Don’t Punish Your Child’s Nervous System — Understand It!

There are challenging kids, and there are “over-the-top” challenging kids. If standard parenting approaches just don’t work, or if you resonate with one or more of the comments below, you may well have an above-average challenge with your child. If so – today’s parenting tip is for you!

• “Dressing is always an ordeal for my daughter. No tags, and sometimes no socks, because they drive her crazy.”
• “My teen has never been a touchy kid. It used to be tough to get him to slow down for a hug, but now he even pulls away and acts like I’ve violated his space.”
• “My child is such a picky eater. I feel like I’m always special order cooking from the ‘brown and white’ food group.”
• “My son just can’t sit still – he’s always squirming, wiggling. It’s almost impossible to get him to slow down, look me in the eye, and really listen.”
• “My daughter’s mood swings are extreme and sometimes very sudden. The littlest things can set her off. Talk about intense! Her meltdowns wear me out.”
• “My child is easily over-stimulated. Large groups of kids, crowded places or busy stores are usually a prescription for trouble.”

These comments are from parents with one thing in common: highly sensitive children! These kids are easily overwhelmed by intense or aversive sensations from their body or their surroundings. They are almost always kids with highly sensitive nervous systems, and their challenging behavior is about much more than defiance or disobedience.

This issue hits close to home for us: two of the young Jackson children had meltdowns at the feeling of clothing changes, tooth-brushing, or cold toilet seats. The sound of a blender, a vacuum cleaner, thunderstorms, or fire alarms inevitably led to intense reactions. We learned early on that disciplining our highly sensitive children for their reactions was like punishing them for getting a cold.

Because we are often blamed for our child’s difficult behaviors, parents tend to focus on getting rid of the behaviors instead of understanding them. We have seen over and over that there is a very strong overlap between “difficult-to-raise” children and those with sensory challenges. (Both groups comprise about 10 – 15% of children.) The specific behaviors that would clue a parent into these sensory challenges are numerous and varied, but these children are often louder, more intense, sensitive, active, emotional and/or strong-willed than their peers. If you don’t have one in your family, you probably have a close friend or relative who does!

The first practical step for parents of such a child is to spend a little more time understanding “What’s going on with my child?” instead of “What should I do?” By learning more about their child’s nervous system, parents can get strong clues about what might be causing the specific challenges that their child is facing. For example, I (Lynne) coached a mom whose desperation about “what should I do?” led her to seek help. First, we addressed “What’s going on?” As the mom began to understand her daughter’s nervous system and the constant state of “fight or flight” her daughter lived in, the mom had an “aha!” moment. “Could it be my daughter’s constipation and crabbiness is affected by her sensory challenges?” I explained that stress can often throw off digestive function. The mom completed her flash of insight: “And the way we’ve been handling it has only added to her stress!” This understanding brought subtle but powerful changes in how the mom responded to the situation, and her daughter’s condition improved dramatically.

When we better understand what’s going on in our child’s nervous system, we can better empathize. When we empathize, we are calmer, our children are calmer, and we can more creatively and positively develop solutions.