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Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Jess, we recorded a trilogy.
And I love myself a good trilogy.
It's giving Lord of the Rings.
Thank you for understanding that reference.
Obviously.
I mean, I have been going through all the
Books including all the ones preceding even the Silmarillion and everything so now it's giving nerd.
Yep, I know.
Okay
So this trilogy is about the sensitive child or sensitive children in general.
And it was supposed to only be one episode, but we just
We, Jess, just kept talking and talking and talking, which makes it sound like it's gonna be super interesting for people to listen to.
But
The reality is there was a ton to talk about.
There was a lot to talk about.
And we really wanted to give this topic the time and attention it deserved in order to reframe sensitivity from
a problem, which maybe not all people think, but let's say a problem into a strength that requires understanding, structure, and emotional attunement.
So we talk about stories and all that.
In this first episode we really get into the understanding temperament in biology
Early signs, the types of sensitive kids, all that kind of stuff.
And then we go further and further into it in the second and third
part of this three-part series.
Yeah, I am really excited for our listeners to get these episodes because I know we've been asked about sensitive kids so many times.
Yes.
And especially this first one, the one that you're about to listen to, is really the foundations of sensitivity.
So like I just re-listen to it and I think the listener will really come away feeling
Like they understand sensitivity and if they have a sensitive child or not.
And I think it's just such a buzzword right now.
Like everybody's talking about it, but like what?
Is it actually?
So I'm really excited for people to listen to every episode in this trilogy, as you would call it.
But I think this one will be really eye-opening for a lot of people about themselves and and their kids.
So I'm excited
So I would say enough of this preamble.
Let people listen.
Enjoy.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn, hosted by my parents.
Jess and Scott.
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
Good morning, Mr.
Random.
Don't use my last name on this public platform.
How's it going?
It's good.
I feel like it's been a while since we've recorded a podcast.
We say that every time we record because we've now doing it once a month.
And I've been around the world since the last time we've been here.
Mm-hmm.
Leaving me on my own.
Yep.
Scott's been on his own.
Crying in the corner.
Aww.
Everyone's gonna feel so sad for you.
You think that's true?
I doubt people will feel sad for.
Nor should they.
Yeah, I know it's been an interesting switch.
Scott and I were just saying this, that he used to travel for work for like ten years constantly.
And lately, just because of the way our roles have kind of shifted, I've been traveling for work and for joy.
I traveled to Italy with my mom, which was super fun
And Scott's been staying home with the kids.
And so our roles have really reversed.
And now I'm the one here with jetleg, trying to rally and do all the things.
And Scott's sitting pretty at home, like, hey, I've been sleeping
I've been in my own bed.
Yeah.
We've just been saying though that I think because we've both lived each other's lives, like I've been the one at home with the kids
And you've been the one on the road.
We actually both are entering this season where I'm traveling a bit more for work, like with a lot of compassion for each other and understanding for
how the other feels and the stresses and joys and challenges and whatever that comes with both.
So that's been cool.
But Scott has made a point to let me know that I do
did not have this compassion for him when he used to travel I would let her know that yes oh I definitely like being the parent who travels when I was the one at home I think I was always like oh must be nice
You know, must be nice to go and go out for dinner and get to do cool things and see different countries and all of those things.
And I mean there is an element where it is cool.
But there are parts.
Yeah, there's parts where it's cool.
Like
You get to see something different.
You get to get out of your house.
You think you're gonna get a full night of sleep, but really you don't because you're jet-legged.
So there is parts that are cool, but what I didn't give Scott credit for when he used to travel was
It is also difficult and tiring and you miss your own bed and I have celiac and I can only eat Starbucks
egg bites so many times before I'm ready to lose my mind because there's never any gluten-free food on the road.
Like yeah, so I feel like I should have or could have maybe had more compassion on you in those days.
Well it was more the the tiredness.
Yeah.
And I was saying this to you.
There was a few things that I I did when I traveled.
Like I was in the hotel gym every day to make sure that I it just helps you get on the schedule.
You go out for a walk as soon as it's bright out, you do all these different things, try and eat healthy, eat on schedule, on a proper schedule, and I'm just trying to give you a few tips to
My hard thing is, and this is maybe my thing to work through, is that basically any spare moment I have, I just feel like I should be working on the book
So where I would usually go to the gym or what I usually would wake up early, I'm just like, oh, I have an hour?
I should probably write.
So the book is taking over my spare time.
And so now that I'm home, I'm hoping like I need to get back into
regularly working out because for both of us that's a huge thing for helping well being and helps you sleep better.
So I'm gonna get back into that, but yeah, especially with
Travel and travel across time zones.
Physical activity is a huge benefit.
And I went to Italy, so that's six hours difference.
Then I came home for just a week and then I went to California, which is three hours the other direction in time zone.
So I think by the time I got home, my body is like
What is happening?
And there's me just kind of chuckling.
I'm like, I don't know when to be hungry.
I don't know when to sleep.
My body has no clue what's happening.
Just imagine doing that, but having to do that for five more weeks in a row.
I know
I know, I know, I know.
I have a lot more reverse compassion on you.
But I think at the time too, we just had a baby, so then
I was like, as soon as you got home, I'm like, I've been up all night.
And I have compassion on myself too.
I've been breastfeeding.
I've not slept the whole time.
You've been gone.
Here, take the baby.
I need to go sleep.
And now our kids, at least they all sleep through the night.
So that's that's a little different.
To be fair, I wanted to do that.
But that's why I also liked going out and doing things where you were maybe you're like, I was already out at the park and doing all these things this week.
I don't want to do that.
Yeah, I just want to be home.
And you're like, let's go to the park.
Let's do this.
Anyways, this is completely unrelated to today's topic.
Maybe.
Is it well, yeah, maybe not.
I don't know.
Today we're gonna talk about
How to parent the sensitive child or the child with heightened sensitivity to their environment.
And I think folks have been
ready and excited for this conversation and I know that I am.
You think so?
Oh yeah.
I think if I get any question the most, it's how do I raise my sensitive child?
What do I do different for a sensitive kid?
Do I have a sensitive kid
I feel like I just get these questions constantly and we've been asked about a million times to talk about this on the podcast.
So I'm I'm thrilled.
I'm so excited.
To be honest, I spent a bunch of time going through research and I felt like I was reading I mean it almost felt like a deja vu with this topic and one other one that we're gonna be recording for I think next week or the week after
So I was a little confused that we were doing it again in my mind, but I guess you're saying that we did not do that.
And we have used parts of this in other episodes, but not
We specifically focused on this.
We talk about sensitive kids a lot, but we have not focused an entire episode on the sensitive child.
Maybe I should have better memory.
I mean we've only done this will be our 83rd episode now.
Only 83.
I feel like that's a lot of episodes.
Well I mean it is a lot, but maybe I should actually remember the fact that we have not done this yet.
You know what?
I should
I guess.
That's what happens when you have kids.
Your memory goes straight out the window.
That's a whole other episode.
Yeah, right.
All right, let's get started then, Jessica.
Stop taking us off track, please.
It's very distracting
I'm ready.
All right, so many parents will come to you feeling exhausted in your practice and they might say, My child has these huge
Epic meltdowns over things that seem so small, like the tag on their shirt or the sound of the toilet flushing, which I know a couple of our kids hate the sound of toilets flushing.
What is the first thing that you tell a parent who's in in that moment or has a child that is sensitive over these seemingly small things and feeling like they're dealing with a level of intensity
That's just off the charts and doesn't seem to fit what's going on in the child's life.
Yeah, so to back it up a little bit, I get these clients in all the time, right?
So whether their child is this child who's like
the and the parent says to me, Jess, they can't tolerate a toilet flushing.
They have these epic meltdowns.
They're so loud.
Or in the older years I might hear things like, they don't want to go to school.
They complain about how loud their classroom is.
Whenever a friend says something to them, they take it extremely personally, like they're they're so sensitive to rejection.
And when I start to hear these things in my head, a light bulb starts to go off saying, we're probably dealing with a sensitive child here.
And so usually one of the first things that I do for a parent is instead of telling them, okay, here's how to respond and here's what to do, I take it back and I say,
let's talk about the different temperaments for children.
And so I think that's where we should start today as well.
Temperament is really, I think a good way to describe it is it's the biological basis for
personality.
And so what that means is every child is born with their innate temperament.
So this is just part of who they are.
I always say to parents, you didn't make your child sensitive.
They were born this way.
So a lot of parents will be like
Did I do something in my pregnancy?
Like was I so stressed out that they became sensitive?
Or was it the way I responded to them when they were born?
And I think it's important to note that sensitivity is
typically something that your child is born with.
Wait, so you're s saying though that it's not related to the nature versus nurture?
debate.
Mm-hmm.
It's you're saying it's nature.
Yeah.
It's genetic.
It's kind of ingrained in your brain, built into your genetic makeup.
and not really related at all to how you're parented.
So of course our parenting can impact.
I was just reading this article and I can find it for you, Scott.
But
It was by this researcher and she researches babies and sensitivity in babies.
And one of the ways that she researches it for babies
is she will have this jack in a box.
So kids as young as, let's say, five, six months old.
And she will
put the jack in a box and open it up for the babies, right?
And some babies, when they see it, they get all excited.
Like they love the surprise.
They're all excited by the surprise.
and they think it's fun.
And other babies, it's like they're watching a horror movie.
And it's the scariest thing, like the shock of seeing this jack in a box is like terrifying to them.
Kind of like the toilet flushing, like what we were talking about before.
And there's other various articles and research that have been done for decades already showing that we can see sensitivity in as young as babies and in the way that they respond to the world.
And so some babies just simply respond to stimuli in the world in a different way than others.
And that's the sensitivity trait that we're talking about.
And so what I am saying is that there is something innate and biological to sensitivity that parents can't blame themselves for that.
A lot of parents will.
Like they can't change the fact that their child is
Sensitive isn't it?
Exactly.
Yeah, you just have a sensitive child.
And the way that we parent can often shape the resilience, the ability that a child can deal with their sensitivity.
how they cope.
And so sometimes when we're parenting a sensitive child and we'll get into this and we're kind of bubble wrapping them, thinking they can't handle anything in the world, then we can decrease, I guess, their resilience to deal with the tough things in the world
which makes them, you know, even more sensitive.
So that's where the nurture comes in and is really important.
But what we do know is
As young as babies, we can see differences in temperament.
Okay.
So what I would educate parents on is that there's three different temperaments that children are born with, and two of them involve sensitivity.
So the first temperament and I don't really love this label, but what I see it often referred to as easy.
And so easy and what I would prefer to say would be flexible.
Is that like a child being easygoing?
Yeah.
Or is that something different from No, I'd say easygoing, flexible.
So I'll give you an example.
Let's say dinner is at five o'clock every single night, like at our house.
One night, you're like, you know what, everything's getting pushed back.
We're gonna have dinner at 5.
30 instead.
The easygoing or flexible child's like
Okay, whatever.
They might get a little hangry, they might get a little bit like, oh, I wish we were eating at five, disappointed, but they can handle the 30-minute difference.
Your sensitive child might have alarm bells ringing in their head instantly, right?
They are more susceptible to get hangry.
So they're gonna need to eat at five, and they maybe can't tolerate pushing back their hunger another 30 minutes without a huge meltdown.
they need routine or they crave the structure a lot more.
So changing something as simple as thirty minutes of dinner might just set them off internally and they might have a more difficult time adapting to
that small change.
So that's one example that you can probably see in your children.
Yes, go ahead.
Can I ask the example you're giving though?
We have three daughters, three young daughters, from three to eight.
Mm-hmm.
And maybe I'm misremembering this, but I feel as though all three of them
at that three-year-old age would have had troubles with that.
Is the sensitivity piece like what you're explaining there, that example, I feel like that also ch kind of changes over time.
So I can just imagine someone listening to you saying I have a seven-year-old and I have a three or four-year-old and the three or four-year-old cannot handle waiting an extra 30 minutes for food.
So they must be sensitive.
Yeah, yeah
And it's just one example, but you have to think of the flexibility.
So if I think about our oldest when she was three, she was much more flexible.
Of course she still had tantrums.
I think any doctor would be worried if
Well, anyone who understands development would be worried if you said my child never has a tantrum and they never get angry or they never get upset.
Easy-going children or flexible children still get upset sometimes.
They still have tantrums, they still get hangry, they're humans, right?
But on the whole, if you're gonna quickly change if you have to change a nap so that they're driving the car instead of your napping at home or you're at the park and you're like, Oh shoot, you know what, we have to go and I didn't give you your five minute warning and for the most part they're like
Okay, you know, I'll come with you.
Or you get to a family gathering and there's far more people there than they expected and they're actually like, oh, fun, more people, like great.
On the whole, our easygoing, flexible children can handle or tolerate change or these different things like all of a sudden there's more people than they expected, a lot more
easy than your sensitive child.
Does that make sense?
So you have to kind of look at the whole picture, not just one moment.
Yeah, right.
And what you're explaining too, there's a lot of additional variables that you haven't
Let's say in terms of going to that family event, if your three-year-old didn't have their nap and is hungry.
Of course.
So I just feel like the example is a little bit too simplified.
I get what you're trying to get at.
Like they're just overall just a little bit easier going, but I think it's important to point out the fact that that's a very simplified
Example.
Yeah, and I don't want you to picture that unless my child's kind of happy go lucky with everything, they're sensitive.
Yeah.
That's my concern with you saying that is
a parent listening is or a grandparent or whoever is gonna be like, oh well then our toddler must be super sensitive because of this or
And also think about them as a baby, right?
So I often will ask the parents I'm working with, what was your child like as a baby?
And the sensitive kids are often like, oh, they cried all the time, they struggled to sleep, they struggled to feed
They were very loud.
Like I always hear about these loud babies.
Sometimes they were like, oh, they crawled so early, like they were so active.
And then there's on the flip side where they were very slow to warm, like they were scared of everyone that wasn't me.
Um they never wanted to kind of socialize with other people that they didn't know super well.
So sometimes we have to actually look back to these early baby stages as well to see the patterns over time.
Instead of just looking at a toddler who all toddlers are gonna have tantrums, all toddlers are gonna be sensitive to things.
So I see what you're saying too.
You know, and it's hard to maybe make a really simple answer to that.
And
you have to look at the whole picture.
And I think a lot of parents think they have sensitive kids and perhaps they do and perhaps they're just a toddler that has tantrums.
So I think that's what you're trying to get at as well.
Nothing is ever black and white.
My favorite black and white statement.
Nothing is ever black and white.
You know what, Scott?
Let me say, I was listening to another podcast the other day and I was like
Yeah.
Scott would have had a lot of skeptical questions for this person.
And I was kind of like, oh, I'm kind of like as annoyed as I get with you always questioning me.
I think it's important because sometimes you listen to a podcast and it's just so simplified and you're like, well, I do think that there's more.
So I
I pre I do appreciate your questions.
Well and honestly in a lot of the research too, I'm often skeptical of the research and this is a future episode that we're gonna t we're planning on talking about single and or co-parenting.
And some of the advice I was thinking
Like this is so stupid.
I don't understand in the real world, I just don't foresee this being the reality for that parent.
Yeah.
But anyways, that's a tangent
Hey friends, so at pickup last week our daughter asked Scott a truly kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan.
And he said to our daughter, Thank you for asking.
Let's talk tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from our new body safety and consent course at Nurture First.
So this new body safety and consent course is taught by me.
So Jess, if you listen to this podcast, you know me.
I'm a child therapist and a mom of three, and I have taught body safety and consent education for years.
This course takes all my years of experience teaching this education and gives you calm, age-appropriate language for body parts, consent, and boundaries.
You'll learn how to teach your kids that no means no, you'll learn how to teach them to read facial cues, you'll talk about safe and unspeakable.
Safe touch, and you'll even teach them about their uh oh feeling.
There's guidance inside this course for the real life stuff, like tickling that goes too far, and even the difference between a secret and a surprise.
We made this course at Nurture First because research shows that body safety education helps kids speak
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So check the course out at nurturedfirst.
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And just full disclosure here, we are the creators of this course and we're so proud of it.
Let's go back to sensitive kids, right?
So
I've described apparently not well the easygoing child.
No, it was good.
I just wanted to make sure that we don't immediately have people saying, Oh.
I have three kids and all three of them are
are highly sensitive for sure because which is also possible.
It is possi no I'm not saying it's not possible.
I just don't want it to be based on your very simplified example.
Yes.
That's fair.
I think what we see, so let's go to sensitive kids, and there's kind of two branches where we typically see this.
So one type of temperament and
also typically sensitive is our slow to warm children.
So these would be the children who are typically labeled shy, which I actually think there's nothing wrong with the word shy.
We've tried to kind of change shy kids for so many years, but to me, shy is just I'm reserve my truest self for the people that I trust
Right.
And I I think there's nothing wrong with that.
But slow-to-warm children, they take longer, as the title describes, to warm up to others.
They might be the ones who cling
closer to your leg as a toddler.
They're the babies who they might not be quite as outgoing and like, hey, look at me, center of attention, right?
They stay closer to you.
It takes them longer to feel comfortable in a group setting.
They might get
more easily overwhelmed or or overstimulated when there's tons of people around.
And you might see that if these children are too busy, like you schedule too many things in a day, they can't handle that.
Right.
They have big meltdowns.
You can almost like predict with these children, like, hey, if I'm doing three things in a day, it's gonna be too much and for sure they're gonna have a big meltdown tonight.
I think that's probably the biggest difference I've noticed in our oldest who would say is more of that easygoing temperament.
and thrives off the social situations.
Like that girl could be with friends and b have social things like
the entire day.
Entire day, all week long.
All week long.
Every day.
All day.
Then she might get tired on the weekend, maybe, and want one day where she doesn't do it.
Maybe
But like she never had those big meltdowns after a busy family thing.
Like I feel like and we have a lot of family, so that's why I'm picking on the family things.
But like when we're with family, there's tons of people there
And she's like, make me the center of attention.
Like, I love this.
Everyone talk to me.
Where's the busiest place I can be in this room?
Like, let me be there.
Whereas our I would say our other two daughters
would be more slow to warm and they'd be more on our leg, clinging to us, hold me mommy, hold me daddy, until they felt ready in their own time to venture forth.
Yeah.
With the slow-to-warm child, you also see they take more time maybe to even learn a new skill, you know, like I think about swimming with our daughter, you know, who is a little more slow-to-warm.
It just took her a bit of extra time and she needed
her own time not to be forced like she couldn't be forced to learn biking or swimming, like she just needed to kind of get to that on her own time.
Whereas your more easygoing, flexible kid
Maybe just isn't not that they're not thinking about it as deeply, but I think our sensitive kids like there's a lot more like fear of what if I don't get it right and what if Yeah
What if frustration with getting it wrong for her?
I because you're talking about her middle daughter right now.
Frustration or possibility of getting it wrong.
Yeah.
And the possibility of
getting hurt.
Those are her two things that I find are often holding her back from trying something new.
And I think the third thing would be the possibility of someone's disappointed because I'm not getting it right
Right.
Like I feel like she w she reads your face and she's like, are you okay?
Are you disappointed?
Are you happy with me?
Like
So our sensitive kids are much more in tune with other people's emotions, other people's perceptions of them.
I think they're more likely to become people pleasers just because they can read other people's emotions just so much
Whereas our other children don't have that maybe same spidey sense of other people's emotions.
And then the third type of temperament, which is often also sensitive, a lot of researchers will call this quote-unquote difficult
which I don't like, or inflexible, which I also don't really love.
I like the description of active.
So these are or like intense
So these are the kids that are kind of born like raring to go.
I see this like me.
Like yeah, I wasn't gonna say it, but yeah, like you.
Like they're born with like a fire inside of them.
They're ready to go from day one.
They're busy.
They're go, go, go, go, go.
They don't always know when to slow down.
They're maybe a little more likely to go anger-wise from like zero to a hundred.
Their emotions are big, they feel what they feel very deep, but they can sometimes move past it very quickly as well.
And these kids
I think often appear the most strong-willed, which maybe that's what you're having deja vu, because we talked about the strong-willed kids being very sensitive.
And these kids can appear very strong-willed, but I think underneath that strong-will
They're very sensitive, might be more sensitive to like textures, tags, the way things feel, the way things smell, and their response.
Whereas the still warm child's response might be to like pull back and pull closer to you
the active or intense child's response is to like get really mad and be like, I'm not doing that.
And there can be some crossover.
Like you can have your slow to warm child who appears to everyone else very cautious and quiet and
Teachers and other people can't believe that in the home they're yelling and screaming at you and going from zero to a hundred, right?
So there can be some crossover.
Those are the three styles of temperament that we are born with that
I have seen and talked about the most often and where I'll start to educate parents and then we'll kind of get curious of like, where do you think your child fits?
Because when we understand that this isn't our child just trying to drive us nuts or isn't something we've done wrong, then we can learn how to support our child based on who they are.
and how they were born and to help them see sensitivity as a gift instead of as, you know, this curse that they're gonna have for their whole life
So you're saying that, because it sounds like you were trying to answer my original question, the first thing you try to do is just help parents see where they might be in.
terms of temperament.
Yes.
Because I find most parents who come in with these sensitive kids, whether they're older or younger, are like, what did I do to make my kid like this?
And how do I fix it?
You know, our answer our question's always, how do I fix it?
How do I stop them from being sensitive?
How do I stop them from having this intense energy?
How do I stop them from being so shy?
And so I like to shift the mindset away from fixing to how do I create environments that support them in their sensitivity and how do I help them cope with their sensitivity
in healthy, helpful ways.
It's not about getting rid of it.
They'll always be sensitive.
If you're born sensitive, you're always going to be sensitive.
It's just how do I live with the truth and use it, right?
Yeah, because
According to the research, with the proper environment at home, sensitivity often lends itself to children becoming incredibly creative.
Yes.
And being able to do amazing things given the right environment.
You know what's interesting and self-reflective?
I for many years would not have labeled myself sensitive because I was not
the big meltdown kid like you.
And I think for many years I looked at you and I'm like, well Scott's not that you're the big meltdown adult, but Scott's sensitive because if you hear stories of you as a kid, right?
Like
you were loud, you had these big emotions, you had this intensity to you.
I didn't stop running.
Stop moving.
Yeah.
You had this strong sense of justice and you wanted to fight for people and that was I think the way of your empathy coming out, right?
Is like
This is wrong.
I'm gonna fight for this person and I'm gonna Yeah, I mean it's a mixture of a whole bunch of different things, right?
So many factors.
But I think that you were born sensitive, right?
As if you hear your parents talk about your earliest days
loud and intense would be descriptions of who you were.
I did not like being messy.
Apparently as a baby, as soon as I was eating solid foods, I had to have
A cloth.
A wet cloth beside me so I could wipe my face off constantly.
Because I just hated being and to this day it's still the same thing.
It always feels like there's something on my face when I'm eating and I have to wipe it off.
Exactly.
Even if there isn't.
But if I look back on myself, I would say I'm still slow to warm and I think I was definitely slow to warm as a child.
Like I was different.
I was very quiet.
I wasn't the one who had tons of friends in school, you know, it took me a little bit to find the courage to like share how I felt and
I never wanted to be the center of attention.
I always kinda wanted to be pulled back.
And I was very sensitive in terms of if someone made a comment
to me that I felt or I perceived as rejection, I would take it.
And I always thought this was like the worst thing about me.
That no matter what someone would say about me, I would take it like so deeply personal
And for so long, even of my adult life, I'm like, I just wish I didn't take everything so personal.
Like everything everyone says, I take it as if like Even if they say nice things, honestly.
Like I take it in a bad way.
You potentially could see it as
Offensive.
Well, what do they mean by that exactly though?
Yeah, and I feel like I would walk into a room even as a kid and be able to read everybody's emotions in a room, be like that person's having a hard day, that person feels that way.
And then it would just feel like it was my job to fix.
And and probably, you know, all of therapists have their reasons for getting into therapy.
I don't think this is my reason, but I think
Part of why I was so interested in psychology was to understand why people feel these emotions and where does it come from and just to like try and probably make sense of even my own perceptions of
So I think this is a good example of how sensitivity can show up in two different ways.
We're both sensitive people, but Yeah, there's an additional village that we both had.
Yes.
Because you say that, but I feel like I could also read the same thing.
Yes, you also can, and you still can.
Yeah.
Scott and I are both like very in tune if we're in the room and someone's off.
Like I feel like we both have a good sense of that almost immediately
But yours also might have come from trauma.
So Yeah, oh exactly.
So this is completely unrelated to actually my line of questioning that I had.
But you're describing active
difficult, strong-willed kids, whatever.
That temperament.
But then there seems to be a lot of overlap with neurodivergence and ADHD.
I think I had a question about that later on, but I kinda want to ask that now because how do you know
What's what?
Yeah, like it sounds kind of like it's one and the same, but different, but not really.
And it's confusing to me because you're describing a lot of things that are
what were used to diagnose me with ADHD.
So there is a lot of overlap of people with ADHD or neurodivergent people who
also being sensitive.
And so being sensitive doesn't equal you have ADHD or you're neurodivergent.
People can be sensitive and not have, let's say, the diagnostic criteria for ADHD or autism or other things that would
make them neurodivergent.
And a lot of neurodivergent people are sensitive.
So I it's kind of like both and
Is it possible that I think in a lot of ways society has over pathologized certain things?
So like even whether I don't know, whether it's ADHD or sensitivity, I don't know.
Maybe one of those
has just become mainstream kind of like how people use trauma to describe every possible thing that is not great in their life, like that's trauma.
Is it possible that people are also using the term sensitivity in a similar way when it's maybe not even sensitivity?
Or is it just a lack of understanding of what it means to be sensitive and that's why it's used that way?
And same with trauma.
I see trauma a little differently.
I think sensitivity I think more people are claiming that and believing that about themselves.
And it's just not something that we ever talked about before.
I don't necessarily see sensitivity as being overly used as long as we're not using it to like be like, oh well, they're sensitive so they can't go to school.
Or like that's where I would maybe have the issue with it, where it's like, oh, they're sensitive, so I'm not gonna let them do this or I'm not gonna make them do that.
And I
I think the problem or the issue that I'm mostly seeing when it comes to people labeling their kids as sensitive is that it comes with a bubble wrapping and with a, well, they can't do these things because they're sensitive
And then I think that's where the n the nurture like the nature nurture debate comes in where it's like, well now are they just more sensitive because
they don't think that they're capable of doing hard things.
Do you know what I mean?
Right, like maybe we've amplified that because we didn't allow them to
Or sort of coach them through their sensitivities and create that environment where they can learn to live with it and actually for them to develop
More fully with the sensitivity.
Yeah, I'll give you an example.
It was actually just on a podcast yesterday where they were interviewing me about temperament and the mom was sharing a great story about
her own therapy with her sensitive kid.
And she said when her kid was two, she started noticing just the difference in this child versus her other she's four children.
in her other children, like these very slow to warm, very scared.
And she said her first instinct was, well, I must protect them at all costs.
Like I don't want my child to be scared.
And so she gave this example of her child child watching Daniel Tiger, which is a pretty age-appropriate show for a two-year-old.
There's really like if you're gonna
Do a non-scary TV show.
I feel like Daniel Tyler is one of your best bets.
Pretty much best.
Yep.
And there was a a a piece of the episode where the child got scared
And they got scared because I think the teacher had a negative emotion like was frustrated with Daniel Tiger or something.
And that was too overwhelming with the child for the child.
He didn't like how the teacher got frustrated with Daniel Tiger.
Didn't you know
there there's a sensitivity, right?
I don't like it when someone else has an emotion that I So the whenever that episode would come on, the mom would just like turn off the TV or skip past that part because she didn't want her child to feel scared
And what happened was then the child learned in their head, oh, I can't handle that.
I can't handle that scene.
It's too scary.
And so the first
piece of advice that this therapist actually gave to the mom was you need to watch that episode through.
You need your child to know they can actually handle seeing someone else upset and be safe at the same time.
Together with them.
Together with them.
They
It's not like just put this on and let them be scared alone, but it's don't bubble wrap your sensitive child so much to be like they're sensitive so they can't handle anything.
Therefore I'm going to turn off Daniel Tiger and then actually confirming to the child I can't handle things like that.
And I actually
I need someone to save me when someone has a difficult emotion and I'm there.
So we talked about that a lot in the episode I was on yesterday where it's not leaving your sensitive child alone to be like
Here, figure out the world, make sense of people's emotions.
And it's also not you can't handle it, you're too sensitive.
So I'm gonna just
protect you, but it's being alongside of them, showing them what they can handle, giving them the extra time to handle it, extra coaching support.
Otherwise
It's kind of what you're saying where we're saying kids are sensitive, we're bubble wrapping the sensitive kids, and then they are becoming more sensitive and then they can't tolerate it.
Right.
Does that make sense?
No, that that does definitely make sense.
But to your ADHD neurodivergence piece, this is where I was like, how controversial do I want to be?
Tell me what you think about this.
But I've just been thinking about this a lot.
Like I'm seeing kids as young as three, four being diagnosed with ADHD
And when I look at their life, it's typically around the time where they've just had something really difficult happen.
So their parents got divorced, they
had a new baby and through the family they moved, like something big has happened during their life.
And what I'm wondering and concerned about, and I'm talking about the young, young kids, is that you have a sensitive child who's just been through something huge and their parents
no fault of their own, just don't have skills to support them through the big change.
So what happens?
They have a feeling of alarm bells kinda going on through their body.
And when your body's alarmed, even for me, even when I'm overtired, when I'm my body's alarmed and it's not calm.
We have less ability to pay attention to things.
We have bigger meltdowns or bigger feelings of anger.
It's harder to sit still because you're just antsy, right?
You have like big things.
We have that anxious energy.
Yeah, you have anxious energy, right?
Which I like just calling all of that alarm, like the anxious energy, y the anger, like all of those things.
There's like alarm bells going off in your body
So then a parent's like, I don't know how to help this child and their emotions are so big, they can't sit still, they can't pay attention.
They take them to the doctor and they fit all the criteria for ADHD, but also they're four and their brain hasn't had time to mature
and develop and they've just been through a a terrible life change.
So of course they're gonna meet the criteria for ADHD.
It's the perfect thing.
You have a brain that hasn't developed impulse control, reasoning, logic, all of those things
and they're sensitive and they've just been through something difficult.
And now by age four, they're diagnosed with ADHD.
So I feel like I'm no I'm seeing that more and more and more
And it's not to say they don't have ADHD they very well might and we're just catching it really early.
But my concern is that instead of getting the help
that they really need to teach their child, you know, and help them like lower the alarm in their body and soften these defenses and connect with them and give them the skills.
We're just like, oh, that's just how they are because they have ADHD, but we're not actually helping the child.
Right.
Does that make sense?
I see where your logic is there.
I think I mean as an adult, often
People will go to the doctor, be like, I'm feeling anxious or I'm feeling depressed because of this.
Like one of the I guess one common reason for people to go on anti
anxiety medications is let's say going through a divorce.
But they will typically wean themselves off after that period of the highest level of anxiety is kind of gone.
Yeah.
Is your concern that those children, let's say they're being medicated early, that they're just never going to get off the medication?
Because also from what I was
reading on ADHD just because I have it.
I'm trying to read research on it now.
Yeah.
I understand that if you catch a child with ADHD early enough
and you intervene with medication, but then on top of that you also do all of the other things, like maybe you do therapy for a situation like that or you create a better environment in the school for them to learn that they are less likely to have to be on it.
as an adult and they can kind of their brain can be rewired in order to not have to use it anymore.
Yeah, and so let me be clear, I'm actually not against medication for children with ADHD for those exact reasons.
And sometimes I find, especially for the kids who have been through such complex trauma in those early ages, we can't even get their body to not be in this constant state of alarm.
Like it's much harder to do so without the medication
And some some sometimes the medication can work hand in hand with the therapy so that we can actually get them to calm the alarm down in their body because the medication is helping them be able to think clearly and stuff like that.
So in no way am I against the medication and every family has to make that decision for themselves.
I have families who medicate their kids early and families who are have no interest in that and and we see what we can do without it.
I think my concern with this is that
I'm often not seeing the medication and the diagnosis of ADHD combined with any education for the families on what this means, how to help their child, how to calm their alarm system down.
So it's almost like, okay, yep, your four-year-old meets the criteria for ADHD.
Here's the medication and you know, check back in with me in five months.
Good luck to you.
Yeah, no, okay, I understand that.
That's the majority of clients I see and it's like
When I ask them questions, it's like, well, yeah, we got divorced at that same age and this happened and this happened and he's yelled at all the time and this and it's like So what you're saying is
You don't love the fact that these children are being diagnosed with ADHD because they're highly sensitive and they're going through life circumstances that
manifests in ADHD symptoms and also they're not getting the additional help that they really truly need.
They're just being medicated.
Exactly.
So those symptoms are just being medicated out of them.
Yeah, and sometimes not even, right?
And like they're on the medication.
It's a little bit better.
I often see that.
And then that's work therapy, it's a perfect time.
So it's like great
They're on the medication.
Now we can actually help them in other ways.
But I think my issue is when we just put a label on something, but we don't get to the root of what's actually happening.
And I think that's happening in so many kids.
And parents are like, oh perfect, we have an answer
not to parents' fault, but no one's ever saying, okay, above and beyond this, here's how we can help and support our child.
Well the reality is what do any of us know about
ADHD and why it happens, where it comes from.
Sensitivity, same thing.
Like we know so little about it, so then how yeah, it's on the medical community to actually
Teach us this.
Yeah, I know.
But then it's also you have to get through everyone.
Like in Canada, we don't have enough doctors, so it takes a long time to potentially go to the hospital or
Some family doctors are next to impossible to find, so you're kind of like getting through everyone as quickly as you possibly can.
Well I know and that
I think that's my problem is like parents will come in like being like I thought we had the answer and the doctor we had like a 15-minute consultation.
They told me nothing about what ADHD even means.
Right.
And now he's on this medication for seven months
And things have improved a tiny bit, but not really.
And this is where I like and I'm just seeing this constantly.
So it's my problem's not the ADHD diagnosis or even the medication.
My problem is
Thinking that that's the answer for all these other things that are going on that maybe led to the child being in that spot.
No, I mean this is a
major we just went fully off track here.
But is that just because like how many kids for the ones that you actually see are
all better after going on the medication.
Like that's the problem with your it's a bit of confirmation bias, right?
Because those are the the families that you might be seeing, but you're not seeing any of the other ones that are doing well
either.
So it's possible what you're saying is correct, but I also just would I do have a sample bias because of who's coming to me.
But I also have I mean I feel like I've spoken to countless professionals who feel the same way in my field.
No, I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong.
I just
I want to caution that just because that's who you're seeing, it doesn't mean that's a good idea.
part in our three-part series of talking about sensitive children.
We hope you enjoyed this episode.
We have a lot more to cover and
I mean, it was interesting enough that I was willing to record three separate episodes.
It was long enough, and I kept my attention long enough that I actually
was able to talk.
It was fascinating.
Yeah, it was.
Honestly we could keep going and going past three episodes, but we decided to cut ourselves off for now.
But we're we really hope you come back next week and join us for part two of the sensitive kids series.
It's gonna be great.
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode.
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