Tag: #highlysensitive #hsp #highlysensitivechild

Access to Center

Highly Sensitive People experience the world in a unique way, creating some challenging situations for all parties involved. Nowhere is this more clear than in school.

My focus for this post is on the system itself and I want to emphasize that this is not a critique on the dedicated individuals making positive contributions to schools nationwide (U.S. system as this is what I can speak to). Everyone is doing their best to juggle all of the moving pieces: students, parents, staff, administrators, academic, social emotional, extracurricular. The box that is the education system is virtually the same box that was designed in the mid-late 1800’s as part of the 2nd industrial revolution. You would have seen this advertisement during that time. Needless to say, we are no longer living in that world.

We have also learned a lot about the science of learning since the system was designed, yet the basic format remains.  During my school board tenure (2013-2021), we implemented a shift towards a “constructivist” philosophy where students actively construct knowledge for themselves. Not being an educator, my exploration of constructivism led me to numerous articles from the 1990’s highlighting the benefits of granting students more agency in their education. Surprisingly, almost 30 years later, we are still slowly transitioning to that philosophy.   

Mike Rowe’s “The Way I Heard It” podcast recently featured Todd Rose, a high school dropout turned Harvard professor. During the introduction Rowe says “everybody knows that kids don’t learn in the same way and yet, for generations, we act as if they do.” I will add…and we label them as deficient when they cannot operate in that traditional environment. Todd’s story of failing in school and then finding his life’s purpose is common. Throughout my years of interactions with school staff, I heard numerous stories of kids that struggled in school, yet once out in the world they flourished. A former student that could not even set foot in the high school building found success in college. Conversations with talented musicians revealed shared disdain for school and academic performances that matched.

I completed special education advocacy training recently. As I work more advocacy cases, I am feeling a whole new level of sadness and frustration with how the system treats those that don’t or can’t conform. Simultaneously, I recognize that 1) what is best for special ed kids can benefit all kids 2) highly sensitive kids often are like canaries in the mine. Schools are seeing the number of kids needing IEP’s grow, while more and more kids rely on medication for anxiety and ADHD.  The situation demands reflection.

So, the box needs a remodel major overhaul. Besides this challenge, HSP’s are unconventional thinkers and can feel as Stephanie Tolan describes in “Is It a Cheetah?”. As I pondered this post, another simple and fun metaphor popped into my head.

Picture the classic shape sorter toy. Using visual/spatial, motor, and problem-solving skills, the child must figure out which opening allows each shape entry to the middle. As hard as one tries to shove the circle into the hexagon spot, it won’t ever go.

If the inside of the sorter symbolizes success, where success equals a happy, healthy, and purposeful life, how are we supporting each child (shape) to access the center?

Zoom Out

I recently had a conversation with my eldest daughter about her transition into adult life. After her download about all the pieces that she wanted to be perfect, all I could say was “take a breath and zoom out”.  Yes, my “seasoned” adult perspective has a wider breadth versus a 22-year-old working hard to make her mark while earning a small stipend. The infinite number of details she was trying to control were causing overwhelm. My suggestion to “zoom out” was just like the game where you try to guess the item of a hyper-magnified picture, where widening the lens allows us to see. Taking a step back actually permits us to identify purpose and understand how each activity relates. In my advocates’ class with Don’t IEP Alone, Lisa Lightner constantly talks about the lighthouse in the distance, the metaphor she suggests for clarity and focus on what is important.

Since the discussion with my child, other situations involving perspective have bubbled up into my consciousness. Perspective really is everything. With it comes appreciation for more viewpoints and interpretations, which empowers more holistic decisions. This perspective and thus ability to see through the noise often has been earned through challenging experiences such as battling cancer or losing a loved one because what is important becomes clear and the things that are not fall away.   

There is such a thing as being too close to a situation; examples of this are not hard to find. Ask any empty nesters about something that they wished that they had spent more time doing and you will inevitably hear that they would have just enjoyed their kids more. When you are “in the weeds” of parenting, it’s easy to get caught in the hustle and bustle of school, activities, feeding them, and teaching our family values, while giving them space to fail. Time to stop and smell the beautiful blooms (our children) is often difficult to manage. I wish I could shrink my girls back to when the giggles were contagious and dress up shoes clapped across the floor. I now understand why older women in the grocery store would see the cute, curious, and silly when I may have been getting frustrated because I just wanted to run in and grab an ingredient for dinner. Perspective.

“Love is blind”

“Rose-Colored Glasses”

I have been known, according to my daughters, to sport “mom-goggles” ever since they were school age when I give them what they see as nonobjective compliments. The glasses we put on, though, are not always rosy – we can also don a pair that shade everything dark. Anxiety, depression, and misophonia paint the world with wide colorless strokes where everything is interpreted as negative. We parents and teachers can do this when we heavily weigh bad behaviors and label kids as “bad”, “a pain”, “exasperating”. Coupled with our innate negativity bias gone unchecked, this can create a harmful cycle. For highly sensitive children, this labeling doesn’t even have to be declared aloud – they feel it in our tone, our words, and our actions. They can and do interpret slight differences, albeit sometimes incorrectly, as adults’ feelings towards them. From their perspective, which includes all of the senses, all communication is very personal. 

As I was reflecting on this post, I remembered that I had “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”. When it joined my family’s library, I read the introduction where Betty Edwards explains the skills necessary to learn to draw:

“The global skill of drawing something that you see “out there” (a perceived object, person, landscape) requires only five basic component skills, no more. These skills are not drawing skills. They are perceptual skills, …”

Over the next several weeks, I plan to start the creative process of honing my perception of edges, spaces, relationships, lights and shadows in order for my skill of gestalt (perception of the whole) to become brighter. Consider grabbing a copy of your own and joining me on the journey!

The best thing that we can do as parents (and just as human beings) is to keep awareness on our perspective and ask ourselves: 

WHAT LENSES DO I HAVE ON RIGHT NOW?

Sometimes, it’s the hint we need to stop and grab our Groucho Marx’s.

The Box

Are You In or Out?

I have been thinking A LOT about how different, or what is seen as different, is interpreted as deficient or disordered in some way. Highly Sensitive Children are intense (different than the majority) and thus ‘extra’ to parent, but, in many cases, they are diagnosed because of it due to a lack of understanding. (That is not to say that diagnosis is not real in some cases.) This really concerns me as, on some level, society is saying that different = disordered. But, don’t we actually need different, out-of-the-box ideas for healthy progress?

I am going to stop there and let some creative disrupters that definitely lived outside of that box have the floor. 

For an amazing summary, look up Apple’s “Think Different” commercial from 20+ years ago.

Greta Thunberg

“Being different is a gift. It makes me see things from outside the box. I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things. If I would’ve been like everyone else, I wouldn’t have started this school strike for instance.” BBC interview

Albert Einstein

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Bill Gates 

Articles and movie “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” highlight specifically  how his brain works differently

Maya Angelou

“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”

Temple Grandin

“When I was young, I thought everybody thought like me. I am learning more and more that minds can be different, and how they solve problems.” VCU Speech

Stephen Hawking

Renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist that studied black holes, while living with ALS for over 40 years

Richard Branson

Champions disruptive leadership and openly talks about how his dyslexia made him feel different while growing up

Marie Curie 

Pushed the envelope by even attending university and then developed a novel idea regarding “radioactivity” as she dubbed

Malala Yousafzai 

Stood up even though she felt fear all of the time. “You must have the confidence to say that this thing is going wrong, and we must raise our voice. At that time, I wanted to live my life as I want.” ABCNews 

Steve Jobs 

Thrived after dropping out of college AND being fired from his own company

“Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” Commencement

Frida Kahlo 

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too.”

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Proposed a project that combined hypertext and the internet. The end result was the World Wide Web we know and rely on today.

Kacey Musgraves

“I remember being repelled by some of the stylistic norms that were expected around then for a female in country music – subject matters, style choices, things I didn’t find myself being inspired by. I was thinking, I’m not going to do this if that’s how it is.” The Guardian

Martin Luther King

Refused to accept the way things were and led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s. His “I Have a Dream” speech was a defining moment of the civil rights movement and among the most iconic speeches in American history.

Stephen King

American author with millions of copies sold. Interviews cite that he felt like an outsider growing up.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

One of only nine female students during her time at Harvard and championed a better legal foundation of women’s equality. “She Persisted”

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