Is Your Child "Sensitive"? Tools, Truths, and What the Research Really Shows w/ Renowned Temperament Researcher Professor Michael Pluess

32:40And obviously there's lots of questions with that, like childcare outside of the home, who's looking after a child at what age. So there's significant differences. And that's also research that we've shown that the difficult children that are often more sensitive, they're actually more impacted by the childcare quality that they experience, as well as the parenting quality. They are more likely to develop problems if parenting quality or childcare quality is low, but they have the least problems. They have less problems than other children if they're in a high quality environment. So a sensitive child experiencing high childcare quality or high parenting quality will have less behavioral issues than a less sensitive child, a less sensitive child in the same context.

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36:47Well, I guess that that brings up to everything you say makes me have more questions. These are two that I just thought of. first of all, I think the Hoover, the vacuum cleaner example, that's a Hoover, right? Yeah. Vacuum cleaner. Yeah. That is such a great example because the supportiveness and sensitivity of his parents was that, okay, this sound is too much for him right now. We're not going to not Hoover. we're just going to give him the opportunity to make it a little lighter with earphones or voice protection and then he gets used to it and acclimates and then eventually he too can be in a room with the Hoover.

37:40He's not, you know, I think it's actually a perfectly beautiful example of how. So when I would give him those ear moths I would tell him I'm hoovering now it's going to be a bit noisy but after 20 minutes or so I'm done so he obviously doesn't understand the minutes yet but he knows okay this will end so I would sit there on the sofa put the headphones on and give him a book to read and he would have a bit more a sense of control of the situation because he knows what's going to happen And it's not a surprise. It's not like, oh, will this go on forever now? Because I told him, this is just going to be for a little bit.

38:25And now, why don't you read this book? And then I come back to you. So it de-escalates or prevents escalation from the beginning and gives him some sense of control to make sense of the noise that he hears and to understand what it's about. And so would that be equivalent to just like generally over time and even thinking about couples or in the workplace or with older kids, that if you know that you are more highly sensitive and you've been given the opportunity to realize, oh, I do better when I'm not surprised. I do better when I have a plan. I do better when I remind myself that this will be a little bit more uncomfortable, but I'm not helpless.

39:14That you then translate that to the different scenarios that you might encounter. Absolutely, yeah. And that's why it's so key. And I think we do find in some of our studies that highly sensitive people, and we look at adults now, sometimes struggle a bit more with understanding their emotions. And I think because they have strong emotions, they have strong emotional reactions. And having strong emotional reactions does not necessarily mean you understand them, it's just you experience them. And I think I would expect that in more adjusted, highly sensitive individuals, they would have a good understanding of their emotions.

39:54So they know, oh, I feel stressed at the moment because of this deadline or because of this conflict or this or that happened, or I'm feeling overwhelmed right now because I've been surrounded by people. I've been in five meetings today and I just need a break. All right. So understanding what's happening within you helps you then to take action and knowing exactly what you need to do to regulate yourself. And that's absolutely key. So, and we know about regulation, whether that's emotional or behavioral regulation, that is often internalized parenting that you receive from your parents. So your parent tells you, oh, you know, the first thing is to acknowledge the emotion.

40:44So you're feeling sad right now because of this. And that gives the child a sense of, okay, the child doesn't think about why do I feel sad, right? They're just feeling sad, but helping them to make that connection, understanding, oh, this is why I felt sad, or this is why I feel happy. To make a connection, they can internalize that and they can internalize then the strategies that the parents use, and that will become their self-regulation. So the stronger their self-regulation skills that they acquired during childhood, the more likely they will do well in adulthood because they now have learned to deal with their emotions.

41:19They've now learned to deal with their cognitive processing as well because sensitivity is not just about emotions, it's also about the deeper cognitive processing of experiences. So highly sensitive children will think for longer and more deeply about their experiences. and if they have the chance to talk things through with their parents who takes them seriously and their thoughts seriously that will help them in that processing they will benefit from the processing that their parents are able to apply and then make it their own so they internalize the parental strategies basically and i could see where so so thinking about siblings first if your parent is responding in a supportive way.

42:08And I guess I should just from a reality check standpoint, sometimes it's annoying and sometimes you might lose your cool. But if the majority of the time you can think about what is my child experiencing and how can I, you know, help support them and co-regulate, I would imagine you end up with a deeper connection with that particular child so that the environment draws out from some parents a closer connection and a deeper connection. Maybe some, if there isn't a good fit, it causes tension. But if there's high quality connection, what happens in siblings and other family members if the conversation of the house, you hear this a lot, like they're sucking the air out of the room.

43:01They're taking all of the space there. They require so much more. So then you get the kids who are just like, nobody notices me because I don't need them. Like they're highly adaptable. But does that cause attention, not attention, attention in households? I read somewhere, I can't remember where I read this, that it's more adaptive to have only one highly sensitive child in the household because that means they're going to, they'll get more attention. But if there are multiple highly sensitive children, it would not be super helpful or something along those lines. Well, there's two perspectives here.

43:46The evolutionary theories would suggest that it makes sense, or at least some evolutionary inspired theories would suggest it makes sense that children differ in their sensitivity, so that within a family you will have one sensitive child and one that is less sensitive. Some other theories suggest it's all about adaptation. So depending on what that family's experience is, children will both, you know, if they're more than two, they will develop a similar level of sensitivity. I think the reality is that children differ substantially in their temperament, even though they're biologically relatively similar.

44:26there's still quite differences in tempering between children from the same parents. So I think if you're a highly sensitive parent, you're probably more likely to have a highly sensitive child because we know it's heritable. But it's possible that your children are less sensitive and it's possible that you have one child that is highly sensitive and other children are not. It's also possible you have only highly sensitive children. I think probably all the combinations are possible and we don't have the data on the distribution of high sensitivity amongst siblings. So we simply don't have that data.

45:05But we do know from the genetic studies that the siblings share 50 % of the genetic information with each other. So we would expect that it's more likely, you know, it's not unlikely that they would be similar. But again, it's only 50%. Same with the parents. Have you looked at anything that sort of suggests cultural, like are there some cultures or communities that have higher rates of high sensitivity? Yes, there are. There are cultural differences, especially when we collect data sensitivity with self-report measures where children complete the questionnaire. For example, one funny example is, so we've used our measures in the UK, and then we do lots of research with colleagues in Italy as well.

45:57And one of the subscales of our sensitivity measure is called aesthetic sensitivity. It's basically capturing to what degree children enjoy nice tastes, arts, music, and things like that. And Italian children scored much higher on that. Oh, wow. Yeah, which they push their sensitivity levels high. And I think that's clear there's a cultural difference. There's a much stronger appreciation for good food in Italy compared to the UK, I would say, culturally, right? As well as the arts and music and all of that. So that's one difference. And we also find very interesting differences with China. So in the West, UK, USA, and most countries in the West, we do find this association between sensitivity and mental health.

46:46Sensitivity is more considered a problem. And in China, that's quite different. In China, sensitive children are considered as examples. It's something positive. and we do find associations with sensitivity in Chinese and our Chinese samples are more positive they're not strongly linked to the mental health so in the culture sensitivity is perceived as a more positive trait in China compared to the western world where you know especially the USA I guess it's very much about you know the loud voices win and you know you're your brand and and all of those things. I think as a highly sensitive person living in the West could be more challenging.

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52:07They've even got vegan flavors. So go grab your FlavCity protein and just get your protein on. Visit shopflavcity.com and use the code goodhumans15 at checkout for 15 % off. So from like, just from a broader cultural perspective, it seems like in the U.S. culturally, there are some adaptations that are meant for supporting young people that have maybe, it's like a misunderstanding of sensitivity. So like now I can't decide if there's like this high, like the U.S. is so about the loudest, the leadership qualities that are sort of overt, the resilience is highly sought after, while at the same time, our way of dealing with sort of mental health and social and cultural issues is to either overcorrect completely and just like make sure that there's like nothing, words are not spoken, things are not done that would cause any discomfort whatsoever.

53:17And so I think, and then there's the rebellion against that. And I think there's some like strange misunderstanding about the capacity for sensitive caregiving that it means getting rid of uncomfortable experiences. And I was so curious. I think there must be an association between empathy and sensitivity. I want to hear about empathy and sensitivity and those associations. And then I guess I want to understand, are there some highly sensitive people whose empathy is so overwhelming that they might come across the opposite, unable to sort of open that up? And so there's the reaction is having to build sort of a hardness around it?

54:12Yeah, so we do have information on empathy and different aspects to empathy. So generally we do find that the higher people score on our sensitivity measures, the more empathy they report as well. So that's all self-report, right? And it does make sense because the measures of sensitivity, especially the new ones that we use, they include the aspects of the social life, how well they can read emotions in other people. Do they know what someone else needs before they say it? Are they impacted by the emotions of others? If you're around people that are in a negative mood, in a bad mood, does it have a stronger impact on your mood as well?

54:53At the same time, if you're surrounded by someone who's really positive, does it have a strong impact on you as well? And we do find that most people that are sensitive score high on those questions. If someone would score low on these questions, he would be concerned that that might not reflect sensitivity the way that we define it, but that they could be experiencing aspects of sensitivity combined maybe with something else. So someone somewhere on the autistic spectrum might score lower on the social sensitivity, but still high on the others. But that's another question about the overlap with autism, which is a big one where we need to do a lot more research.

55:35So we did look at emotion recognition in children. Basically, they were shown photos of just eyes of adults. And they had to indicate, they had to select from four potential answers, which answers the correct, which answer displays the correct emotion seen in that face. And what we found is that the highly sensitive children were doing better at that task. And this is going beyond self-report is an objective measure of how well do they actually do in recognizing emotions. And highly sensitive children, they seem to be doing better in emotional recognition, and emotional recognition is an important aspect of empathy, right?

56:20It's difficult to empathize if you don't recognize the emotion in someone else's face. So highly sensitive children are doing better at emotion recognition and generally do find stronger associations with empathy. Highly sensitive people, it's easier for highly sensitive people to put themselves into the situation of someone else. And this is one of the reasons why many highly sensitive people end up being therapists or coaches. because you have to be doing that. You have to be able to do that well for those kind of roles. So a lot of highly sensitive people probably choose those careers because that's a good fit for public sensitivity.

57:03And the second question about could sensitive people be so sensitive that experience empathy to such a level that they sort of shut down or show less? That's an interesting hypothesis. I don't think we have any research on that. that probably would require an experimental study where we overwhelm people and then see whether there's an impact. I can imagine that something like that could happen, but that probably has more to do with overstimulation and the irritability that can emerge from that. So if you have someone that is overstimulated, it's just too much, then that can result in irritability and that irritability can then potentially shut down their empathy in the sense that they're no longer able to.

57:49Like I can no longer deal with your emotions at the moment. I just, it's too much for me. I need a break. Right. But that's really the irritability speaking rather than their empathy. And irritability has been activated because it just has been going too much. There's been too much going on. So similarly, if someone is highly sensitive, has a very stressful day or has been overstimulated all day that might erode their ability to respond in an empathetic way they might still perceive the other's emotions but they just find it too overwhelming so that they they they with basically withdraw they don't they don't want to do that it's too much but that's a speculation and a hypothesis that needs to be tested thank you for saying that okay along those lines are there phrases that they can say to help other people understand them, like their romantic partners in the future or their friends, or to your point, like you can imagine if somebody is not that sensitive, they probably aren't as impacted by how the day went.

58:59So they get home and it's not overwhelming. And so they are still available. They might not be as attuned because that's not their natural state, but they're not going to be withdrawn. But if you know that about yourself and you want to, you're thinking like, oh, I want to have the kind of relationships and interactions where I'm not pushing people away because what I'm really trying to say is like, I need to recharge. Are there things that you imagine you'll tell your little one over time to help them get their needs met without them alienating people? Yeah, these are important things to teach.

59:36And that's basically, I think that's true for all of us to understand what is important for us and to be able to communicate that. That's really key for ourselves, for our own well-being, but also how to get along with others. Because if we feel drained and they were well because of a stressful day, we have less capacity to deal with someone else. So we might get more easily angry with them, but it has nothing to do with the other person and it might have nothing to do with us having had a difficult day. So a mature person, an emotionally mature person, And obviously we talk about ideals here and the reality is that is much more complex.

1:00:17We would be aware of their own emotions and also be aware of how their own emotional state has an impact on others. And foresee that and then, you know, maybe say when they get home, say, I've had a really tough day. Please give me half an hour. I need to go. I'll quickly go for a run or I do this and that because I know this is good for me. This will help me to process that day. And after that, I'm ready. I'm available. So knowing what do I need in order to also meet the needs of other people. That's quite complex, right? That requires understanding yourself, but also understanding the needs of someone else and how your behavior will impact their emotional state.

1:01:05But the more able you do that, the more likely you can deescalate situations or prevent escalation from the beginning. And that will be probably a more pleasant experience of life. Well, because I also think about likability and how important it is to have likability in the world. And I think about how hard it is when you're experiencing so much input from the environment to also express like the warmth and competence and confidence of a highly likable person. Like you want to be this way, but if you see that it prevents your social connection, then it can be problematic and so I wonder like how do you make sure that you're promoting social connection without trying to say like you have to be a friendly warm extroverted you know whatever yeah I think that's that is the challenge that highly sensitive people are great at listening They're great at making people understood.

1:02:11And at the same time, that can probably tip over into just leave me alone because there's too much going on. So it's possible, I guess, to see those two extremes. And I guess I've heard from many people saying that your emotions are your responsibility, not someone else's. So we need to regulate our own emotions. and we need to that's why it's important to understand our own sensitivity and knowing what are what are the boundaries that we need to set that's our responsibility we set the boundaries we can't expect other people to do that for us and i think it's a it's a key thing that parents should teach their children to understand what are their boundaries and then to set those boundaries but then also to communicate that to others without alienating them so that's you know as i mention when you come home say i need an hour or i need half an hour to just decompress i feel overwhelmed i can't really take on anything else for the moment just give me that one hour and then i'm back or if you know if a child is being invited to a birthday party and the child feels really stressed about that because they're doing something you know the activity is really they they found that difficult also to find a way to say, I really appreciate that you invited me to this party.

1:03:34I'm worried about this because, you know, I tend to respond to these things in a certain way. So I probably won't be able to join for this part of it, but I'll conjoin for the other parts and finding a solution that is sort of like a compromise where you can still have your, you have your boundaries because you need to have them because otherwise you're not functioning well, but also to not be so strict to sort of alienate everyone and isolate yourself from everyone else. So key is to understand yourself, understand the needs and demands from others, and then draw the boundaries in a way that allow you to be yourself, whilst also allow you to enjoy other relationships and engage with others.

1:04:20And sometimes, you know, people might engage in an overstimulating activity, knowing this is going to be overstimulated. I'm going to be, in the UK, would say knackered or really exhausted after this. But I appreciate this situation. I appreciate this so much, or I appreciate this person too much. I want to do that. But then I know after that, I need some time to recover from it. So this has to be taken into account. If you know yourself. I mean, this really, it's a really strong argument for high quality parenting, not to put so much pressure on parents, but this does seem to be like a very clear, these things are all how we can learn.

1:05:02We can learn in our childhood so that our adulthood, we have these tools. We can say, oh, I made plans two nights in a row. I will not be, if I say yes to the third night, I will not be the friend that this person is looking for or whatever. or I won't be able to get to the office because I'll go, you know, berserk. Are there vulnerabilities? And then I would love to talk about the strengths because I don't want to fixate all on the vulnerabilities. And I do want to know sort of, I think we talk a lot about building resilience and robustness, but I would love to talk about also building sensitivity.

1:05:39I think when it comes to sensitivity, how does it develop? We do find, we have just a recent paper that came out last week in our Syrian refugee children sample where we looked at predictors of sensitivity and we did find that both negative and positive experiences are associated with increased sensitivity. So in more challenging environments, people develop higher sensitivity. In more positive environments, children develop higher sensitivity. That makes sense from an evolutionary theory called biological sensitivity to context, which suggests that sensitivity reflects a conditional adaptation, conditional based on the quality of the environment.

1:06:22So sensitivity is a costly feature, so it doesn't make sense to develop it unless you're in a context where it's of benefit. And it's particularly beneficial in a difficult environment because it helps you to detect threats. And it's particularly beneficial in a positive environment because it helps you to benefit from whatever opportunity that you come across. It's less beneficial in more moderate environments. And that's basically what we do find in our research as well, that both negative and positive experiences seem to be associated with higher sensitivity. But we do know relatively little about the development of sensitivity.

1:07:01We do know there's such any component. We do know environmental factors play an important role as well. We don't know exactly how that looks like across development. But I can imagine that, you know, the time as a parent that you spend with your child observing the world also has an important impact on sensitivity. I haven't really seen anything on that, you know, in research. But, you know, older parents always seem to be rushing wherever they go. And maybe in the U.S. mostly, you know, you go everywhere by car. but here in London most people don't go by car but they go on public transport or they walk and I see lots of parents just rushing and I'm one of them you know rushing pushing their child to to the next thing and sometimes what's needed is just to to give them time to explore observe you know take a break and just you know we see a family a dark family in in the canal Now, just observe the next 10, 15 minutes.

1:08:08Just have a look at that and pointing out details. And I think that can probably help them to actually be in the moment and perceive those details. And I think those are things that are stolen from the children if they engage with screens and social media, because they're designed to capture the attention without subtlety. but to be in nature and observing things i think that that is probably i would assume helpful to develop a good level of sensitivity yeah they would yeah but i think it's important to to clarify that you can be you can be low in sensitivity and you can still you will still have you know you still be able to empathize you still experience all in nature and all of those but probably not to the same degree as a highly sensitive individual.

1:09:03So do we want to work on that? Like, is that worthy of focus to think about like drawing that out more? Or do we not need to worry about it unless you find that your kid is just like not noticing anything? I think the sensitivity is generally, I think, a positive thing. It's a positive trait that has some potential downsides as well. and not being particularly sensitive also out as positive because these children adapt more easily to change. They tend to be naturally more robust and resilient, maybe less easily overwhelmed by things so that they might just be able to deal with more difficult challenges or able to bounce back from them.

1:09:47So I think there's lots of positives for the lower sensitive ones. I think the terminology low sensitive obviously doesn't imply that. It suggests you're low on something. But let's say they're high in resilience, so the mental toughness or robustness has lots of benefits. And before the field started talking about sensitivity, the ideal outcome of development was resilient children. And actually, there's an interesting example. There is lots of research that's been done on the serotonin transporter gene. and there's been a lot of research. So this is research that's 20 years old. That's when it started, where people found that if you have a short version of that gene, you're more vulnerable.

1:10:34You're more likely to develop depression if you experience childhood maltreatment or stressful life events. But if you have the long version, you're more resilient. So everyone wants to find out that they have the long version, they're more resilient. They're more resilient in the face of stressful life events. And then we published a paper suggesting and providing some evidence that those with the short version of the gene are not only more vulnerable, but they also benefit more from positive experiences. They're generally more sensitive to the environment. And I once was presenting that to some of my students in that term.

1:11:13In that way, I suggested that that short version of the gene is associated with sensitivity. People that have that version of the gene are more negatively affected by negative experiences, but also benefit more from positive experiences. At one point, some of the students got together and arranged that they collected DNA samples and got those analyzed in their lab. And I actually had people come to me saying that they're disappointed that they found that they have the long version of the gene, which is the resilient one rather than the short one, which I thought was a really interesting example of the importance of the narrative around it.

1:11:53Because the positive aspects to any of those gene variants, and that's why they're still available, they're still in the gene pool. In the meantime, much of that research has been criticized for various methodological issues. So not too many people are talking about the serotonin transporter so i just mentioned it as an example but yeah both first of all sensitivity is a dimension so you could be anywhere on that dimension or anywhere on that spectrum being at the lower end of the spectrum doesn't mean that you're a sociopath it just means that you're you know you might be a little bit less perceptive or you might be you know processing your experiences a bit less deeply than other people do and that has positives just as being at the higher end has positives.

1:12:40These are different evolutionary strategies for people to succeed. So you can succeed at any level of the dimension of sensitivity, but probably in different contexts. So there are some that are more suited to highly sensitive individuals and some that are more suited for less sensitive individuals. But one should not be valued more than the other. And I think the Dandelion Orchid metaphor does that to some degrees as well.