Highly Sensitive Children: Tips for Parenting, Nurturing and Co-Regulation
Episode 41: Highly Sensitive Children: Tips for Parenting, Nurturing and Co-Regulation with Natalie Brunswick @highlysensitivefamily
We hear the term “highly sensitive” a lot these days- but what does being highly sensitive or having a highly sensitive child really mean? This week Rachael and Natalie Brunswick, a psychotherapist OT and parenting educator, dive deep into the characteristics of highly sensitive children (and parents!). You’ll learn all about the importance of understanding and supporting highly sensitive children, as well as the need for parents to do their own inner work.
Here’s what they discuss inside this insightful episode:
Natalie’s challenges with her colicky and sleepless baby, which led to her own postpartum PTSD diagnosis and a journey towards helping others
All the amazing & unique characteristics of highly sensitive children
How to help co-regulate and release stress for parents AND children
Some of the challenges and difficult experiences that can come with parenting highly sensitive children
Some potential ways to support highly sensitive children in school and social settings
Tools for sensitive & neurodivergent parents to support the needs of their sensitive children
Ways for parents to creatively meet their own needs
The grief that may arise during parenting
How to decide if and when you are ready for more children, particularly if your first was highly sensitive or you had a difficult time postpartum
Natalie is a psychotherapist, occupational therapist, parenting educator, mental health advocate, and mother of two exceptional boys. Like so many of us, she came into parenthood with an idea of what it would all look like. And, well, spoiler alert, it looked nothing at all like what she imagined! And so The Highly Sensitive Family was born. The Highly Sensitive Family is an online community with courses, workshops, and support for educating parents and helping others better understand their experiences, their stories, their nervous systems, their families, children & relationships, their dreams & passions.
Mentioned in this episode:
Natalie’s Instagram: @highlysensitivefamily
Natalie’s Website: https://highlysensitivefamily.com/
Natalie’s courses:
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✨For sleep support and resources, visit heysleepybaby.com and follow @heysleepybaby on Instagram! 😴☁️🤎✨
Rachael is a mom of 3, founder of Hey, Sleepy Baby, and the host of this podcast.
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Welcome back to No One Told Us, the podcast that tells the truth about parenting and talks about all the stuff you wish you knew before having kids. I'm your host, Rachel Shepard-Ohta, and today I am so happy to have my friend Natalie Brunswick, a psychotherapist, occupational therapist, parenting educator, and mental health advocate, plus mom of two exceptional little boys. Natalie, like so many of us, came into parenthood with an idea of what it would all look like and spoiler alert it looked nothing like that at all.
And so the highly sensitive family was born. Natalie runs the highly sensitive family as well as an online membership called Raising Us where she educates parents and helps us better understand our experiences, stories, nervous systems, and relationships. Thank you so much for being here my friend. I've missed you since we we were together Nashville a couple of weeks ago. How are you doing?
I am well, thank you for having me. Did you pull that from my website? That was like so, you didn't even ask me for my buy -in, but that sounded great. Well done.
Thanks.
And with your research team.
Well done to Emma, my assistant, who helps me put all this stuff together.
Yes.
Well done, Emma.
Yeah, she was like, you know, I can come up with some questions for you. And I said, you know, me and Natalie have talked about this kind of stuff so many times. I can probably wing it. But I do have a list of some things we could cover. The first thing I really want to hear though for those who are new to you or new to your page, the highly sensitive family is what was your inspiration? Because I think for many of us who kind of joined this online space to educate moms, to create community, we had an experience ourselves in our own motherhood. So I'd love to hear kind of the inspiration behind Your page and why you kind of chose this crazy world of online business as we were just discussing before we hit record.
So as Rachael knows, before I started the highly sensitive family account. I Had another account and so I am a therapist. I and I became a mother to a very colicky, hard to soothe, baby who never slept, and was tongue -tied and had reflux and really had this very traumatic, I didn't realize it when I was in it, but in hindsight I actually ended up getting a PTSD, postpartum PTSD diagnosis, about a year and a half postpartum, but had this very traumatic entryway into motherhood, which, you know, being a therapist and someone who is trained in all of this stuff or so I thought, but also having been someone who had been on my own healing journey since my early 20s.
So like, you know, 15 years of healing and being in therapy and then working as a therapist and learning about all of this stuff. I was totally just like everyone where you have a parenting journey that does not look like everyone else's. I was like totally thrown off by it and it took me a while to find my footing and a lot of it like so many of us and so much of the work that you do.
It was around sleep and I had this baby who didn't sleep like didn't sleep, cried all the time, needed to be held, couldn't get put down for naps,
would wake up the minute you try to lower him into a crib. And I know you know the story well. And so much of your audience relates to the story of just being so miserable in that place of trying to follow the like sleep culture, sleep training culture rules of drowsy but awake, and my husband like what the heck is drowsy but awake and like this is not something we are experiencing like are there babies that do this and you know for those first three months…. I was really trying like I would try to get him down and I like was so distressed over the fact that like I would have to keep pushing him in the stroller because if I stop moving the stroller, he would wake up and I would walk like I remember like walking by other moms sitting at the coffee shop with their babies asleep in the stroller.
Whereas I had to keep circling and circling or else my three month old would wake up screaming and that was after I got him into the stroller because for the first two months he would scream in the stroller. But once I put him into the upright seat instead of the bassinet which he was too young to be in but I like patted him with blankets around his head… he was fine, and I was like so I mean I think we can laugh about these experiences in hindsight but when you're in them…. God like it was horrible. And you're catching me like on an emotional day but when I think back to that- that mom that I was who even though I had all this training I was in it, and I couldn't see the force for the trees I couldn't see my way out and it was so hard.
And I think a piece for me is you know in the midst of that I went to see a perinatal Psychologist- no perinatal psychiatrist- Who I I knew enough to know I wasn't okay and I went to see her and she was like, "You seem fine. Just try to get more sleep." I was like, "I knew I wasn't fine." But she was like, "You seem fine." So I'm like, "Okay, of course I'm fine." And I wasn't okay. I was really not okay. And so I think as I started going on my journey with my son in my own little world, around the four month mark, I really gave up on a lot of the sleep training stuff. Like we never actually tried, like we did try it one time when he was like four months. We let him cry for eight minutes.
And then he screamed for 45 minutes. And we were like, "Oh, never again." And at that point I kind of gave up. I started letting him contact nap on me without trying to roll him off. I started just going for those walks and letting him sleep in the stroller without trying to get him into the crib. And, you know, once I started to ease into that, just on my own, 'cause the, like Instagram didn't exist back then, as you remember, this is like six years ago in the same way that it does now with all of these alternative sleep accounts.
So I just had to really tune in to my instincts, but also my training started to come up. Like started to get to this place where I was like, now that you know what's happening, like you know why he's not sleeping, like you work in trauma, like you work like with the nervous system, like you, you know why he's not sleeping. You know why it's, he's having such a hard time settling. He has a nervous system that is much more easily dysregulated and much more easily triggered by the world around him. And you know, I work as a psychotherapist, but I also have a background as an OT. And so I know about the sensory world. I know that the loud noises are more likely to wake him up than another baby who can sleep in the coffee shop with mom sitting and having a wonderful time while that baby sleeps through the noise, whereas a more sensitive baby is going to get woken up and needs you to keep moving.
And so I really got to this place where one, as I'm sure you relate, like a lot of anger kind of bubbled up around like, I can't believe I was told that babies are supposed to sleep. And I allowed like that to completely take over so much of my early relationship with him as opposed to allowing myself to just like give in to his needs. And that eventually turned into, you know, a real desire to help parents because I was like, "I am trained in this."
Most people aren't, and if me with all my training can still get pulled in to these unrealistic expectations around how our children should be without acknowledging that all children are different and all children have different nervous systems and some kids are highly sensitive and some kids are neurodivergent and some kids are autistic and some kids like we know that neurodivergent brains sleep differently. They have a harder time with sleep. So why do we continue to propagate this lie that all children should be doing X by X time?
So it was really this like as all activism starts, right? Like there's so many moms and I love seeing every time I see a new mom page because there are some dads with mostly a lot of moms like pop up on Instagram. It's like, it's activism, right? Like we had this experience and we don't want other people to have to go through it, right? We want to help. And it's always so, I love seeing all the wonderful parents online who are now working to try to help other parents.
But, at first I actually just started on Instagram with a perinatal mental health page, because I didn't really know anything about the online world. Like I just was a therapist, so I'm like, okay, I'm going to share some of this stuff on my therapy account. And I started sharing on a therapy account, which Rachael and I have been connected long enough for her to remember, and I remember there was a post about highly sensitive kids. I made a post about highly sensitive babies, And my son must have been, my oldest must have been a year and a half. So we were still fresh, like just outside of that baby time and I was just posting to try to get therapy clients.
I just started a perinatal practice. I had left my, I was working in a neurology clinic doing a lot of trauma work. I worked with concussion patients, patients with clients with chronic pain and was like, again, became a mom, had bad postpartum postpartum, depression, trauma, wanted to help other moms. But I kept getting messages from people who lived all over the world and I can't do therapy unless you live in the province where I'm regulated. And then I had that one post. I actually had made two posts, but the first one kind of went viral for me at the time 'cause I had a really little account and it was about highly sensitive babies.
And I was like, okay, I really think I need to talk about this. And I really wanted to talk about it because I wanted to talk about my experience. And as a therapist, I'm giving you a long answer here. As a therapist, you can't really share so much, right? We have, we kind of have like rules around like how much of yourself you're allowed to share. And so I felt running a therapy account that I had to really be, I had to hide a lot of who I was and I couldn't share as much of my personal story.
And so I was like, you know, I'm going to start this account. I'm not going to put my face on there and I’m not going to put my name. We're just going to call it the highly sensitive family. And at the time that was the only language I had to really understand what was going on for me and my son. Like he was, again, like I said, I think when I started the highly sensitive family had been running the motherhood mat for a year. So he was about two and a half when I decided to start the other account. And I was like, okay, I want to niche down to really talking about this experience of being more sensitive, this experience of having a nervous system that is more tuned to the world around you, that can hear every sound that other people miss and takes in more information and struggles more with sleep.
But for me, it really started to move past just the sleep piece into that greater experience that all at the time I was really speaking to that highly sensitive person experience. It has changed since then and we can talk more about that. But that was language that I found being highly sensitive. It's not language I learned about in grad school, but it was language that I found, I think through Tracy Cassell's evolutionary parenting blog, which again, at the time, six years ago, that was like one of the only sleep alternative resources out there.
And I remember finding her blog and being like, "Okay, highly sensitive person." So I started learning about being a highly sensitive person. And then, so I started the account and I started sharing about being a highly sensitive person and the way I understood it to interact with trauma and the way it can interact with the world around us and both as babies and children, but also for parents. And so I think something that I, there's lots of reasons why I started that account, one of them, 'cause I wanted to speak about this topic, and I wanted to be able to share myself more of myself than I felt like I could on a therapy page.
I wanted to be able to speak to trauma and the piece that, you know, I felt as someone who experienced some childhood trauma of my own, I felt like there was so much shame for parents who came into the world of parenting with these trauma experiences. And so if you are someone who is highly sensitive or neurodivergent, you are more likely to be impacted by childhood traumas therefore you're more likely to carry that into your parenting journey and therefore more likely to get triggered by your kids and yet there's so much shame there's so much deep shame for parents around reacting yelling and I think I wanted to be able to share and speak to that and I also wanted a place where I could speak to the holistic experience.
'Cause as you know on Instagram, there's lots of accounts that are like, either for kids or just for parents. And I didn't feel like there was a lot that spoke to that experience of the whole family because when you are a more sensitive family, you are all triggering one another. Like, it's so important that we understand, you know, we can help our child and understand our child, but if we're not doing our own inner work at the same time, it doesn't matter. Like we have to, we pass on our nervous system. So if I have a highly sensitive kid, I have an autistic kid, I have a kid with ADHD, odds are good, either mom or dad are carrying some of those traits inside of them as well.
And so we have to do the work too. And I think what's beautiful about understanding our kids' sensitivity in whatever way their neurodivergence is showing up is that for so many parents, it allows us the opportunity to see it in ourselves for the first time as well. That's the long answer to your seemingly short question.
No, it was the perfect answer. And you touched on this a little bit, and we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, I would love for you to talk more about this is, what are those signs? Because like you said, you were trained in this and you kind of knew you know more than maybe the average person does about themself- you're very self -aware and had been working on your own healing journey for so long- but when we come back from the break I would love for you to talk more about how you knew that your son was highly sensitive and what that meant at the time and what it means for you now so we'll take a quick break.
Okay, we're back, and you were talking before about sleep mostly, but it's not just sleep. So when we're talking about someone who is more highly sensitive or who just has a more sensitive nervous system, who's just wired differently, who might be neurodivergent, what are some of those first signs that parents might be able to notice. So it's the, you know, baby wakes up the second you stop moving or right when you put them down or they're very sensitive to noises. What are the other things that parents can kind of look for?
Well, I think what's important to know is that it shows up differently for all of our kids and for ourselves as well. But the really important piece around sensitivity is what happens, there's their sensitivity itself. Okay, so there's sense in the language I like to use is sensitively wired because it includes all of the people who are in my community, some of whom are highly sensitive, some of whom are autistic, some of whom identify with having ADHD, giftedness, but this whole umbrella of neurodivergence under which highly sensitive is included, it falls into that category of being neurodivergent as well as folks who have trauma. And that could be a baby who had a birth trauma, that could be a parent who had childhood traumas or a birth trauma themselves.
So what's important to remember about this group of people who by design have these nervous systems that are more sensitive to both the world around them, but also the world inside of them is that stress can often exacerbate the trait, the signs, the experiences of that sensitively wired person. So and the reason why I say that is because there's parents in my community who will say I have a highly sensitive daughter, but she was the most easy going baby, never had problem with sleep, was so easy, slept all the time, but then when they became a toddler or a preschooler, I started to really notice a lot of these traits of being highly sensitive or anxiety or whatever it might be for that individual.
And so that could be because of stress and there's good stress and there's bad stress and we won't get into a whole workshop on stress, but stress can build in our little bodies, right? And so let's say there was no early stress, right? Let's say you take a child who had a pretty easy, mom had a pretty easy pregnancy, pretty easy birth, and maybe on the spectrum of like sensitivity, you know, when we talk about high sensitivity or we talk about orchids and dandelions to Thomas, Thomas Boyd, did I get, is that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have his book right here. Which book is it?
The Orchid and the Dandelion. Yes, The Orchid and the Dandelion. Yes, here it is, Thomas Boyce. Is it Thomas Boyd? Boyce, okay, I knew I was a tiny flash in there.
Yeah. (laughing) So, you know, we can understand the way both, so the work of being highly sensitive, highly sensitive people, That comes from Elaine Aaron, and his work uses more of that language of dandelion orchid, but we're all talking about the same thing, and so the idea is there's like 30 % of the population falls into that category of being highly sensitive, 40 % of the population falls into that category of being moderately sensitive, 30 % of the population falls into the category of being not very sensitive. What does that mean? The people who are not very sensitive are kind of like those sturdy people.
Doesn't matter what environment you put them in. They're gonna thrive. They can thrive in a good environment. They can thrive in a bad environment. They're kind of just, they're not like affected by the environment as much as our kids on the other end of the spectrum who are more sensitive. So what does that mean if you're born in this highly sensitive body or you're born in this orchid body? So an orchid is equal to that highly sensitive dandelion is that low sensitive.
You're a sturdy dandelion your weed…. You can grow in whatever soil you'll thrive doesn't matter what what environment you have. But for those who are more highly sensitive But this also is relevant for those who are neurodivergent who are you know who have different neurodivergences- But have this more sensitively wired nervous system- it means that you're more impacted by stress.
And so you might come in and be sort of in that middle, like that range between moderate and high sensitivity. But then as that load of stress builds throughout your little life, you might start to creep over. And yet that sensitivity might start to get expressed more and more as that load, that load of stress inside of your body builds.
And if you're not given opportunities to discharge the stress, so stress in of itself isn't actually bad, but we need to actually be able to discharge that stress. And so if we're not actually given adequate opportunities to do that, if we're not given adequate opportunities to co -regulate with our grownups to return to baseline, to have moments of rest and recovery, and that builds and builds and builds, then yes, we can start to see that a child who previously seemed like they weren't sensitive at all, suddenly are now expressing all of this. And so really, we are now entering a question of like, what is it, right? How much of this is genetics? How much of this is the environment?
And it really is an interactive effect. We are born with a baseline and then the environment can shift where we end up, which is why I started my account in the first place, because for me, it was like if parents could understand that for this category of child, your parenting matters more, which feels like so much pressure to be putting on a parent, right? Which is why it's such a hard message to like package up.
No, that's true. But it matters more, right? It matters more because these are the adults I see in my practice, like in my therapy practice. These are the adults who still remember being bullied when they were in the third grade and the adults who still remember daycare drop off being really, really crying. I have adult clients who remember those moments. And so we obviously can't be perfect parents, but it is so important that where we do have control That we tune out the outside noise and we instead tune in to our children and their needs.
But the flip side to that is that if you are a parent parenting a child like this It's hard and you need more support. Like it is hard. No one like warns you how much time you're gonna spend like thinking about where you're gonna send them to school and when that first school doesn't work out where are you gonna send them for that second school and then making that decision to homeschool them because you've tried four schools and none of them are working and it is so difficult for parents but if we don't teach parents that like this is because your child's nervous system, they just came into the world like this, parents will wrongly believe that it's their fault, like they're doing something wrong.
When in reality, it's like the school is probably too loud or there's too many kids or the teacher's not, you know, they're not accommodating enough for your child's needs. And so to come full circle back to what you asked me with my long -winded answers, which is How do I know right? How do I know if my child is highly you asked specifically about highly sensitive, you know…. Oftentimes we will see with little kids. We will see that they have a harder time Regulating because their nervous systems are so much more impacted by Everything that's happening around them.
So there's a big sensory piece of a piece of being a highly sensitive person is that you are more hypersensitive to the sensory world. So that noise, you hear it louder. That smell, you smell it more. That like ache in your belly, that tooth that's coming through, you feel it more. Whereas the nonsensitive baby sleeps through that new tooth coming in. The highly sensitive baby is up for like two months every single night until the tooth finally pops through, not because they're trying to give you a hard time, but because they actually feel it so much more.
And what's happening inside of the nervous system is that the nervous system is detecting that feeling as a threat. And it's going danger. This is like something bad's happening. And then they start to cry. And then our job as the parent is to help them to soothe them and to remind them that they are safe. The same things for the sensory world once our kids go out into school, right? Or they're going to birthday parties or extracurricular activities as they get older and like the sensory overwhelm of the world around them can be really overstimulating.
And so what we will see with our kids is that they'll be prone to meltdowns, they'll have more separation anxiety, they'll struggle with anxiety, and we see that anxiety more so in our older kids, but in our little ones it'll manifest as that separation anxiety. And so that's a big piece. Another piece of the highly sensitive profile is depth of processing. So our kids and ourselves who are highly sensitive Think about things more…. They are constantly processing…. so we have all the sensory information that we now know they take more of in and What are they then doing with that information?
It's not just coming in and it disappears. They're now thinking about it. They're going okay. Is this a safe smell? Is this an unsafe smell? Is that something I saw before? Is that a stranger? Is that stranger gonna take me away from mommy, whereas the average child is not processing that information as deeply and for as long. And so as anyone who has a sensitive kid, you know your kid comes back a week later and they're still thinking about the thing that happened a week ago, 'cause they process it very deeply.
Same as us as adults, we create Instagram accounts and run them for four years talking about a subject that we've learned it out in depth. So sensitive people like to really go deep. We like to go deep in conversations. We like to go deep in the things that we learn about. And we do this naturally. Like we can't not do it. It's a part of who we are. And so that's a big one. And the other piece is the emotion piece. So they feel the emotions of others more.
We know that they have more mirror neurons, not more mirror neurons, but more active mirror neurons. So a mirror neuron is basically the thing that lights up in your brain. So when you, if you start crying right now on screen in front of me, my mirror neurons for sadness will light up and I'll feel that. I will feel that more than the person next to me, whose mirror neurons are not as sensitive. And so think about that for a child, right? Who is picking up on all the emotions of people around them, picking up on the emotions of mom and dad, picking up on the emotions of people at school. So that's a big one.
And so they tend to have a bigger range of emotions. They feel highs a lot higher, feel lows a lot lower. And so those are kind of like the defining characteristics, if you will, of like the highly sensitive person profile. Now to go into sort of a lot of the controversy, which I know you wanted to talk about online between like the neurodivergent world and the highly sensitive world is that, you know, the autistic community, many people in the autistic community would say, all of that describes me.
As you know, Rachael, I recently went through the assessment process for autism and I got a diagnosis. That's very recent, but the autistic community will say that all of these traits, and especially much more so for women than for men, this profile of being a highly sensitive person, most autistic people, many autistic people, we'll say that that defines them as well. And so the lines are pretty blurry between what is a highly sensitive person versus an autistic person, but they are different.
And to get a diagnosis of autism, there has to be a lot more present. So you can think of it like, all of those parts I just described will be present in a child, an adult who will get an autism diagnosis, but in order to get that diagnosis, there has to be a lot more stuff present, a lot more diagnostic criteria present, which we won't go into because that's a whole other workshop.
Come join raising us. Exactly. You'll learn all of this. Yeah.
But they are separate. There are people who are highly sensitive and will never get a diagnosis. And then there are people who, many people who will find their way to the autism diagnosis that maybe their child will one day get in there, or they might get themselves through the world of high sensitivity. And that was really up to come back to your first question, like why I started the account and why I, like if you go back to my first post, I actually talk about this, which is like most kids who our highly sensitive will one day get another label.
Like they will one day get anxiety diagnosis or ADHD or autism, like I knew that when I started the account. But for parents who have kids who are too young to get diagnosed who will never get a diagnosis because they don't meet enough criteria, like it's so important that we also have spaces for them to talk about what they're experiencing because You can show me a highly sensitive kid and autistic kid and sometimes on the surface they might be Presenting very similar and have similar levels of dysregulation and similar levels of difficulties in school.
And sometimes the highly sensitive kid is actually having more trouble in school than the autistic kid. And so I just want to name that it's not always a clear path and a clear clear line to, you know, being able to, yeah.
Yeah, and just speaking from someone who has worked with autistic children for the better part of my adult life, like a lot of what we look at in schools too is like how much is this impacting and how does this impact your functioning in school and in social settings and at home. And a lot of times that's kind of almost a barrier too of getting a diagnosis or getting support is well this isn't impacting them enough so you know we're not going to slap this label on them but I'm really glad you addressed that and I was also thinking about this when you were talking about how people often ask you if sensitivity can change throughout life and oh they were an easy baby but now they seem
sensitive.
And what I actually hear a lot of is the opposite parents will say oh I think they were really highly sensitive as a baby but they're Now they're really not so much anymore and you know, we both had kind of similar stuff with our first babies with you know colic and reflux and tongue -tie and hard to soothe and and all of that stuff. So I guess my question is like how does a parent know what's just maybe biological factors that babies will just grow out of sometimes and how and when is it a sign that it is a more highly sensitive or sensitively wired nervous system and how come some kids seem to grow out of it and other kids don't? What do you have to say about that?
Well, there's lots of reasons, right? So it could be that the child never was a highly sensitive child to begin with and maybe they were just in like extreme amounts of pain, right? And if you're in extreme amounts of pain all the time, right? Or there was a traumatic birth or like something very acute was happening and then that thing resolved then yeah of course it makes sense that like that child would come back to baseline but what we also know about sensitively wired kids highly sensitive kids kids who have certain temperament traits there's there's work around vantage sensitivity differential susceptibility.
And the idea is that these kids, while as I was talking about earlier, they are more negatively impacted by their environments, these same kids are more positively impacted by their environments than the dandelions. So you take a kid like this who's super colicky and cries all the time, super dysregulated, and you give them all kinds of co -regulation and you give them all kinds of nurturance and you help their nervous systems settle into the world because maybe they were a sensitive kid that then had a birth trauma and that took their already present sensitivity and put it on steroids.
And so now we are giving them all of this nurturance, all of this co -regulation, allowing our nervous systems to teach their nervous systems how to feel safe in the world. That's really what's happening for these really colicky, distressed, hard to soothe babies is that they have nervous systems that are really struggling to feel safe in the world and they need so much of us, right? That's what parents will say, right? They needed me all the time. You should be attached to me all the time. You need to be bounced and rocked all the time. All of that is soothing activities for our babies. But if we give that to them, If we nurture them, we are actually rewiring their brains to be able to one day regulate well on their own.
So yes, that is the goal, right? And I think that is, again, why I started my account and why the sleep industry is an industry that I find so problematic with the way it blanket gives these blanket recommendations to just sleep train is that if you do have a child like this, that child actually is going to need more holding. That child is actually going to need more soothing. Not every child needs that much soothing, right? There are those child, those children who they are dandelions, you just put them down and they're not going to be at a deficit because you didn't hold them all the time and rock them.
But for those kids who are the kids and also maybe throw in some traumas, tongue ties, really difficult stuff that might have happened at the beginning of their journey. And if we do not give that to them, the thing that they're asking for, we are then not allowing that process that we actually know can happen, which is the more we give, the more we're going to help them thrive. If we don't give that to them, then we actually don't see what you're describing, you see happening with some of your families, which is, yeah, you have this really hard to soothe baby who now becomes this really well regulated toddler.
But that actually fits what the research tells us about these sensitive kids. They do better, like as teenagers, sensitive teenagers do better in therapy than the average kids, sensitive adults do better in therapy. Like we thrive under positive nurturing environments and we flounder in environments that are bereft of that support that emotional support that regulation support that we need.
I love that and I think that what's also so difficult that we need to talk about too is it's so hard for some parents to provide that coregulation that is needed. So we're going to take one more quick break and when we come back I would love to talk about that.
Okay we're back and right before the break we kind of discussed you know how these sensitive kids really need that very nurturing sensitive caregiving and they need a lot. They need a lot of co -regulation. They need a lot of holding, bouncing, contact napping, co -sleeping, whatever it is, they just need so much of us. And for the average parent, that's hard, right? Like you're sleep deprived, you're new to this whole thing, you have no idea what you're doing. It's really hard.
But then there are those parents that are also sensitively wired and that also struggle with regulating themselves and with sensory input and now there's a baby screaming and touching you all the time. That's a lot. So I would love to kind of speak to the highly sensitive parents or the neurodivergent parents that are listening. What can you tell them about doing this work and helping your baby co -regulate when you're finding it so hard to keep your own self-regulated?
Mm -hmm. We could do a whole other episode on this. I know. But I think, you know, I think the starting point is, okay, if we can acknowledge that the sensitive neurodivergent baby toddler child needs more help, then we also have to recognize that the sensitive neurodivergent parent needs more help. And you need more help. You need more breaks, you need more support, you need, you need more than you probably are getting.
And so I think this is going to look different for everyone and this is why this is such a hard conversation to have because we all have different resources. We all have different villages. We all have differences, like some, some people have no one, right? No one don't hold the baby. And so then what do you do, right? And so I think it's a very personal question that everyone has to ask themselves, which is how can I creatively get my needs met in this season?
Because every season is different, but I think if you have that kind of a baby that doesn't sleep and is really challenging, that year postpartum is always going to be just a hard season. And I think for sensitive and neurodivergent parents, that season is so hard because, again, you're touched out and there is so much that's being asked of you. And I know like breastfeeding for me was just like torture. Like I actually saw a Instagram, a reel that a mother posted the other day talking about how as a neurodivergent mom, like feeding was like the sensory experience of breastfeeding was a nightmare.
And I was like, yeah, and like, and I did it for a year and a half. And I like can't believe like I did it for a year and a half in my second, but I think a big piece is like co -reg is re regulating ourselves. So like, what do I need in order to be more regulated? And so the question is, do I need therapy, right? Like, did I have a birth trauma do I need to do some actual trauma therapy work because so much of what I see with parents is that they actually are traumatized and then they're trying to regulate with their child but they're in a place of fight or flight all the time because they likely either had their childhood traumas got opened up the moment they had a baby or got exacerbated by a traumatic birth or you know IVF journey or pregnancy or postpartum or whatever it was.
And so when we are walking around with these open wounds and we are sort of our traumas are out there, it is very hard for us to stay regulated. It's also when you have a child who's crying a lot, you're going to get triggered, right? That is going the sensory experience of that is going to be triggering. And so is there actual like therapy that I need to do? The other piece around that is like just having someone who can hold space for the emotions that you're feeling, you know, the grief that you might be feeling.
I think so much of the parent what the parents in my community experience is grief. Like this is not what I thought this was going to look like. And I think first Parents like often experience that in that newborn phase where it's like, this was what, what? This is not what I was promised. This is not what I thought this was gonna look like. But then that really does continue through that journey of, you know, your kid is the only one screaming at drop off two months into school while every other child has figured out how to go in.
And, you know, your child is the 10 year old who is refusing to play on the baseball team and how do I, you know, figure it out. So there's grief that follows parents into this journey of things just being harder than they ever imagined it would be and grief around maybe the ways that we're showing up. Like, I'm not showing up as the parent. I thought I was gonna be, you know? I'm an angrier mom than I thought I was going to be. I may, I cry in front of my child. Like that's something I hear from parents all the time. Like I'm crying in front of my child. Like I feel so bad. I'm like, it's going to like negatively impact them. And so, you know, what is, what is the grief that we need to sit with?
And then the other piece is that sensory piece, right? And so like, if, and this really comes back to the stress plus sensitivity, okay? So It's like the more stress we have in our lives, the more our sensitivities will be exacerbated, the more that sensory experience will be harder for us. And so it really is this interactive effect, but do I need to get ear plugs, right? Do I need to buy those? I don't know. Has anyone still got those loop ear plugs? I remember they sent me a pair. My children lost them and I never actually marketed them for them. They sent me a I'm your free sample, but can I put in some noise -canceling earbuds or just put in my ear pods or listen to music while my kids are screaming in the next room or do I need to go take a break and go close the door in the bathroom for a minute?
Do I need to get us all outside in the fresh air and move our bodies? Do I need to put some music on and start dancing? Do I need to be around another safe adult? So we talk so much about co -regulating with our babies, them borrowing our nervous systems to calm down, that we forget that as adults, we do this too.
So, you know, is there another adult that I can co -regulate with? I know I used to just get out of the house and go talk to my barista at the coffee shop, who was like a 26 year old and like, she She was totally chilled, had no stress in her life at the moment, and she was always so soothing and calming, and can you get out and go talk to the checkout person at the grocery store? Is there a friend you can call? Is there a family member that you can just call in those moments where you're feeling dysregulated? Is there a podcast host, like Rachael, that has a soothing voice that you want to just listen to their podcast and you know that when you listen to them, you feel soothed.
Likewise, are there things I cannot do? I know there are people I can't listen to. There are certain podcast hosts that when my nervous system is especially activated, deep, deep male voices, which we know research has shown that those deep male voices are actually very alarming to our nervous systems but also high pitched like people who talk really fast. I can't listen to them either. So you know who and the people in your lives right like maybe your partner is really stressed and you need to say like I can't talk to you right now.
I'm with the kids and you're having a hard time at work but I need you to call your mother instead of calling me and so like we need to really be able to advocate for ourselves and decrease the stress that we have control over. Because there is so much stress in our lives as parents, we do not have control over. I cannot control whether or not my child's going to have a meltdown today. I can't. I think we get so fixated on that as parents and so much of the parenting world has monetized that around download my tantrum script so that your child doesn't have the tantrum, but those are actually things we don't have that much control over, right? Like our child is going to have them melt down, be likely regardless at some point. Maybe it didn't happen in that moment, it's gonna happen, you know, an hour from now.
So what are the things we can control? Let's focus on, you know, the external world, the external sensory soothing things that we can bring into our lives. What are the grading sensory things we can remove? So can I put on sunglasses instead of squinting? 'Cause that light outside, even though I'm not aware of it, is taking a toll on my nervous system and is making my window of tolerance, which we haven't talked about yet. But it's decreasing my capacity to handle another stressor. So sunlight coming in means the next noise my child makes is I'm less likely to tolerate it.
It seems like such a small thing, but we have to think of the sensory world is the way we receive information. And so anything that's coming into our brain is coming through one of our sensory pieces, right? Our eyes, our ears, our nose. You know, am I not gonna wear those today because they're going to be too tight and by midway through the day, I'm going to be screaming on my kids and I'm not going to know why. It's probably because I decided to wear the jeans or wear the headband that's digging into my head or really start to think about the sensory world and what are the things that are soothing and what are the things that are not and bring in more of the soothing stuff, get rid of the stuff that's not. And then the other piece is self -talk, you know, how am I speaking to myself? This takes a toll on us as well when we are not kind.
So when I am yelling at myself, when I am harsh with myself, or when I'm catastrophizing and saying things like, you know, well, the whole day's ruined because they didn't take the nap or, you know, we're never going to get to school on time and whatever. When I talk to myself in that critical away in that anxious way, it is also depleting my reserves, and it is taking a toll on my nervous system.
And so we just have the one nervous system, and it does all the jobs, and it is impacted by all the things, whether that is the world around us, the sensory world around us, the sensory world within us, or the thoughts that we are having in the way that we speak to ourselves. So that is, that's the big, the big, long answer to that one.
No, that's so, it's so helpful. And I know so much of this is so much easier said than done, but it really is like a muscle that you have to just practice. And sometimes we just have to like fake it till we make it and just try on a whole different bunch of things and see what's gonna work for us. 'Cause it'll be a little different for all of us, just like there are different things that work differently for our babies, right?
We are running out of time, And you're just such a wealth of knowledge and I could listen to you talk all day. So the other thing that I kind of wanted to talk about, but now I think maybe we should just do another episode, because I think we could talk about this for a whole hour, is this idea of having a really traumatic or really difficult postpartum journey, having a sensitive child or a neurodivergent child, and then that grief piece of like, oh, I thought I wanted a big family.
I thought I wanted at least one or two more kids. Now I'm not so sure and this is something that I hear all the time and I know you do too and you built a whole course around this idea because you were getting this question so many times is like I would love another baby but you know what if it's the same? What if it's harder? So yeah I know you have a lot of content around that already and maybe we'll bring you back for another episode dedicated to just that because I think that's another huge piece.
Yeah, I mean, I love talking about it. And yes, I built like a 20 hour course called I Love Another Baby Butt. Come Take I Love, it is currently running live. It's in its second iteration. It is such a beautiful course. And it is something that, you know what? It was one of those things where I was like, I was so deep in it and I, my husband and I, it took us a long time to get to a place where we could even contemplate doing it again. And I did a lot of prep. Like I really wanted to try again.
When I got to that place where I was like, okay, I really do want a second. And so much of the course and so much of what we need to think about when we're thinking about having another baby is this idea, right? The idea I had around how many children I thought I'd have, what my family would look like. That's really where the struggle comes in, right? We come in with these ideas, some people come in and they think they're like, I was only ever gonna have one. And so it's not a struggle for them, right?
Like they never imagined that they'd have more, but it's for the people who imagined they would have more. And then suddenly it is so difficult and so traumatic and you have postpartum depression or your relationship relationship with your partners like so on the rocks and, you know, so many things, right? There's so many reasons you had a birth trauma, you had a hard time conceiving what miscarriages infant loss like there's so many reasons.
But this having a really difficult baby is a really common one. This baby who needs so much more of us that we were just not prepared for and then oftentimes the way we kind of end up struggling as a result and then show up in the ways that we maybe didn't think we would and so there's so much to unpack around these ideas the expectations that we have and unpacking how much of this like is a fear is it like really truly like a fear that's rooted in trauma and I knew that was what it was for me I knew I really did want a second, but I was just really afraid that it was going to be like awful, like, and I wouldn't be able to handle it. Or is it more of a worry?
So not quite rooted in trauma, but more of like this worry of like, I'm worried like, it's more of this regret and we're going to make the wrong decision. And it's less in that world of like trauma based. I really want another one, but I am terrified I'm going to be a bad mom to my first child or I'm terrified all these bad things are going to happen. And so there's a lot of unpacking to do around societal expectations.
Did I think I, like my idea of having more, did that come from my own wants or is that because the society told me that I should have more than one, maybe I'd be happy with one. And so there's so much work, there's so much unpacking and we do all of that in the course but I can honestly say like now for me I'm like I would love a third but I truly don't think I could do it and what's so interesting is that what we talk about in iLab…. in the course is like it really is this balancing act of like your want against your not wants right so like for me the first time, I wanted a second more than I was afraid of the things that could go wrong, like my desire to have another baby was stronger.
But now I've had my second, I don't feel, I would love a third, but my desire for a third in this moment is not stronger than the absolute nausea I feel when I think about having to be pregnant again, when I think about not sleeping again, when I think about having to breastfeed again. Like I feel ill when I think about doing that. Like I truly feel sick.
I feel like that's how you know your done.
And I did feel, I felt that. Well, no, because no, but so that's what's interesting. I actually felt all those things after my first as well. And that's what's so interesting.
But that feeling went away. But that feeling went away. That feeling went away. When my first was around like two, two and a half. Yeah, went away. Yeah, no, I was pregnant by the time he was two and a half, but by the time he was two, it went away. And so my youngest is now like two and a half and it still hasn't gone away. So I'm not getting pregnant anytime soon. But that's really what it is, right? It's like, is my desire for another one strong enough? And if it is, if I really do have that yearning, then what do I have to do, right?
What supports do I need to put in place? You know, like I booked my tongue tie clinic appointment while I was pregnant. I got like everything, like I was like, I booked my postpartum therapist before, like I didn't need her, I was totally fine, but I booked all that stuff while I was pregnant. I planned, so like how do you plan? If that's what you really want, how do you plan and set yourself up for success? And if the decision is my fears outweigh the yearning then how do I sit with the grief of not having more when I really thought I would?
And that's where I like I'm gonna but like that's like I'm in that whereas like I would love like I wish I could but I don't think like I can't but I always joke I'm like if I like accidentally like maybe in like five years when I get that like whoopsie like I'm like 43, you know, like I didn't think I'd get pregnant but we accidentally get pregnant. Like that might be the only way it happens, but there's no intentional getting pregnant on my end.
That would be the best. Right. And so there is, but there's grief there, right?
Of course. There's grief. And I think we have to make sure that when we are sitting in that grief that comes up for us as parents. And again, it comes up in so many different ways that We keep it to the grief and we don't go to that place of there's something wrong with me. I'm broken because how easy is it and I hear this from parents all the time, it's so easy to go to that place of like, I wish I wasn't so sensitive. I wish I wasn't neurodivergent. I wish I didn't have these sensory, like I wish I maybe I shouldn't have never had children. I'm not built for this.
I wish I could handle it. I wish I was better at this. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so easy to go to that place and we can't like we have to we have to feel the feelings of the grief but not make it more than that.
Like you are still like I'm an amazing mom. Like I'm like such an incredible mom. And so the grief doesn't have to become more than what it is, which is the sadness for the yearning that things, you know, are different than what we imagined, but different doesn't mean worse. It's just different.
Yeah, right. What is something that you wish somebody had told you before you had kids?
Oh, good lord. That I would cry on public podcast episodes. If you like, I think I cry through like a third of the iLab videos. I cry so much in public these days. Um, what do I wish? I mean, I think I just wish that there had been someone to tell me how much of my own traumas would come up. Like I was so cocky, like I was like, I'm good. Like I haven't struggled with depression in like a decade. like, I'm not going to have post -partum depression. Like, I'm totally fine. Like, I'm a therapist. I got this.
Like, I wish someone had actually sat me down and given me like, this is what this is potentially going to look like. These might be the things that are going to be triggering and activating for you. This might be the way that your traumas and your childhood stuff is going to show up. Here's what you to make sure you don't you don't start drowning in it and I wish I had had that.
That is the number one answer. I ask that question of everybody that comes on the podcast and that's what everybody says is that I wish I knew how much parenting would bring up my own stuff and how much about it is about me and has nothing to do even with my kid.
Yeah I think that's such a common that's such a common experience. Natalie, as you know, I could talk to you all day and I am so glad that we finally made this work because I know this episode will help so many people, but again, we've really like only scratched the surface of your knowledge and what you talk about. So where can people find you and connect with you if they want to hear more about what you talked about today?
So at the moment, although, you know, as Rachael knows, we've talked about changing my account name, so hope Rachel will update show notes if and when it changes in the future. But for now, my Instagram account is called @highlysensitivefamily.
If you are looking to do like an introduction to any of the parenting healing work, I have a wonderful masterclass, it's called the Reparenting Masterclass, where you can just go in depth into all of these topics around healing our own wounds as parents and triggers and all of that stuff. I have the raising us membership community, which is a massive deep dive into all of these topics around what is a highly sensitive person, the window of tolerance, trauma, stress, grief, neurodivergence, autism, giftedness, all of that stuff. You can find everything that we talked about and more inside of the membership.
And then I have the I’d love another baby book course, which is a course for parents who are trying to navigate this big question of am I gonna have another baby.
Perfect thank you so much, have a great rest of your day and I'm sure I'll talk to you later slash tomorrow.
I'll talk to you soon. Thank you for having me. Sure.
