Helping a Highly Sensitive Child with Their Worries with a Monster Headband

Take the fears and worries of your highly sensitive child (HSC) seriously. They think deeply. They don’t just read about a monster; they picture it in full technicolour and imagine what such a monster could do to them with those teeth and those claws and how their roar would sound. Their worries about their day become huge to them, particularly at bedtime.

Saylee, mother of an almost nine year old HSC, not only respects her daughter’s worries but has come up with a tool to help her with them at bedtime – a monster head band.

Helping a Highly Sensitive Child with Their Fears: Monster Headband

What’s the Purpose of a Monster Headband?

I talked to Saylee, and she explained why and how the idea of a monster headband came to her and her daughter.
 
“My almost 9 year old is a HSC and becomes anxious over small things. Before bed time she often says that her head is full of things – mostly small things she worries about.
 
So I started plucking her worries one by one before bed. What i mean is I pretended to pluck things from her forehead and then it became a kind of game.  She’d describe one I had missed over here (‘a very sticky one mumma’), a ‘yucky one over there’, a tricky one over there etc.
 
Then one day she came up with the idea that I could really pluck some monsters from her forehead so I got the idea to make a monster headband.”

 

What You Need to Make a Monster Headband

  • a headband, hairband or a cap
  • velcro
  • laminated monster cutouts (Saylee found her images here)
  • glue to stick the velcro to the monsters and to the cap
Simply glue the velcro to the band and attach velcro to the back of the monster images. It’s that simple.
 
Monster Head Band for highly sensitive children

How Does the Monster Headband Work?

Saylee explains that you make a game of plucking the monsters off the headband, imagining and describing them as your child’s worries. You can name them specifically whilst plucking them off or just remove them one by one. Whatever works for your child.
 
She took it a step further and turned the tool into something that reinforces positive thoughts too.
 
“We found a few cute monster cutouts, which we used to stick onto the headband after we had got rid of the worries to represent good thoughts. As I stick on the cute monsters I tell her positive things about herself.”
 Saylee describes the effect this simple tool has had on her daughter:
 

“She feels more peaceful and calm before she falls asleep. It has helped her feel more relaxed and because the monster plucking results in laughter it’s become a great tool for bonding.”

Saylee’s daughter says: “I like the monsters, which are cute and like the way my mind is emptied of the worries before sleeping.”
 Monster Head Band for highly sensitive children

About Saylee: I am a HSP myself and it took me years to realise I was one. It was a light bulb moment for me when one day while searching for my daughter I came across this word and then everything fell into place for me, and also for my daughter. I am a storyteller where I conduct story telling sessions for little ones to help them in language development. I am a passionate reader and love kids literature and so also have a library for the age group of 0-6 year olds to inculcate the habit of reading in them.

What is great about this idea is that you can personalise the pictures to personalise it for your child’s own worries. Your child could even draw the pictures themselves.

You could also try putting your child’s worries on a cloud.

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