly sensitive parent – but there are ways. Some basic support mechanisms are:

  • slow your day down, take more breaks
  • make sure you get physical exercise because moving the body releases emotion and prevents traumatisation
  • breathe consciously as much as you can – both in but also out – the outbreath is crucial for releasing fear and anxiety
  • Limit social media and don’t watch the news at all. If you have to, do it with headphones so your child doesn’t pick up the negativity from the TV
  • Limit coffee and drink herbal teas; make sure you eat regular meals so your body doesn’t go into low blood sugar panic mode
  • be aware not to discuss political events or scientific theories in front of your child because they will pick up on the intense emotion of the times immediately and feel out of sorts.
  • The good news is that if you can remain relatively normal in your mood and activities, you create a bubble of protection from world events for your child, at least whilst you are inside your home. This will give them a foundation to rest and recover from whatever else they experience when they go out. This is absolutely essential.

Your own mindset is crucial

I can’t stress enough that whatever your mindset is regarding the virus and the political measures will directly affect your child’s mental and emotional health. So work on keeping the fear out, on keeping yourself centred and positive and being an active creative agent in your own life. Whatever you can do – be it plant vegetables, volunteer to support others, clean, decorate, plan or communicate please do it. The stronger and more resilient you get the easier things will be for your child.

Dealing with the global emotion

The general underlying tension outside of your home that is also affecting many adults will not go unfelt by your children. I’m talking about the global or even country energetic field of which we all form a part. The “alert” state of being hypervigilant that most people initially experienced for a few weeks happens when the parasympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) is aroused and can’t discharge. This is exhausting and many of us spent weeks without proper sleep or digestion.

Highly sensitive adults and children will pick up on this vibe and experience it as a real threat in their environment without being able to see what it is. If your child is old enough (probably 4-5 at least) then explaining the fear and tension that a lot of people are feeling about not being able to work, about changes happening may help your child to locate the fear as outside of themselves and put it aside. Making it separate and tangible can prevent trauma (overload) and settle the system.

The importance of Touch

Physical touch – hugging, foot massage, gentle shoulder rubs – whatever normally soothes your child – can be very helpful at regular intervals. Frightened children tend to dissociate and lose touch with their bodies, and so digestion stops, they get stomach cramps and also knock into things and have more accidents.

Common Anxiety Symptoms

If you see your child not eating normally, not sleeping and expressing sysmptoms of anxiety like diarrhea (fear/terror), stomach cramps, broken or disturbed sleep (nightmares) please check your own state first. The most important thing you can do for your child is be calm and grounded yourself. The next step is to find ways to help your child calm down again.

Relaxation and Emotional Regulation

Most parents generally notice as they go along what helps their children settle and relax. In case you are stuck for ideas, everything that promotes a sense of safety and wellbeing in the body helps. Keep things slow, low key and gentle… A warm bath with lavender oil or Epsom salts, reading stories by the fire, making fairy cakes together…

If your child is in a real state an activity like walking barefoot on the grass together may help. You can suggest that your child imagines a nose on the sole of each foot that is smelling the earth as they take each step. Walk together slowly, maybe holding hands, and as you sense the soles of your feet encourage your child to sense theirs using the nose… They usually love this and it gets them reconnected with their body fast. Be creative – ask if they can smell the daisies, the grass, the earth, the worms, etc. Notice if they are breathing. If not, do some big breaths into your lower belly together whilst standing on the grass.

Symptoms of fear

If your child has persistent stomach cramps, headaches, diarrhea or develops asthma this is not necessarily anything medical to worry about. (Although do see a doctor if you suspect your child is ill). These can all be and are actually common physical manifestations of fear which highly sensitive children are especially prone to. In this case  it might be helpful to see a child craniosacral therapist. They should be able to help relax the connective tissue in the abdomen/neck and stimulate the vagus nerve and sympathetic nervous system. If your child is hypersensitive or aroused most practitioners will be able to work without even touching your child. It’s a last resort but it can save you a lot of stress and worry.

How to deal with Clinginess

Has your child recently stopped being able to play on their own even for short periods, or are they demanding to sleep in your bed again? If you’re despairing that your child seems to have regressed developmentally since this all began your not alone. However please try to understand that this is a normal response. It happens when children are stressed, and it’s unlikely to be permanent. It’s just a sign of distress. Extra clinginess and not wanting to let their preferred adult out of sight would also be expected responses. Why? Because when you are fundamentally scared you want to cling onto whatever security you have at all costs. Your child is asking to feel all of you present with them so that they can feel reassured on a base survival level that someone is there for them. They need your full attention at this point.

It is incredibly challenging to have your child behave like a cling-on when they were previously at least a little independent. But if you push them away you will make things worse. You will leave a very frightened little person totally alone which I know is not what any parent does intentionally. Acceptance and reassurance would be more helpful responses. When you really can’t cope any more see if you can stay physically present but disconnect emotionally. That way you can take some space for yourself. Supplements such as magnesium or melatonin may help your child relax generally and also sleep at night. Sleep is so important for HSCs overall functioning and mood…

And the good news is…

Many highly sensitive children are actually thriving during this time of staying at home. Right now they are not having to deal with overwhelm at school and learning things that they don’t want to. So on the bright side, this can also be a great time for your child to develop a stronger sense of self and to find their own rhythm. Being creative and active creates a sense of power and agency. This minimises the risk of trauma and feelings of powerlessness that are so prevalent right now.

How can you help generate a positive experience for your child? Even setting daily tasks for help around the house like watering plants, clearing lego, making beds can serve this purpose. HS children love nature and caring for living things. You can plant seeds, grow tomatoes and basil for your windowsill, or even start an allotment. Caring for pets (and they don’t have to be your own) and doing errands for old people who need help right now are also activities that hs children can find a lot of calm and purpose in.

Conclusion

This epidemic is providing a pause. This is actually an incredibly fertile time for highly sensitive people of all ages. It allows us to be able to come back to the basics of nature, growing food and tending plants and the living environment. This can be a reset and foundation for all future activity. It also gives a good foundation for living at our own pace, and within one’s own optimal activity/rest/nutrition/social requirements. There is much less pressure from what is considered “normal” or social.  

So whatever problems you encounter in your child right now, try to see them as opportunities for bringing your child right into their own centre of optimal functioning, and also as a strengthening of your relationship with them as a parent. If you have any more specific questions about your child or would like to talk about your own emotional experiences please get in touch. I’d be happy to support you at this time.

© Mira Watson. Please feel free to share the text but always give due credit to the author.

A Basic Guide to Highly Sensitive Children

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by Mira on AUGUST 13, 2011

Highly Senstivie Children – what sensitive children need and how to give it to them. Calm play in nature is an important component…


Introduction

If you are the parent of a sensitive child you may be familiar with the frustration and mystery of trying to work out what your child needs, what they are trying to communicate and what to do to help them develop. This article is intended as a guide to orient parents, school teachers and relatives to know where to start. It contains pointers to help you learn to feel and relate to their child, and to understand what their world is like from the inside.

In broad srokes, Highly Sensitive Children often need help calming their nervous systems, processing emotion, and learning to name and express the wealth of sensations and emotions they are experiencing. They expereince everything on volume ten and when it gets too loud they melt down, just like a fuse. No two children are the same, yet this article contains the broader principles within which you as adults can work out the details by observation, trial and error. You may also find it helpful to work with a practitioner (like myself, most craniosacral therapists, and those who work with gifted/senstive adults and children) who is trained to focus on perceiving at a very sensitive level, as they can be of great assistance in translating the child’s world and experience you as the parents, and facilitate a more satisfactory relationship between you and child… S/he may be able to help you as parents or teacher adjust to the child’s needs and show you how to make the more empathetic contact that will support the child’s healthy development.

What do Sensitive Children Need?

Being taken more seriously, faster responses to their emotional needs… more time and space to recover from activity and figure things out for themselves… soothing…

Sensitivity is not just an inconvenience or something that you can make disappear if it doesn’t suit you. One if five people seems to have a much more sensitive nervous system than other people. This means that their experience is heightened – things are louder, brighter, faster and much deeper for these kind of people. They are more easily overwhelmed and take longer to recover than others. They feel things more intensely, need to process events more thoroughly and tend to be very careful about making decisions to do things… only acting when they are absolutely sure… Such people also respond extremely well to craniosacral therapy because it is sensitive and does not overwhelm their delicate nervous systems. This is true for adults as well as children. However if parents can acknowledge and support their child’s sensitivity, such a child can grow up healthy with their figts in tact, rather than being heavily traumatised and having little confidence – so it’s well worth the effort.

How are their requirements different from those of other children? 

They need more sensitive parenting! In practise, that means that attuned attention or precise emotional empathy is vital. Imagine a child with a highly magnified bubble around them full of their own experiences and thoughts and observations. Their nervous system picks up every nuance and change in the surroundings. Their life is rich with things they want to share with you. Showing you a sesame seed on their finger tip for example. A caterpillar on a leaf. Chalk dust under the blackboard. If you don’t make the effort to tune into their world as a parent, you will miss out on connecting with them, and they are left with the sense of being totally alone, unconnected and ignored. They will try to make sense of this by assuming they are wrong and will think their needs are not relevant, which can be really crippling for such sensitive children.. The cycle of self-criticism and self-denial begins, and often leads to later depression and relational problems.

Importance of Attuned Attention and Emotional Regulation

More than other children, they really can’t exist without daily quality attention and feedback on their states. They require a more immediate response to their emotional needs than other children because their sensitivity means they don’t have as much tolerance. A small change in their internal environment may feel huge and very frightenting, and if left unattended leads to shock and then trauma as the nervous system overloads and shuts down. Highly sensitive children react more intensely when their blood sugar falls and they get hungry. A highly senstitive child can’t be asked to wait to eat when they are hungry, or the internal storm of sensation and emotion becomes so intense that the rest of the day is a wipe-out. This is not a dysfunction in the child, but rather the result of a highly sensitive nervous system with less slack or tolerance of extremes.

They also tend to appear to be “shy” in that they pull away from new people and observe. Its not actually the case that they are shy, but rather that they perceive a lot more than other kids, and take longer to process the information. They also test people carefully to see whether they are respectful of their needs and boundaries or not, and physically run away from adults who unknowlingly try to overwhelm them. This is a very healthy trait and should be respected and encouraged. Such children know what they can and can’t handle, and even at age 12 months are taking active care of themselves.

So as the parent of such a child, you need to be present and connected with your feelings and sensations, rather than lost in thought. This will allow you to perceive what is going on with your child, and to respond instinctively through the connection you build up with them. If you don’t know how to do this, craniosacral treatments can be a huge support for you in helping you to learn to feel, to connect with yourself, and to be able to connect with your child. I currently offer a course of weekly sessions online to enable you to practise getting embodied step by step and stay present.

How Craniosacral Therapy can help deal with Sensitivity

Craniosacral therapy also opens up blocks in your core energy, and can enable you to be more present and freer with expressing your instincts. This will probably help you more than any parenting “technique” in accessing your instinctual response to your child, to give them the stimulus they need developmentally, soothe them when distressed etc. Even if you feel you don’t know how to parent, the thousands of years of human parenting are stored in your body and will naturally come out at the appropriate time if you allow yourself to set aside you thinking, your fear of getting it wrong, and the ideas you’ve been told. Everyone can parent, its literally, natural! Craniosacral therapy can help you get back in touch with that embodied nature…

Highly sensitive children are ususally very sensitive to sound and smell, and easily disturbed by abrupt movments, loud aggressive people, and hysterical or frightened behaviour. These are kids who really need adults to calm down before they approach them because their systems are to sensitive that they pick up and resonate with the slightest hint of emotion or nervous energy, and they don’t have the capacity to get themselves calm whilst the stimulous is still around.

If you as the parent are a highly strung or nervous, then they are likely to suffer constantly… which is why working on your own calm as a priority is even more important for these children. Again, learning to regulate your own nervous system or self soothe through craniosacral sessions can be highly beneficial.

And your child can benefit immensely from having the chance to learn to feel sensation in their own body during a quiet, safe craniosacral session when they will not be overwhelmed or too frightened to cope. Craniosacral sessions can also help them to begin to learn to name emotions, allow anger and express their inner states and needs. In a normal family environment this can be very hard for sensitive children because they just cant seem to find enough space or quiet to get connect with themselves, and parents may simly not know be able to tell what they need. They tend to end up rather quiet, lost and ghost-like which is a shame given the huge amount of felt experience and imagination they have to contribute to life. By paying proper attention as the parent you can help them connect with life more fully.

More rest and quiet time

Highly sensitive children also need more down time to rest between activities. In general it is not that they are anti-social, but they tend to enjoy their own company, and need solitary time every day because other people are so “loud” energetically and emotionally that they smother and squash them so they can’t feel themselves. Once their nervous systems get aroused they take longer to calm back down to a comfortable state, and they are also more affected by eg. A visit to the swings, or a friend coming to play. They take longer to recover and come back to themselves. Similarly, if you give them strong or sugary foods, they may react more than a less senstivie child. This doesn’t mean they need to be sheltered from life, but rather shown more tolerance in handling their experience, and space to work out what they need for themselves without interference.

Above all they need to be taken seriously. When a boy says he wants to play football for 5 minutes in the garage, then he really does want that, and out in the patio is not the same. A sensitive child will feel denial of his wishes as an extreme hurt and rejection of his self, whereas a more robust child might be able to brush it off.

Relating to sensitive children effectively

Parents of sensitive children need to be careful not to dominate them with their own emotions, and to leave plenty of space and time in conversations for these children to form their own opinions and responses. This can be agonisingly slow and frustrating, especially when there are other children in the family who are not like this. However if you don’t make these allowances you give the child the message that they should be different. Not only does this destroy their self-worth, but it is an impossible demand on their nervous system, which can only process things at the speed and volume that it does, and it can create physiological problems, nervous system distrubances and eventually extreme trauma.

What does not dominating your children mean in practice? In practical terms it means asking questions without expecting a particular answer. It means listening openly without thinking, and experiencing the answers without reacting. It means not forcing them to do what you want, but letting them be and negotiating a course of action. In energetic terms it means speaking only after you can feel your feet, are calm and with yourself, and to check that you can feel yourself, and feel the child when you communicate. If you take the time to sense yourself, you will feel where the edge of your being or energy meets your child, and whether you are meeting them at the right distance and intensity to make them feel comfortable and able to respond. If this is something that is unfamiliar to you or you would like to know more, i offer face to face sessions by zoom, where i show you how to increase your awareness and ability to relate empathetically to your children. In addition, having craniosacral therapy will support this process by helping you to learn to feel your own body and experience your own emotions. These are simple but essential steps in being able to relate effectively to a highly sensitive child.

Tagged as: calming nervous system, Craniosacral therapy, effective parenting, emotional regulation, highly sensitive child, relating to children, sensitivity

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

netty puji rahayu February 26, 2012 at 3:27 pm

really useful articke for me at the momet, thanks.

by Mira on AUGUST 13, 2011

If you are the parent of a sensitive child you may be familiar with the frustration and mystery of trying to work out what your child needs, what they are trying to communicate and what to do to help them develop. Craniosacral therapy can be a useful tool both for treating parents of sensitive children to help them to learn to feel and relate to their child, and for the child also. Sensitive children often need help calming their nervous systems, processing emotion, and learning to name and express the wealth of sensations and emotions they are experiencing. Since the craniosacral practitioner is trained to focus on perceiving at a very sensitive level, s/he can be of great assistance in translating the child’s world and experience to the parents, and facilitating a satisfactory relationship between parents and child… S/he may be able to help the parents adjust to their child’s needs and show them how to make the more empathetic contact that will support the child’s healthy development.

What do Sensitive Children Need?

Being taken more seriously, faster responses to their emotional needs… more time and space to recover from activity and figure things out for themselves… soothing…

Sensitivity is not just an inconvenience or something that you can make disappear if it doesn’t suit you. One if five people seems to have a much more sensitive nervous system than other people. This means that their experience is heightened – things are louder, brighter, faster and much deeper for these kind of people. They are more easily overwhelmed and take longer to recover than others. They feel things more intensely, need to process events more thoroughly and tend to be very careful about making decisions to do things… only acting when they are absolutely sure… Such people also respond extremely well to craniosacral therapy because it is sensitive and does not overwhelm their delicate nervous systems. This is true for adults as well as children. However if parents can acknowledge and support their child’s sensitivity, such a child can grow up healthy with their figts in tact, rather than being heavily traumatised and having little confidence – so it’s well worth the effort.

How are their requirements different from those of other children? 

They need more sensitive parenting! In practise, that means that attuned attention or precise emotional empathy is vital. Imagine a child with a highly magnified bubble around them full of their own experiences and thoughts and observations. Their nervous system picks up every nuance and change in the surroundings. Their life is rich with things they want to share with you. Showing you a sesame seed on their finger tip for example. A caterpillar on a leaf. Chalk dust under the blackboard. If you don’t make the effort to tune into their world as a parent, you will miss out on connecting with them, and they are left with the sense of being totally alone, unconnected and ignored. They will try to make sense of this by assuming they are wrong and will think their needs are not relevant, which can be really crippling for such sensitive children.. The cycle of self-criticism and self-denial begins, and often leads to later depression and relational problems.

Importance of Attuned Attention and Emotional Regulation

More than other children, they really can’t exist without daily quality attention and feedback on their states. They require a more immediate response to their emotional needs than other children because their sensitivity means they don’t have as much tolerance. A small change in their internal environment may feel huge and very frightenting, and if left unattended leads to shock and then trauma as the nervous system overloads and shuts down. Highly sensitive children react more intensely when their blood sugar falls and they get hungry. A highly senstitive child can’t be asked to wait to eat when they are hungry, or the internal storm of sensation and emotion becomes so intense that the rest of the day is a wipe-out. This is not a dysfunction in the child, but rather the result of a highly sensitive nervous system with less slack or tolerance of extremes.

They also tend to appear to be “shy” in that they pull away from new people and observe. Its not actually the case that they are shy, but rather that they perceive a lot more than other kids, and take longer to process the information. They also test people carefully to see whether they are respectful of their needs and boundaries or not, and physically run away from adults who unknowlingly try to overwhelm them. This is a very healthy trait and should be respected and encouraged. Such children know what they can and can’t handle, and even at age 12 months are taking active care of themselves.

So as the parent of such a child, you need to be present and connected with your feelings and sensations, rather than lost in thought. This will allow you to perceive what is going on with your child, and to respond instinctively through the connection you build up with them. Craniosacral treatments can be a huge support for you in helping you to learn to feel, to connect with yourself, and to be able to connect with your child.

How Craniosacral Therapy can help deal with Sensitivity

Craniosacral therapy also opens up blocks in your core energy, and can enable you to be more present and freer with expressing your instincts. This will probably help you more than any parenting “technique” in accessing your instinctual response to your child, to give them the stimulus they need developmentally, soothe them when distressed etc. Even if you feel you don’t know how to parent, the thousands of years of human parenting are stored in your body and will naturally come out at the appropriate time if you allow yourself to set aside you thinking, your fear of getting it wrong, and the ideas you’ve been told. Everyone can parent, its literally, natural! Craniosacral therapy can help you get back in touch with that embodied nature…

Highly sensitive children are ususally very sensitive to sound and smell, and easily disturbed by abrupt movments, loud aggressive people, and hysterical or frightened behaviour. These are kids who really need adults to calm down before they approach them because their systems are to sensitive that they pick up and resonate with the slightest hint of emotion or nervous energy, and they don’t have the capacity to get themselves calm whilst the stimulous is still around.

If you as the parent are a highly strung or nervous, then they are likely to suffer constantly… which is why working on your own calm as a priority is even more important for these children. Again, learning to regulate your own nervous system or self soothe through craniosacral sessions can be highly beneficial.

And your child can benefit immensely from having the chance to learn to feel sensation in their own body during a quiet, safe craniosacral session when they will not be overwhelmed or too frightened to cope. Craniosacral sessions can also help them to begin to learn to name emotions, allow anger and express their inner states and needs. In a normal family environment this can be very hard for sensitive children because they just cant seem to find enough space or quiet to get connect with themselves, and parents may simly not know be able to tell what they need. They tend to end up rather quiet, lost and ghost-like which is a shame given the huge amount of felt experience and imagination they have to contribute to life. By paying proper attention as the parent you can help them connect with life more fully.

More rest and quiet time

Highly sensitive children also need more down time to rest between activities. In general it is not that they are anti-social, but they tend to enjoy their own company, and need solitary time every day because other people are so “loud” energetically and emotionally that they smother and squash them so they can’t feel themselves. Once their nervous systems get aroused they take longer to calm back down to a comfortable state, and they are also more affected by eg. A visit to the swings, or a friend coming to play. They take longer to recover and come back to themselves. Similarly, if you give them strong or sugary foods, they may react more than a less senstivie child. This doesn’t mean they need to be sheltered from life, but rather shown more tolerance in handling their experience, and space to work out what they need for themselves without interference.

Above all they need to be taken seriously. When a boy says he wants to play football for 5 minutes in the garage, then he really does want that, and out in the patio is not the same. A sensitive child will feel denial of his wishes as an extreme hurt and rejection of his self, whereas a more robust child might be able to brush it off.

Relating to sensitive children effectively

Parents of sensitive children need to be careful not to dominate them with their own emotions, and to leave plenty of space and time in conversations for these children to form their own opinions and responses. This can be agonisingly slow and frustrating, especially when there are other children in the family who are not like this. However if you don’t make these allowances you give the child the message that they should be different. Not only does this destroy their self-worth, but it is an impossible demand on their nervous system, which can only process things at the speed and volume that it does, and it can create physiological problems, nervous system distrubances and eventually extreme trauma.

What does not dominating your children mean in practice? In practical terms it means asking questions without expecting a particular answer. It means listening openly without thinking, and experiencing the answers without reacting. It means not forcing them to do what you want, but letting them be and negotiating a course of action. In energetic terms it means speaking only after you can feel your feet, are calm and with yourself, and to check that you can feel yourself, and feel the child when you communicate. If you take the time to sense yourself, you will feel where the edge of your being or energy meets your child, and whether you are meeting them at the right distance and intensity to make them feel comfortable and able to respond. If this is something that is unfamiliar to you or you would like to know more, you can take the transformational parenting course by skype or in person, and learn the details of how to increase your awareness and ability to relate empathetically to your children. Having craniosacral therapy will support this process by helping you to learn to feel your own body and experience your own emotions. These are simple but essential steps in being able to relate effectively to a highly sensitive child.

Tagged as: calming nervous system, Craniosacral therapy, effective parenting, emotional regulation, highly sensitive child, relating to children, sensitivity

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

netty puji rahayu February 26, 2012 at 3:27 pm

really useful articke for me at the momet, thanks.