This is my baby. She is my third child, and she taught me so much about the highly sensitive personality and I found out that at age 1, she is the most sensitive out of all of my kids. I found out it was called a highly sensitive personality. She sees the needs of everyone around her and desires to take care of all of them. One day when she was almost 1, she was opening my cupboard to get into the Tupperware to pull everything out like they do. It was at the end of the day and I had cleaned it all up already and was making dinner. She came over and opened it up and I said very gently “No no we are not going to do that right now” and I shut the cupboard.
Our Story
Next thing I know I hear this thud on the tile floor
I turned and realized she had hit her head on the floor, I picked her up and her eyes were rolling in her head. A panicked feeling came but then she started breathing again and crying. I put together that she had fainted?! She started doing this several times a day since that day. If she got upset she would take the big breath to cry, but the cry would never come. Since she was not getting enough oxygen, her body would faint. Once she would come to, the cry would come. I started researching and asking questions. The pediatricians call these breath-holding spells, and say they happen in some kids and they will “grow out of it”. It is showing up more and more in kids.
This certainly cannot be good in any way
Not getting oxygen to the brain and fainting every day can do damage, right? Not only for the brain, but she would hit her head if we could not get to her and catch her. I had to find something to help her. I did not know how long it took for them to “grow out of it”. These kids do not do it on purpose, how can a baby choose to hold their breath on purpose? I knew this was not just for attention. And it was not good for her brain. I found through my research that it could be till she was 6, and that is a lot of fainting and hitting your head.
How I Helped My Highly Sensitive Child
- I found the book The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron (she also wrote The Highly Sensitive Child). It has a test in it you can take to see if you have a sensitive nervous system. This is great and will help explain for babies, kids and adults.
- Next, what we did for her is I found essential oils blends to help keep her balanced and calm. This way she did not have so many ups and downs, and things did not affect her as “deep”. We found if we were consistent with putting them on her morning and night. She did not faint NEAR as much. We saw a huge difference, she would still cry but she would not hold it as before.
- Magnesium is a must for highly sensitive nervous systems (ask your pediatrician about the right amount for kids). You do not want to be low in magnesium. It helps you sleep as well and helps the nervous system not be so raw. For a person with this, it is like you are an open live wire always exposed. You get overwhelmed quicker than another person. You get overwhelmed by your environment through all of your senses- hear, sight, taste, touch, smell.
- Sleep! I noticed she would faint a lot more if she had missed her nap or stayed up late. Late nights were not good. When we get sleep our subconscious releases a lot from the day.
The book helps explain how the nervous system is different and other things you can do to help as well.
How a Highly Sensitive Personality Is Different
Someone that does not have a highly sensitive nervous system will sift apples, oranges, and grapes from their environment through their senses. Now, someone with a sensitive system will sift apples, oranges, grapes, bananas, kiwis, pears and plums. They basically have more coming in all of the time. They have to work through more, and it takes practice to not get overwhelmed by it and be able to develop a way to sift through more. When a person feels overwhelmed they tend to be very irritable, and break down more.
My little girl is 5 now and for the most part has “grown out of it”, once in a while she still faints, but it is mostly when she is tired. When she got a little older it was even more important to make sure we put the oils on her, and that she slept. The problem we ran into was when she was potty trained :/ After she was potty trained if she did her fainting thing, she would have “accidents”.
One of the things that happens when you faint…. your bladder releases
And if there is any urine in your bladder, it will release. So when we would be at the store, if she would have an episode she would pee all over the floor. If she was in school and faint it would be all over the carpet or the teacher. When we were at our house we would hurry and move her over the tile floor. I did not realize this was happening when she was a baby because she had a diaper on.
It became even more important to make sure we did not miss a day. So we made her her own bottle and started teaching her how to apply it herself. The oils we used and eventually put in a little bottle just for her was Balance and Serenity. We would apply it on her ears and neck and then her feet, morning and night.
Talk to Your Pediatrician
If your little one has fainting or breath-holding spells, please have your pediatrician check them out, just to be sure nothing else is going on. Ask them to check her iron levels too. Research has found that low iron is linked to breath-holding spells, and some kids have far fewer spells once their iron is back up. You can read more about fainting spells in children from the American Academy of Pediatrics. For more on the sensitive nervous system, see my post on natural sleep aids.
