Highly Sensitive Child Parenting Strategies
Written by Dr. Amy Nasamran, PhD, Licensed Psychologist specializing in child and family therapy
Last updated November 2025
Are you raising a child who seems different from other kids? Maybe you can’t quite put your finger on it. Your child is bright, intuitive, and in many ways ahead of what you’d expect for their age. Yet they struggle with seemingly routine things or can sometimes become upset at what feels like a drop of a dime.
You might have a highly sensitive child.
Learning about effective strategies to support highly sensitive children has been a new and rewarding process for me. Even as a child psychologist who’s familiar diagnosing and treating childhood mental health issues, we didn’t learn about the unique parenting experience for the highly sensitive child in our training program. Likely, that’s because the highly sensitive child profile isn’t a psychiatric diagnosis or a mental health disorder.
I first learned about this term — highly sensitive person, or HSP for short — once I started practicing. As I read, researched, and learned more and more about HSPs, I realized how much I identify as one, too. Looking back, I think I was also likely a highly sensitive child, or HSC, but I didn’t know it back then. And at that time, families — including my own — were certainly not given the right parenting tools to support highly sensitive child needs.
Highly sensitive children have so many strengths, but they also have unique needs that can easily get missed. Maybe that’s because highly sensitive kids don’t always look like they need help from the outside. They’re bright, intuitive children who might put on a brave face and appear like everything's okay, when there are actually signs that they could use some extra support.
In my experience, I’ve noticed that even the most reputable parenting books and resources out there don’t address how to help a sensitive child. So I wrote this guide based on current research of highly sensitive children, my experience as a child psychologist, and lived experience to help you not only begin to understand your highly sensitive child, but to also learn effective, evidence-based highly sensitive child parenting strategies.
What Does Highly Sensitive Child Mean?
From a neurodiversity-affirming lens, being highly sensitive is thought to be an innate, neurobiological trait. Current research estimates that about 1 in 5 people have the highly sensitive trait (about 20-30% of people). According to Dr. Elaine Aron, clinical psychologist and one of the leading researchers of HSPs, being highly sensitive is a normal variation of human temperament and personality. While all people vary in how they process information in their environment and how they respond, HSPs have a nervous system (the brain) that notices and processes subtle information more deeply.
Researchers have called being highly sensitive “environmental sensitivity” or “sensory processing sensitivity,” not to be confused with sensory processing disorder. In fact, being highly sensitive isn’t a mental health disorder or psychiatric diagnosis at all. Rather, it’s an inborn trait that explains how a highly sensitive person processes information from the world around them, thinks, feels, and behaves. It’s an innate part of their temperament and personality.
For example, think about a totally everyday activity like sitting in a room with people with the TV on. Many people may not even notice what’s on TV, or they’re able to easily tune out the sound of the TV and carry on a conversation, no problem. Highly sensitive people and kids, though, might feel distracted or even bothered by the background noises — they could become overwhelmed by all of the stimuli happening at once (e.g., people talking, multiple conversations at once, sounds from the TV). HSPs and HSCs perceive and process cues from their environment more strongly and thoroughly, and they can become more affected by this over time, too.
Key Traits of the Highly Sensitive Child
Before we jump into some highly sensitive child parenting strategies, it’s important to understand key traits of highly sensitive children.
The short story is that highly sensitive people and children:
Notice more cues in their environment than others
Have stronger internal responses (i.e., physical reactions, mental processing, emotions)
In other words, HSPs and HSCs tend to notice more, think more, and feel more. But that’s grossly over-simplifying it, so let’s dig a little deeper into specific key highly sensitive child traits.
Understanding Your Highly Sensitive Child’s Emotions and Big Feelings
Maybe you’ve been wondering or are starting to wonder, is my child highly sensitive? Highly sensitive children have some key characteristics to look for:
Highly sensitive children notice more in their environment and take in more sensory information than other kids. They may notice subtleties and changes that other kids don’t. For example, HSCs might be more bothered by faint sounds or startled by loud ones, be bothered by wetness on their clothes, or detect subtle smells or flavors in food. They may also feel more sensitive or hurt by gentle teasing from loved ones or perceive typical kid play like the swings as too high or risky.
Another highly sensitive child trait is processing information more thoroughly. HSCs prefer to observe and think before they act. They generally operate very conscientiously and carefully as a result and may appear quiet or shy. Some are also very creative as a result of their thoughtful and thorough thinking processes.
Highly sensitive kids have a strong sense of empathy for others. They take on the emotions of people and even animals around them. HSCs notice and spend more time thinking about social cues, like people’s facial expressions, tone of voice, and emotions.
Overstimulation & Sensory Overload: What Parents Need to Know
Highly sensitive children are easily overwhelmed by the high levels of stimulation they experience. They’re more affected by unexpected or sudden changes in plans. HSCs are easily overstimulated and can become tired or overwhelmed more quickly.
Due to the high levels of noticing, thinking, and feeling, highly sensitive kids are susceptible to shutting down, tantrums, and meltdowns. This is usually the result of information or emotion overload from what is thought of typical kid activities, like a birthday party or the playing at the park, rather than defiance.
Examples of highly sensitive child in everyday life
Putting this all together, here are some ways that highly sensitive child traits might play out in everyday life:
Using big words or asking lots of thought-provoking questions
Seeming mature for their age or ahead of their years
Preferring quiet play over rough and tumble or high-action play
Having difficulty going to bed especially after an exciting day
Being uncomfortable or having trouble adjusting to sudden or unexpected changes
Feeling easily bothered by scratchy clothing, loud noises, or smells of food
Showing deep care and nurture of their friends, animals, and living things and having strong feelings and empathy when people or animals are injured
Highly sensitive child parenting strategies
Given what you now know about HSCs and their unique strengths and needs, supporting and disciplining a highly sensitive child comes with special considerations. Disciplining a highly sensitive child involves adjusting your approach to teach, communicate boundaries, and provide co-regulation instead over control. Using parenting strategies that match your child’s temperament will help them learn better and succeed. Here are some highly sensitive child parenting strategies that address your child’s unique learning and emotional needs.
Creating Calm Spaces and Predictable Routines
Provide lots of downtime. A highly sensitive child can become easily overstimulated and overwhelmed by bigger groups (even a classroom of kids), sounds, and feelings. Providing plenty of downtime with quiet or relaxing activities can help your child decompress and recharge. Creating a reliable, designated calm or safe space at home and identifying one ahead of time before you leave home can be helpful.
Provide structure and routine. Like most kids, highly sensitive kids thrive with structure and routine. Having a predictable and familiar routine helps kids feel safe and know what to expect. Avoid abrupt changes when possible. Of course, in life, things will come up. When plan changes are unavoidable, provide your highly sensitive child with as much notice as possible. This will give them time to adjust. Praise their cooperation even though it was hard for them to quickly shift gears.
Validating Feelings and Teaching Self-Regulation
Encourage and praise their strengths. All kids thrive off of praise, and highly sensitive children need lots of encouragement and feedback too. When it comes to praising your highly sensitive child, reinforce their strengths, such as noticing their thoughtfulness or empathy for others. This will help normalize and humanize their feelings.
Validate your child’s feelings. In tough moments, start by acknowledging your child’s feelings. This will help them feel heard and understood. It could also help your highly sensitive child understand their own emotions. For example, you could help them name the emotion by saying, “I see that you’re frustrated,” or “I know that made you sad.” Showing empathy can also help your highly sensitive child become more receptive to any upcoming feedback and guidance.
Teach feeling words. Highly sensitive kids feel many emotions, sometimes more strongly than others. Young children might show how they feel with their behaviors. Help your highly sensitive child learn feeling words to help them verbalize and better communicate about all of their very many different feelings with you.
Communication & Boundaries: Co-Regulation Instead of Control
When it comes to correcting or disciplining a highly sensitive child, many parents have expressed challenges with knowing what to say and do. HSCs are more sensitive to criticism and correction, and parents are understandably concerned about being too harsh or hurting their child’s feelings. Yet, all children, including highly sensitive kids, need a parent who can discipline in a way that helps them learn and grow. But how do we do this? According to the latest research, looking at results from multiple studies together, parenting with a balance of strong warmth and limits (i.e., boundaries!), lead to positive outcomes for highly sensitive kids, ones like resilience, self-advocacy skills, and emotion regulation. Here’s how I recommend applying these principles when parenting your highly sensitive child:
Start with a positive. The popular phrase “connect before you correct” is key here. Notice a positive about your child first, or bring up something that you’ve noticed them making extra effort with, before you provide feedback and correction.
Use a neutral tone of voice. Speaking in a neutral tone and volume will make it easier for your highly sensitive child to be receptive and understand your feedback. A neutral tone can help highly sensitive kids, who are more sensitive to things like tone of voice, focus on the message instead of becoming overwhelmed by input.
Be direct and consistent. Tell your child exactly what your expectations are. Be clear and consistent with your boundaries and rules. Even though it can often be tempting to bend the rules to avoid upsetting a sensitive child, too many exceptions actually make it harder for them to learn your boundaries and expectations in the long run. Sensitive children do better when things are predictable.
Parent Self-Care & Why It Matters
Understand your own temperament as a parent. Knowing your own temperament and personality can help you begin to understand how your needs maybe match or differ from those of your highly sensitive child. For example, are you someone who loves to talk and talks a lot? Do you thrive in groups or in high-energy environments? Or does your temperament tend to match your highly sensitive child to some degree, preferring one-on-one, quiet, and calming activities? Understanding the match or mismatch can be a starting point to developing family practices, routines, and values that support the needs of each unique family member and the family unit as a whole.
Prioritize your own self-care as a parent. As someone who’s always caring for others, it can be easy to forget or feel counterintuitive to prioritize your own needs. Your self-care as a parent actually matters a lot when it comes to parenting a highly sensitive child. Caring for yourself sets you up to be able to show up for your child in the way that you would like to. Also, engaging in healthy self-care practices yourself sets a great example for your child about what healthy coping looks like. Finally, prioritizing your self-care means you’ll more likely have the energy it takes to help your child tackle the tough moments together in life, too.
Next Steps For Your Family
Having a highly sensitive child is a gift, and your child has many strengths like a strong intuition, empathy, and creativity. Highly sensitive children also have unique needs. If you feel like you’re struggling with raising your highly sensitive child, it may help to have another perspective. I recommend consulting or working with someone who specializes in the unique needs of how to help a sensitive child.
As a licensed psychologist, child development and behavior expert, and HSP myself, I have the unique ability to guide parents in using specialized skills to support their HSP child’s needs through parent consultation and support. Reach out to learn more!
MEET THE AUTHOR, AMY NASAMRAN, PHD
I’m Dr. Amy, a licensed psychologist, bestselling author, and neurodiversity advocate. I specialize in working with people at two of my favorite stages in life: early childhood and early adulthood. Atlas Psychology was founded to provide community-driven, evidence-based mental health therapy, awareness, and education for children, their parents, and adults with differently-wired minds.
