10 Challenges Parents of Highly Sensitive Children Will Recognise

Parenting a highly sensitive child is easy. Said no parent ever. The truth is that raising a highly sensitive child (HSC) can be a challenging journey and parents stumble upon issues that parents of non-highly sensitives do not face. Here are ten challenges parents of highly sensitive children will recognise.

Ten Challenges

1. Doubting yourself many times over: Is highly sensitive really a thing or did I invent it to make sense of my child?
2. Blaming yourself: is my child highly sensitive because of me? Did I make my child sensitive with my parenting style?
3. Constantly planning. You’ll plan, plan and then plan some more to help your child avoid feeling constantly overstimulated.
4. Being in and out of your child’s classroom and school principal’s office. The school counsellor’s office feels like a second home.
5. Judgement. Your friends and family will judge you and you will tire of explaining your child’s personality.
6. Advocating. You are your child’s best, and often only, advocate.
7. Having a Plan B. You’ll always need to build in a get out clause when you say yes to events or activities.
8. Convincing others. Your child’s teacher will believe your HSC is a model pupil and will be remarkably surprised to learn about the fiery meltdowns at home after a busy school day.
9. Downtime. Your HSC needs lots of downtime, but what they want and what they need do not always match. You will learn to pick your battles carefully.
10. Distracting from negatives. Your HSC will, more often than not, focus on the negatives and you will spend a lot of time trying to bring the positives into focus.

One thing you should know is that you are not alone in this parenting journey. You should also know that there are so many amazing aspects to raising highly sensitive children – and it does get easier the more you know, the more you accept and the more you show your child know that they have your unconditional love. With this in mind, you will be able to deal with the challenges faced by parents of highly sensitive children.