One reason highly sensitive children (HSC) struggle with falling asleep is often because their nervous system is still trying to process the day. HSC have, what is known as sensory processing sensitivity. This is a biological trait that results in a sensitive nervous system which causes HSC to process sensory information more intensely.

Most of us are familiar with 5 senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell but there is also vestibular, tactile, proprioceptive and interoception. How HSC process and register information from each sense can impact their sleep quality. It is helpful to learn which affects your child and ways to manage the input to help support sleep.

Highly sensitive children (HSC) can be prone to sleep challenges that include both difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep. Well-meaning standard sleep advice may not match the highly sensitive nervous system, unintentionally creating more tears, anxiety, meltdowns, and stress — and no more sleep. Sometimes, using these general sleep recommendations can even lead to sleep anxiety for the child, resulting in refusal to enter their own room or bed. It can be overwhelming, exhausting, and depleting as a parent, they know their child needs help to sleep but don’t know what to do. HSC experience sleeps differently at a nervous system level and understanding the role high sensitivity plays in sleep can be a gamechanger for families.

Highly sensitive children (HSC) are born with what is labelled as “sensory processing sensitivity” and as a result have a heightened sensitivity to their internal and external environment. They are often empathetic, intuitive, emotionally aware, creative, thoughtful, observant and have a strong sense of morality.  This means they notice subtle stimuli (like a slight change in tone of voice or facial expression) , process more deeply, can become overstimulated easily, and become emotionally reactive quickly. What can sometimes be referred to as “dramatic” is the child taking in more information than their nervous system can handle.