Speaker 1you know your child is sensitive you love that about them the empathy the depth the way they see the world but you also watch them struggle you watch the party overwhelm them the criticism undo them the ordinary rough and tumble of childhood land harder on them than it seems to land on anyone else and you're caught between two fears the fear of pushing too hard and the fear that you don't push and the fear that if you don't push you're raising a child who can't cope with real life there's a path through and it's not cotton wool it's not single swim today i'm going to give it to you this is the how not to screw up your kids podcast the bucket episode episodes i'm your host dr mary hann so pour yourself a cuppa find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation this episode is about how to support a highly sensitive child in a way which builds their capacity to cope without dismissing overriding or trying to change who they fundamentally are now thursday's episode was about what high sensitivity actually is where it sits relative to anxiety and anxiety and anxiety and anxiety and anxiety and anxiety and anxiety and anxiety and neurodivergence and how to recognize it and this episode is the companion the monday morning version because understanding your child is one thing knowing what to actually do on a tuesday afternoon is another now here's the thing that i want to put on the table before we get to the five ways you know me i like to be honest and put things out there the biggest mistake that parents of sensitive children make and it just doesn't work is that they don't know how to genuinely i know it comes from an entirely place of love is oscillating between two very unhelpful extremes and i know why that happens because you go to one extreme and then you think maybe i've gone too far and then you go to the other and those two unhelpful extremes are either we wrap our child in cotton wool removing obstacles softening every difficulty intervening before the overwhelm hits or when we feel that that isn't working we then swing the other way we push them harder we toughen them up we stop making such a fuss and neither works and i know why we end up oscillating between the two cotton wool prevents our children from discovering that they can handle things and toughening them up tells them that their sensitivity is the problem which of course it isn't we talked about it being a deeper processing a deeper experience so what works is generally as you might expect something in between attunement plus expectation seeing your child clearly what they need what they find hard what they're capable of and holding a warm steady unwavering belief that they can cope with difficulty even while we're helping them build those skills to be able to do it themselves and that's what these five strategies are all about their bucket is going to fill up because sensitive children's buckets will fill faster than most remember the depth with which they process their nervous system works in that high sensitive way so of course their buckets that you know the experiences they have during the day are going to fill much more quickly and the job is to empty it and then build their capacity to empty it themselves so it's always that you know when we often talk about co-regulating with our children it's this notion that initially children can't regulate themselves so they borrow our regulation we do that co-regulation piece until they're able to do it themselves so when we're thinking about it when we're talking about sensitive highly sensitive children then what we're going to do is they're going to use our ability to empty the bucket until they're able to then do it themselves so there are five strategies that i'm going to recommend that will be helpful and of course we're going to talk about how we're going to as always i recommend that you really try and focus on one and sort of listen to all five of them and then think which one either a would be the most straightforward to implement and that i know i can be super consistent with or b that really resonates as one that would have the biggest impact on my child and is probably the area that we need to work on most either us as parents or our child and actually whilst it is difficult we think that would have the most significant impact so just pick on that basis and i'm always reluctant to say that there's a specific hierarchy some naturally fit within others because there's almost like the first bit and then the next bit and then the next bit but when we apply something consistently that in itself can have such a big impact rather than the strategy necessarily itself so let's dive in way one is to validate first problem solve second just going to say that again validate first and then problem solve second you know i'm a work in progress a control enthusiast so my typical approach would often be problem solve and then validate almost as a backup and so i know that this one can be tricky for some some of us parents that are just very you know control enthusiasts so when your sensitive child is flooded so in essence they're crying they're overwhelmed they've gone into shutdown because the depth of processes processing of that particular situation or that outcome has totally overwhelmed them the first instinct of most parents is to fix to explain why it's okay to reassure them it'll pass now i suggest that what and then suggest often what they could do differently all good impulses all unhelpful in that moment yeah because a flooded nervous system cannot take information and it's not going to work and it's not going to work and it's not going to in yep so before any of the useful stuff can land the child needs to feel that what they're experiencing has been seen and acknowledged remember they're thinking in that overwhelm overwhelming emotional part of their brain that in those moments we can't appeal to the logical front brain so we want to be saying things like that sounds really hard of course that hurt i'd have found that hard too you're feeling a lot right now that makes sense just that no fixing no redirecting we're not trying to distract or move them on to something else we're emptying the bucket by naming what's in it yeah that that was a hard thing that that is a hard feeling that that hurts that it feels a lot right now and the remarkable thing which parents always tell me they're surprised by is that the validation often does most of the work on its own once the child feels genuinely heard genuinely seen that their experience is being acknowledged by the significant adults in their life the emotional intensity starts to come down and then when they're calmer the problem-solving conversation is actually possible and can be fruitful and can be helpful and there's more likely for success the sequence does matter validate first problem solve second in that order every time and the space between the validation and the problem solving may vary depending on the situation because sometimes the validation just needs a little bit of time to sink in and for the bucket to empty and other times it can be instant so that's number one number two distinguish between sensitivity and avoidance this is the cotton wool line and it's worth it being really clear about where it is supporting your child's sensitivity means honoring their need for decompression time preparing them for intense experiences in advance giving them language for what they feel and validating the depth of their emotional experience which is very different to wrapping them in cotton wool so wrapping in them in cotton wool means removing the thing that's hard so they don't have to face it allowing avoidance to become the default response to difficulty and inadvertently teaching them that the world is too much to handle so the question that we need to regularly ask ourself is am i helping them manage this experience work through this experience even though it's uncomfortable or am i helping them avoid it so managing is the party will be loud let's think about what you'll do when you need a minute avoiding is not going to the party managing is that comment from your teacher was hard to hear let's talk about it what do you think she meant avoiding is emailing the teacher to ensure she never gives your child critical feedback you can play around with all different scenarios but the question really the crucial question the one that we want to ask ourselves again and again is am i helping my child manage this experience to work through the experience and actually experience it, even though it's challenging? Or am I helping them avoid it? So sensitive children can and do cope with hard things. They cope with them differently, and they need more recovery time afterwards. But the goal is always to build their tolerance, not to protect them from needing to tolerate anything. And that's a really crucial one. And even if we're supporting an anxious child, we want them to work through it. Avoidance only reinforces that cycle, that that thing was too difficult for them to be able to navigate, and therefore should avoid it at all costs. So that's number two. Number three is teach them to notice their own signals. And this is one of the most useful and the most powerful things, because remember, I'm always talking about reverse engineering. We're looking at what's the adult that we want to raise. And we're looking at what's the adult that we want to raise. And being able to notice their own signals is going to be so important, not only now as a child, but in the future for them as an adult. And this is genuinely one of the most useful things we can do for a sensitive child, is to help them learn to recognize the early signs that their bucket is getting full before it overflows. Because then we can, we're into prevention, we're into management, rather than straight into overwhelm. Most sensitive children, by the time they, they're visibly overwhelmed, have been heading towards that point for some time. And the problem is they often can't see it coming until it's already arrived. Teaching them to notice their own early warning signals gives them something they can actually do with that information. And it's part of this sort of understanding and introspecting onto themselves and their physiology and their body. And we can start this conversation in a conversation with a child. It's a calm moment. We don't have this conversation mid-overwhelm because it's not helpful at all, but afterwards when they're settled. So we can say something like, and I encourage you to use the bucket analogy, which I talk about all of the time. So we might say, when your bucket starts getting full, before it overflows, what does that feel like in your body? Does your tummy feel tight? Do you get a bit quieter? Does everything start to feel too loud? And then what helps? When you notice that feeling, what's one thing that helps your bucket empty a little? Or what's one thing we could try that might help? For many sensitive children, quiet and being alone for a few minutes, maybe going outside, drawing, physical movements, the specifics matter less than the fact that they've identified something and have a sense of agency over it. And if they don't have a sense of something, then we can then encourage them to be curious. What might we try? What might be the first thing that we put on our list to give it a go? Because over time, what we're doing is we're helping them build their own internal regulation capacity. And then they learn to catch the wave of that bucket filling up before it breaks, rather than always riding it all the way to the shore. So that's number three. Number four is reframe the sensitivity out loud. So highly sensitive children, as we've said before, they have a pretty attuned, pretty heightened nervous system. So they absorb messages about themselves, and super magnified. And one of the messages too many of them absorb from their peers, from the school system, from throwaway comments, is that the way that they're built is a problem. Yeah, you are the most powerful counter narrative available to your child. And that counter narrative works best when it's specific, when it's evidenced, and when it's delivered in ordinary moments, rather than saved for when they're struggling. For example, you notice she was upset before anyone said anything. That's your sensitivity working exactly as it should. The reason that why that book affected you so much is because you feel things fully. Most people don't get to feel things that way. That's a gift, even when it's hard. Being sensitive doesn't mean being weak. It means you're wired to pick up on what's going on. And that's what we're doing. And that's actually a strength. You just need some tools to go with it. So can you see how we're really framing it explicitly? We're tying it to some evidence, some behavior that our child has done in a given moment. And we're relating it out loud to the way that that is so helpful for them. And it's a strength whilst also recognizing sometimes that it's difficult and that therefore there's tools that go with it, or that it's hard. You know, this is an empty reality. And it's not reassurance. It's accurate. Highly sensitive people show up disproportionately in creative fields, in the caring professions, in leadership roles that require genuine empathy. The trait your child is sometimes struggling with is also the trait that will shape some of the best things about their life. They need to know that. So that's number four. And number five is look after, nervous system. Now this one surprises people, but if you've been listening to the podcast often enough, you shouldn't be surprised that I've got this here. But for me, it may well actually be one of the most important of the five. It's that whole, until you regulate yourself in those moments, there's always going to be, you're not always going to be at your greatest capacity to help and support. You know, highly sensitive children are exceptionally attuned to their parents' emotional state. If your nervous system is dysregulated, if you're anxious, exhausted, overwhelmed by their overwhelm, or even what's going on for you, they feel it. And it amplifies, it turns up the dial on their own state, their own emotional state. And this isn't criticism. And please, please do not take this as yet something else that you need to beat yourself up about because you're failing in. Parenting a sensitive child is genuinely demanding. The emotional intensity is real. The decompression they need takes something from you. The vigilance you carry, monitoring their state, anticipating the next thing, it's tiring. It's exhausting. It's overwhelming. But the most regulating thing you can offer your child is a regulated you, which means you need your own decompression time, your own things, which empty your own bucket, your own space to feel overwhelmed by it, process it and come back steadier. So things like, I need a few minutes to myself. I'll be back in a bit and then we can talk. That's not abandoning your child. That's modeling exactly what you want them to be able to do. And that's super, super powerful. Now, don't try all five at once. Pick one. If you're in the thick of it right now, if this week has already been a lot, maybe start with the first one. Next time your child is flooded, validate before you fix. Just that. Notice what happens in the room when they feel seen rather than redirected. That's a good place to start. Now, this week's free resource is in the library at drmerryhand.com forward slash library. It's a sensitivity support card. What to say when your sensitive child is overwhelmed, when they're avoiding something hard and when they need help naming what they're feeling. Printable, practical and designed to be somewhere visible when you need it most. On Thursday, I'm talking about fear of failure and why some children won't try anything new. What's actually underneath the I can't do it or I'm not going to try and what you can do to close the resilience gap. If your child avoids anything they may not be brilliant at immediately, that one's for you. If this episode has helped, please do leave a rating or review. It makes such a difference in helping other parents find the podcast. And if you know someone parenting a child who feels everything deeply, send this to them. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you on Thursday. Until next time, your sensitive child doesn't need to be less. They need you to help them become more. Until next time, your sensitive child doesn't need to be less.
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