TUNED IN MODULE 4

Transcript 

Welcome to Module 4, Knowing Your Highly Sensitive Child. This is such an important module because if we can know and understand and validate our kiddos' experiences who clearly have traits of being highly sensitive, we can relax around how they are being and resist the urge to try to change them.

Instead, we learn to support them more effectively. So today I will be providing a bit of an introduction, as usual, to the topics that we're covering. I will then move into one of the most important and common topics that comes up in my practice, which is the link between low self -esteem and high sensitivities.

I can't tell you how many times I've worked with a kiddo or a family that's having the experience of their child being so epic, so sensitive, very smart, and a lot of the times, or at least in certain situations, feeling low self -esteem or expressing low self -esteem.

We'll move into the specific traits that have been researched on people of high sensitivities and the ones that you might be looking for or you might see in your child, as well as how to support them in those traits, and then we'll close with a whole bunch of different ideas on how to help your child regulate and feel grounded in who they are, and for the whole family, really, to feel more regulated around how your child is and how you are in relationship with them.

So that's where we're going, and I think this is a really important one. So to start off with, I want to underline that the label of highly sensitive, it was... Oh, I don't have the book right here with me, but it was coined by Dr.

Elaine Aron, who have... mentioned multiple times. And she did a lot of research on traits of people with high sensitivities. And she came to the conclusion that this is a personality trait, being highly sensitive, and within that trait are a whole bunch of other potential personality traits one might carry.

It's not a disorder. So it was a really important shift in my work when I stopped diagnosing kids, that's how I had been trained to diagnose them with depression, ADHD, anxiety, and I started just noticing their traits and getting curious about their unique presentation of traits, knowing that I was really accepting a lot of kids into my practice that did have clearly this trait of being highly sensitive.

So that's not to say the diagnoses don't have a place that can be helpful. They can especially be helpful for getting children's needs met within school systems and medical systems that like to see diagnoses.

But if you're here and you know that your child is very sensitive, I'd love for you to think about what they're showing you as just parts of their personality. And the reason that's important is because if we're looking at parts of the personality, it's stable and consistent over time.

We can learn how to work with parts of our personality more effectively. So the part of my personality that gets really hyper focused on one thing and can be really all or nothing, I can learn to have more control over that part.

Like maybe make a choice in the moment where I'm feeling really hyper focused on one thing and that it has to happen now to practice just being with what's here instead of forcing action to happen. But it's not a disorder that we're trying to fix.

So your child is not presenting you with a disorder that we're trying to fix. They're showing you parts of themselves and we're trying to learn how to dance with these parts of their personality more effectively so that everyone can feel more ease.

So that's a really important piece. Elaine Aaron talks about how it's not that the highly sensitive child changes, it's just that some parents learn how to adapt to the highly sensitive child and some have more resistance.

So you may ask yourself, where have I had resistance to allowing my highly sensitive child to be as they are? Where have I wanted them to just go to the party without being nervous or just have one week where they don't have a big feeling or a whole bunch of big feelings about something?

When you're in resistance to your child being how they are, that's where the disconnection happens and that's where your child doesn't feel supported and actually feelings get even bigger. So if we can learn to adapt to what it means to have a highly sensitive child, they can do really well.

I'll give the example, of course, it's really young to know this for sure, but my nephew who's about seven months old is just like such, such a sweet little soul, such a sweet baby. And my sister, his mom has really beautiful, really beautifully attuned already to the fact that he's highly sensitive or could be highly sensitive.

And she's had him on an incredibly regimented structure and schedule for sleeping and eating since he was born, really. And not to say that this needs to be the case for everyone and should be the case, but it's really working for them.

And he's been able to stay really regulated as a baby even. And there's just the way he presents like in his just such gentleness and like just so perceptive of everything happening in a room. I imagine if he didn't have that regularity and consistency, he wouldn't be so regulated.

So we're just picking up on how our kiddos are from when they're really, really, really small. There are different temperaments that we all have. So something really interesting about highly sensitive people are that we present with something called differential susceptibility.

So this means that we're more sensitive and susceptible to our environment than others, both in positive environments or negative environments. And I know that I've talked about this before. I just really want to underline the term differential susceptibility.

So where it might be easy to think about someone who's immunocompromised is they have increased susceptibility to viruses and illnesses. And it's like we're very cautious of those people and we take care of them.

For your child with high sensitivities, they also have increased susceptibility to environments that do or don't support them. So again, this works both ways. On one hand, if our kiddos can have an environment that's really catering to their needs and there's time to unwind and they're having the experience that their needs, desires, and feelings are attuned to, then they will actually respond with even more positive,

like they'll seem that they were even more positively impacted than someone without the susceptibility. And then on the other, hand, if they're in harsh or negative environments, it's moving too quickly.

It's really competitive and it's something they're not good at. They're feeling a lot of pressure. See how we've been talking like this. They will be susceptible to that negativity in a bigger way. So we really need to provide these supportive, nurturing environments for our kiddos when they're young and then they'll feel more freedom to venture out and be confident and bounce back more easily from moments of falling down later in their lives.

Highly sensitive kids are impacted more by negative teachers, supervisors, caregivers. It's the same for highly sensitive people in the work environment. So if there's a boss who has lots of negative energy or is really forceful, a highly sensitive person might not be able to cope with that so well.

So if you're the parent that is really pushing for your child to have a certain teacher in their school and not another teacher, good job. You're not being too much. Like the highly sensitive parents and non -highly sensitive parents who have sensitive kids have to get over the feeling of maybe I'm being too much when I'm advocating for my child because your child does require certain things in order to really thrive.

And highly sensitive kids need a balance of attuned attention and awareness. Like I'm here, I see you. I know what you're struggling through right now in this moment and space. That hypertracking creates overwhelm.

Can you imagine doing your day, having your work day or going to meet up with a friend and having someone like right there watching it all making sure you're doing the right thing. This is where that helicopter energy doesn't serve.

So it's like, we wanna be attuned, aware, advocate for our kids around big picture needs that they have but we don't wanna be hypertracking every move that they're making because that is a lot for them.

And because of that differential susceptibility they're more susceptible to that experience of being tracked and no one likes to be tracked. We like to be seen and attuned to but we don't like to be tracked.

So just be watching that. And yeah, it's just paying attention to these unique sensitivities. Sometimes sensitive kids have a harder time with things that other kids have an easy time with. The example that Elaine Aaron gives is let's say your sensitive child is really not wanting to go to swimming lessons and you don't know why.

Well, maybe there's been multiple times where you've been telling your child be careful near that pool, like be careful, walk. There's moments where out of safety we're wanting our child to be careful when they're near water.

before they can swim. But because of that susceptibility piece, they're taking in fear in an extreme way in that moment. Like water's not safe. I might die if I go in water. So no wonder they're scared to go to swimming lessons.

So it's not to say don't avoid being how you're being. Of course, we'll be telling our child to be careful near water if they can't swim, but just having understanding that for another child, they might've taken that moment as like, oh, mom doesn't want me to jump in the pool, whatever.

I'll be careful. Whereas your sensitive child took that moment in as mom's having a big feeling around this pool. Water must not be safe. Oh my goodness. Okay. So it's like, there's just so much wrapped up in all of it, you know?

So one more thing here, just in our broad introduction, Jay Belsky, he's PhD in human development at UC Davis. I love this. I quoted this from... a documentary called Sensitive the Untold Story. It's online.

I highly suggest watching it. It's such a good one. But he said, yes, some kids have difficult temperaments, but they are likely the most malleable clay in your hands when talking about highly sensitive kids.

So it might be really difficult, but they are the most malleable clay in your hands. They are going to thrive and flourish if you care for them well. So that's why highly sensitive kiddos do so well with therapeutic support, with the right parenting, with the attention and attunement that they are asking for.

Okay, so I'm going to move into talking about low self -esteem and the sensitive child. I started to ask questions about this when almost every child coming into my practice was struggling with some element of not feeling good enough.

I have a lot of different theories on this. For one, there's definitely a collective experience that we all have of being told we're not good enough. In fact, that's what a lot of marketing in our culture for buying products is based off of, like, you don't have good enough skin, why don't you buy this?

So it's like, it's in the collective. And so it would make sense that our kiddos with higher susceptibility are, they are taking that in even more because they take everything in more. But upon deeper reflection and really looking at common themes that I was seeing, I started to come to the conclusion that another reason that this trait is coming forth, this low self -esteem piece, is because highly sensitive kids and unique kids and gifted kids,

they often have the experience of feeling different than other people around them because they're only 15 to 20 percent of the population. So it's only natural that they're having a different experience.

Like, oh, that kid over there is just having a happy. Maybe go free time. Why am I feeling all the things or why does this feel so hard? Excuse me. I'm just going to close my blind so that the light's not coming in.

Okay. That feels better. Just a sec. Okay. We're good. Um, just reacquainting to my slide. Okay. Um, so, um, yeah, just readjusting. Um, readjusting here. Um, the low self -esteem piece. Um, so just imagine being a sensitive child and having many moments where.

I'm just having a moment of readjusting. It's so funny when I, this is a, this is a trait of the highly sensitive person that when you have a state shift, when you go from like one experience of even a certain lighting.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. to another one, it takes your nervous system a moment to catch up. So this is this is a perfect example, because the perfectionist in me, which is another trait we're going to talk about, literally wants to end this recording and start over because I'm like, it has to be perfect.

If people are going to receive from this, it has to be perfect. The other highly sensitive trait in me, the one that's sensitive to the light change is, was really having a moment of adjusting to now the lines being closed.

And it's all okay. And I'm leaving this in here, because it's important, because it's so easy to minimize. And for maybe some judgment to come up, I could imagine if I were on, if I were watching this thinking, just chill out, lady, like, it's not that big of a deal.

But it is a big deal to your highly sensitive child, all of these minor shifts in environment impact their nervous system, and it takes a moment. So I'm reorienting, and I'm going to continue to talk about low self esteem.

So could you imagine, maybe this is you if you're highly sensitive, but over and over and over again, having experiences where you're having a really big feeling, or a really big excitement, or a really big, like, intuition that something's not right, and you want it to be different.

But over and over again, you're told to calm down, just go with the flow. These are the rules at school, there's some part of you that tells yourself, okay, I must be too much, I must be too intense, too intense.

Or I'm starting to believe people just don't understand me, and I'm having the experience of being misperceived. We end up becoming self critical, because we're experiencing judgment and criticism from the outside.

And so it's only natural for low self esteem to be developed in time, until repair is offered there. And I love in that movie, the two sensitive the untold story. Alana Smarset, we all know the singer, she was a big part of that documentary.

And she explicitly said, you know, as a highly sensitive person, we can be shamed for what later on becomes gorgeous talent. Like she was describing as a child, she felt shame for being in her sensitivities for just feeling all the things her parents basically said, we don't know what to do with you.

But later on, masses and masses of people wanted her sensitivities. She could hold crowds in like big releases of emotion. There's shots of her concerts in this movie where you just see people in the crowd sobbing and feeling it all.

And so it's like, we want it, but then we tell our kids we don't want it. And so it would only be natural for a sensitive child to think there's something wrong with me. I'm not good enough. So what do we do to support our child in increasing?

their self -esteem, we continue to let them know, there's nothing wrong with you. It's fine. Like you have sensitivities that are different than others. We love this about you. Yes, in time, I'm gonna help you learn how to contain some of this so that you feel like you have control over who you are and what parts of you you express of yourself in different places, but there's nothing wrong.

So that's one way, validating, normalizing, not making it wrong. Another way is helping your sensitive child get into groups of people that are like -minded. So that may be some extracurricular activity, a club, it might be some like certain family members that you know are also highly sensitive, letting them have connection time with those people.

But if people don't feel alone, if they feel a sense of belonging with like -minded people, they then feel, okay, I'm safe to show all my colors and be who I am. And it's not because something's wrong with me.

When we believe that something's wrong with me, we move towards low confidence and it actually comes from not belonging to the group, which is a pretty scary thing to the nervous system. If you want more on this, there's a whole article that I've written that I'll link in the module and I'm also so open to thoughts and discussions on this topic.

So now I want to move into discussing the top traits of highly sensitive kiddos. And I wanna share a model that Elaine Aaron created called the DAS model. So it's D -O -E -S. It's easy because it's an acronym and this is also posted below.

D stands for depth of processing. So it's the part of our sensitive children and our sensitive selves that just process things more deeply. So someone else has a conversation with... the gardener and moves on with their day.

Like how you doing? How's your week been? How's your family? Moves on. A highly sensitive person has a conversation with the gardener and is like feeling into how like here's what's happening with their family.

I wonder how their heart's doing. It's like you just process things more deeply and it's a beautiful part of the highly sensitive person but it can also take a lot of energy. Overstimulation is the second piece and this can just make everything about life overwhelming.

We are so aware of things. We see, we feel, we perceive things and sometimes our window of tolerance for what we can take in and still be okay is smaller than others, especially if there's more stimuli.

If you're at a party and there's those people laughing over there but these people having a serious conversation over there. And there's music and there's food, which is a whole other set of senses. It's a lot.

That's where what's called sensory modulation can be really helpful, encouraging yourself and your kiddos to really slow down and feel one sense at a time. So when I had that moment with the light being overwhelming and the change being overwhelming, I went ahead and felt my hand on the desk, my feet on the floor, and I activated my touch sense and really focused on that to get me back to regulation.

E stands for empathy and emotional responsiveness. I mentioned how empathy doesn't fully develop until eight, nine and older in another module, but it might be that your highly sensitive child is already showing extreme empathy.

Some do in a way that's beyond their years, but if they're not now, they will later when they move into later developmental stages and emotional responsiveness. It's like, we're responding to what we're seeing.

Our mirror neurons are really active. So I might look at someone who's having an experience of sadness and I'll feel sad too. My six -year -old stepdaughter who is without a doubt, highly sensitive. She's really owned it though.

And there's a lot of space for her to be in her high sensitivities with all the parents in her life. So she's really fortunate in that way. But I remember I was having an experience of some sadness a little while ago and she started tearing up and she said, I just have this thing where if someone else is crying, I cry too.

It's just this thing. And she wasn't powered around it. She wasn't scared by it. I wasn't taking care of her. And I was like, thanks. Thanks for feeling me. That's great. And then S stands for sensing the subtle and the environment.

So we really will pick up on the subtle. We'll notice if someone's not okay. We'll notice if something changed. I'm sure. sure you've experienced your sensitive kiddo. If you move one thing or if you, um, if you, like, yeah, something changed in your physical space, they will notice.

An important point here that I want to underline is that it's a set of personality traits that make up the bigger trait of being a highly sensitive person. It's not a continuum. And so basically you're either highly sensitive or you're not, and you don't have to have all the traits to be highly sensitive.

You really don't. It's just having, um, if you take the formal quiz for it, it's like, if you have a majority or a certain number of these traits, then you likely meet the requirements of being a highly sensitive person.

But if you're hearing some of these traits and you're thinking, well, my child doesn't have that. It's just, is this the wrong place to be? Is this not who they are? Um, well, first of all, they probably do meet a lot of the criteria.

So yes, and also, I really believe that at the end of the day, a lot of people have access to high sensitivities if they allow this in themselves. So all of these tips and ideas can be helpful for raising any children.

For example, one of the traits of the highly sensitive person is being withdrawn or shy. I was not that as a child, I was very outgoing. But there were other ways that I showed high sensitivity. So it really just depends on the different kiddos.

So there's a whole lot of other traits that you might be seeing in your highly sensitive kiddos. I'm just going to name a few. Some of them fit into these four traits. It would be almost exhausting. And actually, sometimes when I read Elaine Aaron's work, I get overwhelmed because there's like so many lists, there's so many concepts.

I'm like, how am I even going to support me or my kids or the kiddos that I work with professionally with all of these ideas. So I'm trying to simplify it. But just take the parts that feel good, leave the parts that don't.

And I'm just going to read and comment on a few of the other traits that we see in highly sensitive kiddos. So that maybe in your heart, you can feel, oh, yeah, my child does have that. No big deal. It's just part of who they are.

So big reactions to sensory stimulation, more meltdowns than peers, a need for high control, which can result in rigidity and inflexibility, fear and caution and new situations, a brain that has a difficult time shutting off, perfectionism, low self -esteem and self -deprecating thoughts, as I mentioned, high intuition and perceptivity, a high perception, often prone to anxiety and stress, a verse to change.

There can be a low pain tolerance because there's a lot, there's higher sensation. There can be the parts that are very careful. and calculating everything, kiddos might be annoyed by bright lights and noisy spaces.

Like they might actually get irritated. It's a stress response. Kids might seem wiser beyond their years. You may already know that your highly sensitive child already needs downtime and your child might be perceived as shy or introverted.

Just some ideas to be thinking about. And already a plug to just normalize and give space for some of these parts of your child. I would really love for us to let go of the idea that emotion is irrational and not helpful.

It's actually an incredible, helpful system that our body has. Like why would we all have emotions? Why would we feel sad, mad, happy if it wasn't useful? Because humans are like incredibly... designed beings and we've survived, we're survival of the fittest year and we still have emotions.

So our sensitive kids that have them and they've survived and showed up as 15 to 20% of the population with these abilities, it's like, let's let go that emotion is bad and that we don't want it and let's just have them move through it.

My sister -in -law showed me a chart last night. Side note, I have a podcast with her and you should check it out. She's an amazing woman in community in her own ways. Our podcast is called Sisterhood Meets Motherhood.

But anyway, she had come back from a professional convention and she had a chart of emotions on either side. And on one side it said, I want to feel more of these. And on the other side, I want to feel less of these.

And it was all the negative emotions. And I told her instantly, this chart is wrong. It's not about feeling more of that or less of that. It's just about feeling so you can move it through and get information.

So it's like, we're gonna let our kids feel it through and we know that our highly sensitive kids move between empowered and disempowered states very, very quickly. We just have to get used to the wave.

It's like, if you have a child who's not sensitive you are hanging out by a lake or a very calm ocean. If your child is very sensitive you have chosen to live by a beach with huge waves. But those waves can be really good for surfing and we enjoy them when we accept them and we're not scared of them.

Okay, so I'm digressing a bit, but it all feels important. So I'm gonna move in now to some tips. Some tips on how to support your kiddos with their high sensitivities. And I have a whole bunch of them taken from different sources.

Elaine Aaron is an important source for me. Lisa D. on who shared the nervous system regulation process that I talked about in module two. And the majority of them come from just my own experience with parenting and working therapeutically with kids, but it's a long list and I'm going to go through them.

So just, you know, like taking the ones that feel right, maybe in this experience, you are writing down some tips that are just coming to you, like you're piggybacking off what I'm sharing and you're realizing that, um, oh my gosh, I just got an idea.

This is going to be great. Um, but yeah, just take it in. You could even be like walking around while you listen to these and just let it land. Um, so you will want to believe your child. This is validation.

This is, um, helping your child feel like they're not crazy. If they're experiencing emotional or physical pain or overwhelm, you want to believe them that it feels as bad as they're saying. any minimization, like it's just, well, that's not a big deal, is just going to create more disconnect and then bigger, more overwhelming feelings later.

So it's like, if you can take this one thing of just the mantra or the literally the saying out loud of I believe you, I get it, that could be a game changer. You wanna keep your child's regulated with the basic needs like sleep and food is a big part of this.

There's been multiple times I'm supporting a child in my therapy practice. And when I'm in a brainstorming session with their parents to really get to the bottom of what's gonna support their child, it turns out that they just need to get sleep and food more regulated.

Like a lot of unwinding time before bed, sometimes that even looks like letting it be 30 extra minutes so that your child can unwind their minds and their hearts so they can get restful sleep, doing whatever needs to be done for more regular food intake.

I know one child in particular I was working with wasn't allowed to have snacks at school when he was hungry and he was literally getting drops in blood sugar and he just needed to be able to have access to food whenever he needed it.

So it's those basic regulation. You will want to have boundaries and limits on what you're expected to do. The example Elaine Aaron gives is the child that wants their shoelaces tied in a very specific way because they think it's uncomfortable otherwise and they have you tie them 15 times and it's still wrong.

This is where you might set a limit just to keep yourself and the whole system regulated. So you might say, I get it. I get that this is really uncomfortable for you. I'm gonna try it five times. And on the fifth, we're just gonna have to let it be how it is because there's not enough time and I'm starting to get irritated.

It's like, you're allowed to be human and you're allowed to have authentic responses and you're allowed to... set limits. More on this when we talk about loving boundaries later on. You'll want to find the balance between sticking to your standard of what you expect from your child when it comes to like behavior in public and yeah just like being, showing up to life with integrity.

Like we do want to teach our children, it depends if this is a high value for you, but if it is, if you value social norms and politeness and it also makes sense if you don't value this, it doesn't have to be the case, then you'll want to teach your child those behaviors, but really important to also equally honor whatever emotional experience they're having in the moment.

So if you're out of the grocery store on your child that's having a tantrum, you'll want to give them space for the behavior, for the feelings and the behaviors to move through and not make them wrong for it and then it's later on in that repair that you can talk about.

the standard and hold the standard and say I get it, you had a big feeling. I was there for it. In future when we're in the grocery store it's not the best time to talk about all the things that you're upset about.

Do you think we could create a system where you ask me for a big hug because you're having a big feeling and you let me know that when we get in the car you want to have a big talk and we can talk about it and I'll listen.

You're letting your child know that there's space for their feelings and you're also holding a boundary and standard around the way you show up to the world and take care of the collective. You take care of the collective and you're aware that there's other people around you.

That kind of awareness of surroundings is also really amazing if you choose to teach your child that. You'll always want to let your child feel empowered to come up with their own solutions and engage them in problem solving if there's that opportunity to allow your child to make choices where they do have the ability to make choices.

Big little feelings is they are course creators for parenting children. I know in some of their content they talk about kiddos decide the small things, parents decide the big things, but you're letting your kiddos decide the small things.

So do you want to eat this or that? Do you want to wear this or that? Maybe even do you want to go to this grocery store or that grocery store, but you're letting them feel like they have choice where you can, but then you're not letting them feel like they have choice over things that really aren't their choice like bedtime or sometimes what you're offering them to eat.

Especially when your child's becoming older, you'll want to be like empowering them and educating them on who they are and how our nervous systems work. Just like the brain thing, it can be really empowering for kids to know, oh sometimes my lid flips and I get dysregulated.

You'll want to explain things like, Hey, I know you get really hard on yourself and you want to do it perfectly when you have to talk in front of the class or you're playing the sport. But you know that sometimes if we're in a new setting or the stakes are really high and we really care about something that can actually have us get overly stimulated or we made experience over arousal and it'll affect our performance.

That's just human. Like there's nothing wrong with you. You just, you're just being human and you have a body and a nervous system. And when, when things are feeling really intense and important, it's going to make you feel less likely to succeed at the thing.

I hope that one makes sense. It's just like empowering your child to know that they're human and there's nothing wrong with them. And it's not that they're not good at the thing, but that they're having a normal nervous system response to being overstimulated and then maybe not performing as well.

Goodness. There's so much more that I could. say you'll want to give your kiddos plenty of opportunity to succeed. I like to think of the 80 20 rule. So for kids to feel successful 80% of the time and be in 20% challenge is a really good place for them to grow.

So if you're playing a card game, you might want to let them win a little bit more than you are if you're getting competitive with them, because you'll want them to feel 80% successful so that they can grow.

And you'll want to put them in activities inside and outside of school, where they do feel some sense of success, every child's good at something. And a lot of times, it's just about finding that thing for them and then supporting them and building competency supporting them in practice and attuning to them and giving them that sense of connection, while they practice whatever it is.

I know I've worked with some kiddos that parents come in saying like, I know they really like piano or soccer, and I know they really want to play it, but they just won't practice and it comes down to the child's really just wanting the connection and attunement for them to engage in their practice.

So it may be scheduling time for you to practice it with them and build competency until they can build the distress tolerance to practice learning something new on their own. Um, so important to talk to your kids about emotions.

Teach them that it's okay to feel emotions. Tell them about your own emotions. This also takes reflecting on your own relationship with emotions that we'll talk more about in parents self regulation later in the course.

But just like a lot of other things I said, it's a process of supporting more on the front end, like feeling like you're doing more than you should like, why can't my child just move through this on their owner?

Why can't they practice or do their homework on their own? But if you support and you co regulate with them and you give them that attunement and scaffolding up front later on, they'll be able to do it themselves.

You know, it's funny, what's it's like, it's just how you learn something. I'll share a kind of a funny example. When I first launched my business, I had a lot of anxiety around bookkeeping and managing the accounts for the different services I was offering.

And I had an amazing accountant who was also a coach, like he just really got it. And he would come into my office once a month for sessions, and he would sit next to me while we managed my QuickBooks.

And it's really what I needed. It wasn't about learning the thing because I think I could have kept a list of exactly what I needed to do. It was that this part of my business was bringing up a lot of anxiety and doubt and fear in me like, could I do it?

Am I going to mess up? Am I not going to pay my taxes? Am I going to get in trouble? All these things. And I needed the attachment that he provided me and the attunement and the co -regulation to learn the new tool.

And then before I knew it, I was able to do it on my own. Think about how you can offer that to your child for tasks that they're having to take on. And while you're like, while you're first allowing your kiddos to really have the experience of moving their feelings through later on, you'll teach them containment.

But while you're teaching them how to move their own feelings through, you'll want to give them lots of space for it. Elaine Aaron talks about how you'll literally want to go to a quiet place. Like, let's say you're at a party and they're like, I have a big feeling I need you now.

You don't want to take them to a corner where it's quiet. You might even want to leave the scene and give them as much space as they need to fully express. Like you are literally sitting there and you're saying, tell me more, tell me what else, and what else, and what else, what else is here?

Like I am still here for it. I'm not rushing you through it. And then your child is going to experience what it's like to share what's happening inside without having to endure it by themselves. You're there holding it with them.

And then later, they'll be able to do it on their own. And they'll also be able to practice containment. Like, I don't have to process this now because I know that I'm always going to give myself space or always get support in feeling the feeling through on my own.

And they will trust that if your child has been having the experience that there's no space for my feelings. If I bring a feeling to my parent, they basically tell me to stop and do something else. And they just can't handle it anymore.

And I'm too much. They will actually be throwing the feelings in your face more. It's biological because their system will be saying, you better get this out now because you don't know when it's going to come out.

So really important to just give it a lot of space until eventually you won't be, you won't need to be the one holding as much of the space. So you'll you will want to be just really always paying attention to your child's viewpoint, your child's feelings, needs, and desires, and helping them feel validated in them.

And a lot of times that's all that they need. Few more points here, I know it's a lot to be thinking about, but hopefully these are some tips that are lighting up parts of your brain that are saying, hmm, maybe I'm already doing this and now I'm getting validation that this is a really good thing or maybe I could try this on.

So embodiment is a huge piece. So we want to get, it's actually top down integration of the whole system. So when we look at the brain, when we look at the lower brain, middle brain, upper brain, when we can help kids put on their prefrontal cortex, we're providing them with an experience of top down integration.

so they can link the bottom parts of their brain, like the survival parts with the top parts where they can actually think clearly and remember that they're safe and problem -solve. We also wanna have this top -down integration with the mind and the body.

And in getting into the body and feeling safe in the body, we actually relax the brain and we can think more clearly. This is why sometimes if we're feeling stuck on something and we do a workout or we walk outside or remove our body, we suddenly feel more clear.

So whatever you can do to help your child get in their bodies, walking outside together, wrestling, little yoga videos, there's really cool children's books that have yoga poses in them, dancing, even some of the video games that engage the body.

I don't know which ones are being used now, but I know there was like the wee and there was dance stuff with the wee or the tennis. Like you're getting in the body and you're getting into the hand -eye coordination system and that will really soothe and regulate the nervous system.

And it also teaches kids that their bodies can be their allies. Like they can start to pay attention and not avoid what's happening inside of their bodies, this information for what they need, what they're feeling, what they want, all of this.

Music is a really good way to regulate the system and to get in the body. What else, visualizations can be really helpful. So a lot of times highly sensitive people will get stuck in loops or certain sensations, like the loop and the story that no one likes me or I can't go to school, it's just the worst, I'm never gonna be okay, or it's always like this.

If you can encourage kids to start to visualize different experiences, it's like, what if it went well? What if we flipped the script? What if, what if we just started to tell a different story of what it would be like to go to school tomorrow.

And you'll have your own way of doing it that with your child. So that's one way of using visualizations. The other way we can use visualizations is through metaphor. So you might teach your child that experience, or that visualization of it's like you have a basket full of rocks, what would it be like to dump it out?

Or I teach kids in my office, let's pretend you have a giant dinosaur tail. And I have a good friend, she's another therapist in the area that taught me this one. Let's pretend you have a giant dinosaur tail.

And we're just going to stand up and we're going to shake out all the stuff that's inside of you that you don't need down that dinosaur tail. Some kids also like to picture a snow globe, like here's your mind is like a snow globe and it's gotten all shaken up and there's snow everywhere and we can't see the pretty picture behind.

Let's slow down and let the snow fall. and see what happens. See how there's a relaxed response in the nervous system. You may also try anything with the body. So, Simon says, like, using the body, you have to do what I do.

You might do, gosh, I know I'm giving so much here, but I really just want to give all the things that I'm thinking of and you can always come back and listen to this. You might try mirroring exercises.

So, what I'll do with kiddos is we'll go, we'll stand in front of each other and we'll put our hands up against each other with a little space in between and one of us will move and the other one will mirror.

So, if it was like this, this is my hand, this is my child's hand. I'm moving my hand and my child's mirroring me. That can create a really attuned experience and we're using the body. My step daughter really loves this one.

She takes her hand and she traces and counts one, two, three, four, five and back, five, four, three, two, one. There is so much on this. I can't even tell you how much you can find out there and it's just about stepping out of the experience of feeling disempowered and like you're never going to give your child the support that they need and starting to try on new things.

So, lastly, it's like at the end of the day, it's all about attunement and listening to what's there. Like really getting curious about what your child is communicating with you and if you are listening, if you are present, if you are attuned to what's happening and what your child is trying to show you they're experiencing in their inner world, you will come up with the creative solutions to support them and help them regulate in that moment.

I can't tell you. how many times I've given parents lists of things they could try at home and then they come back the next week and they say, that list was cool. Like I thought it might work, but actually I was just really present in the moment my child was having an experience of distress and here's what I did.

And then I told them this, and then we tried this and oh my goodness, it worked so well. So when you're in a present empowered and regulated place, you will come up with the strategy that your child needs to feel supported and to grow.

And truly like it's with presence and safety through connection that kids feel open to moving the feelings that they're having through them and actually have productive releases so that they, so that they can just move through it and then move on.

So there's a lot of pieces there. There's some things to think about. There will be assignments to try to integrate this information. And there will be a bonus audio for this module. That's all about the last tip I wanted to offer.

That's really important. And it's about making sure that the environment for your child is supportive by consistently offering stable morning and evening routines. So a lot of parents that I know have tried this.

Some, for some it works really well and they're actually really rigid with their morning and evening routines. Sometimes like to a point where it's not actually helpful. Some parents are really resistant to structure because they're much more flowy in their way of being and they don't really do structure but their sensitive child needs it.

So I really invite you to do some inquiry within around where you lie on the spectrum. Like have you really been providing no structure or consistent routines for your child and it would help them if you did?

Or have you been like so strict on your routine that there's no space if your child needs to have a feeling and be supported in it? Just consider where you lie on the spectrum and it will be an assignment to actually revamp your morning and or evening routine.

And if you don't have one to create one and start to implement that with your family. This alone is huge. It's like the difference between getting good night's sleep and having an exercise routine and not as an adult like kids just really need the structure and what to expect.

And it comes all the way back to that study of the rhesus monkeys where they looked at monkey. who had mothers with the uptight gene and those monkeys did better because their parents were being uptight and attuned and giving them what they needed for first the sensitive monkeys that didn't have the uptight parent and they didn't do as well.

So let's not ignore the genetic makeup, the clear personality traits that your kiddos are showing you and let's instead move towards them, honor them, celebrate them. I freaking love being a highly sensitive person.

It is my superpower. I feel like I can feel in my body intuition, which direction I should take. I can attune to my family, my friends, and my clients in a way that is so loving and freeing and helpful, and I have access to creativity.

Because of that depth of processing and the way that I'm perceiving a lot in my environment, I get to take in a lot and then bring it forth in my world to my community in creative forums like launching this course.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for learning. Thank you for trying to understand yourself and your child more. And I know that if you don't do any of the assignments or make any conscious changes just by being here and taking in this information, you will begin to notice shifts.

And the more you can put into the assignments and the exercises, the better. Take care, check out the bonus audio, and I will see you so soon for the next module.