So I have made it no secret that I truly believe children’s behavior ALWAYS has a reasoning behind it… They never act out because they’re a**holes (not my words btw)…. They’re just little people in a big world full of confusion, “must do this” rules and huge emotions.
And for a Highly Sensitive Child (HSC) like Boe, this just means a journey on the most insane fairground ride.
Boe really struggles with his feelings, especially as we’re aproaching our third year, and anything “different” or new will really turn his world upside down, and then he gets confused about what’s happening.
For example – he went to visit his grandad, who he doesn’t see all that often, so those visits cause a lot of chaos in his little world due to the processing of the unuasual…. then in the afternoon we went to a new stay and play group. We’d never been to this childrens centre before, so he had that to compute, from the layout, the lights, the many rooms…. add on to that the fact that he’d never seen the other kids before, and it had been a very long time since he’d seen the women running the group, on top of being emotionally drained from the morning’s activities….. it was meltdown city for him. And for me…. as any parent of an HSC (or being an HSP themselves) will know the guilt that runs through your body when these things happen and it was down to your choices is insane….
(This page is really good at explaining what it means to be an HSC, if anyone who doesn’t know wants to know more… just click HERE)
Anyway, we’ve made it a priority in recent months to focus on explaining emotions and reactions to things….
We started by watching Inside Out (which he loved so much it’s pretty much all he watches now) and explaining what each of the main characters represent, which he seemed to understand…. our stories are all about emotions, and obviously we talk about what’s happened once things have calmed down from the chaos, and he seems to be taking it all in and processing it in bite sized chunks, thankfully. Although days are still tough going for him.
Yesterday’s activity was pretty old school, but so much fun!
I drew various faces on our finger-tips 😀 We had happy, laughing, confused, surprised…. we did have sad but he wasn’t happy about that so we swapped the sad face to a shocked face.
We had a lot of fun copying their expressions and talking about why someone might be feeling these emotions or have these reactions and he did so well in communicating his opinions. He’s always been very switched on when it comes to empathy and knowing everyone has different feelings, so at the moment it’s all just about explaining to him that these emotions are completely normal to have and what they all mean… I think the work we’re doing so far is helping slowly but surely.
I’ll work on drawing a sad face, but I didn’t want to overwhelm him and make him uncomfortable at the first atttempt, but hopefully he’ll be more accepting of the other side of emotions next time.
It’s been very hard to find ways while he’s so young – everything seems to be aimed at helping older kids, so we’re having to do a lot of thinking outside the box when it comes to guiding him through his journey, and this activity was one of them.
He was a bit upset when he noticed his finger people had rubbed off though :/ Would it be bad to use a sharpie next time haha
Have you got an HSC or know an HSC? How do you guide them? What’s your top tip?
Pretty please join us over on Facebook to join in our conversation about it all – we could do with all the help and advice we can get 😉
If you’re new to the world of having a HSC, this website HERE is great, with lots of helpful tips on navigating the unknown….
We’ll be documenting our journey and experiences more on our blog, so please keep an eye out if you’re interested in hearing more about how we manage… not that we claim to be experts or perfect parents – to be honest, we’re just winging it and preying we find the best way…. as I’m sure we all are in this parenting life 🙂
Wishing you an awesome day / night
Kate xx
