Raising a Super-Sensitive Child

Sensitivity is something to be nurtured, honored. It is not a sign of weakness, though often parents and teachers interpret it as such. There is a link between sensitivity and genius. However, we need be astute observers of the child to distinguish between the child's true needs and unbalanced demands.

Honoring your child's sensitivity does not mean automatically submitting to your child's demands. You foster your child's character-strength by establishing boundaries on what you will and will not support. If your child tells you that the material of his shirt is too itchy, honor that by finding materials he feels comfortable and natural in. But if he becomes hysterical and demands that you do his bidding instantly, don't panic. Let him go through this bout of unhinged emotionalism to learn that his meltdown does not gain him power. Allowing a child to experience the depth of his emotional reactions can teach him that he has the strength to make it through unpleasantness, even suffering, which adds strength to his self-concept.

A child's sensitivities are linked to the child's mind and heart. We stifle a child's sensitivity by ignoring her feelings. This teaches the child to ignore her own feelings, like compassion. The potentially gifted artist loses touch with the feeling of beauty, harmony and order. The link of sensitivity to the mind has to do with the child's imaginativeness, her ability to recognize subtle reasoning and shades of meaning, and to remain fathom profound mathematical, philosophical and spiritual inquiries and artistic mastery.

Think of your child's sensitivities as his internal guidance system, that helps him to sense the quality of conditions surrounding him and approaching him. His intolerance for discord and his need for sensorial simplicity and tenderhearted treatment reveal to him a path through life that leads him into a life of wholeness, balance, and beautiful order. His sensitivities may indeed bloom into what we call paranormal abilities, which may be understood as merely extensions of normal abilities. For instance the telepathic ability to register another's thoughts is an extension of your ability to register your own thoughts. The ability to empathize with another's feelings can extend into the ability to sense the other's past experiences that contributed to the formation of those feelings, and to predict what lies ahead based on the fact that the future is on its way to us and emits a signal of its coming. One's sensitivities can, at least theoretically, develop to the extent that influences of other dimensions of existence may be consciously registered. Often sensitives experience and display a deeper and more substantial sense of spirituality and God, leading them to lead kinder lives of devotional service.

Parents may fear a sensitive child's capacity for extrasensory perception, fearing the child's claim of seeing angels, perhaps, may be a sign of either insanity or even demonic influence. But fear-based parenting never works for the child or for the parent. A parent may fear the child's show of sensitivity out of a basic of being different, and of having her child seem different. Trying to force a child to be who she is not is like trying to force your foot to function like your mouth. Health and happiness cannot really happen for someone who is not being true to herself. How many depressed parents and children would be liberated for joy if they would only place their faith in the truth of the way things are?

On the opposite side of the spectrum we find a few who might want to promote their child's extrasensory ability to satisfy the ego's desire to feel special, superior, above others. Anyone seeking a goal to feel better than others needs to examine his drive more closely, until he realize what a sham it is. Feeling better than others operates as a force of suppression, not liberation. You feel liberated from the need to prove yourself as you permit yourself to live fully in the present without holding onto the belief that you have anything to prove.

Every infant is supersensitive. Do not fear your child's sensitivities. Relate with them as the budding flowers of your child's internal navigation system that leads him toward a rich, full life in humble, loving service of the beautiful potential of all.