A highly sensitive child test helps understand if your child is one of the 15 to 20% of children born with a very aware nervous system. Their highly sensitive nervous system makes them grasp subtle changes, reflect before acting, and behave conscientiously.
A highly sensitive child test will show if your child is easily overwhelmed by stimulation, sudden changes, and emotional distress. There can be variations in the temperament of highly sensitive children. While some may be emotionally intense and demanding, others may be calm and easy to raise. No matter their temperament, the highly sensitive child test will always show that they are sensitive to their environment.
There are a lot of versions of this scale, but this article discusses the one developed by Elaine Aron. This article will first discuss the features of highly sensitive children and then talk more about the highly sensitive child test, which has a book written by Elaine Aron.
1) Features of Highly Sensitive Children
While determining if your child is highly sensitive, it’s important to look for certain traits. The highly sensitive child test also highlights these features in its questions. Let’s discuss five of these traits.
1.1) They Face Difficulty Being Corrected
Highly sensitive children feel embarrassed when they’re corrected and also get angry. Even helpful guidance seems like personal indictments to them.
1.2) They Face Emotional Extremes
Highly sensitive children are indeed wired to feel things deeply. They live at the extremes and make irrational exclamations.
1.3) They Face More Meltdowns
Since highly sensitive child feels things deeply, they get overwhelmed by big emotions. They have extreme reactions to sensory inputs because of their sensory processing sensitivity.
1.4) They are Prone to Being Perfect
According to the highly sensitive child test, a highly sensitive child is triggered by shame easily. They feel like a ‘failure’ if they lose or fail to do anything perfectly.
1.5) They can be Rigid and Need Control
Highly sensitive children have fixed ideas and also expect others to follow them. The more out of control they feel outside, the more they control their thinking and rationalizing.
2) Features of the Highly Sensitive Child Test
Most of the time, this test is taken by parents for their children. So, here’s a checklist of questions parents have to engage in and score to determine how many traits of a highly sensitive child their child has. So, the first thing to discuss is what these questions are.
2.1) Questions in the Highly Sensitive Child Test
Parents are asked to answer each of these questions honestly and leave unchecked the ones that aren’t always true about their child.
The questions in the highly sensitive child test are as follows:
My child –
- Isn’t comfortable with big surprises.
- Gets scared by small stimuli.
- Whines about seams in clothes, clothing tags, and scratchy clothes.
- Seems to read my mind.
- Prefers to learn from correction, not punishment.
- Uses big words that other kids of their age don’t.
- Has wise humor.
- Notices the slightest unusual odor.
- Finds it tough to sleep after an eventful day.
- Is very intuitive.
- Doesn’t adjust to changes easily.
- Asks a lot of questions.
- Is a perfectionist.
- Consistently changes wet or sandy clothes.
- Notices when others are distressed.
- Notices subtleties.
- Prefers playing without a lot of noise.
- Is more perceptive to pain.
- Asks deep questions.
- Is disturbed by excess noise.
- Performs best in the absence of strangers.
- Feels things deeply.
- Checks the height of a platform before climbing it.
2.2) Scoring of the Highly Sensitive Child Test
If a parent answers true to around 15 questions, their child is highly sensitive. Your child might be highly sensitive if only two answers match their personality greatly.
3) How to Raise Highly Sensitive Children
One of the most central reasons for building tests like the highly sensitive child test is to help parents get more insight into how to raise their highly sensitive children. You may pay more attention to subtle stimuli, loud sounds may scare you, and you may feel strong reactions to criticism. You may have learned to make the best of your traits if you are highly sensitive.
However, HSP kids have more difficulty adjusting to their environment because everything is overwhelming, and substantial time goes by in thought-provoking questions. They find it difficult to mingle with other children because they may not understand the sensitive HSP traits and how to be kind to them.
Therefore, parents of highly sensitive children need to be more nurturing and understanding. Here are a few ways you can be a better parent to your highly sensitive child:
3.1) Provide them with Structure and Routine
Highly sensitive kids thrive with routine. Having a predictable routine helps kids feel safe and know what to expect. When changes arrive, give your child prior notice so they can get time to adjust. When they perform well in changing situations, praise their efforts.
3.2) Provide them with Downtime
Children highly sensitive to stimuli can get easily overwhelmed, so they need to get some downtime to rest and recharge.
3.3) Praise their Strengths
Praise and acknowledgment do wonders for children with HSP traits. Encouragement and feedback help them feel reinforced and humanized rather than put on a high pedestal.
If you are a highly sensitive person and are trying to control these overwhelming tendencies, this article may be of some help: 8 Helpful Ways On How To Be Less Sensitive
4) Highly Sensitive Child Test – To Conclude
The highly sensitive child test helps you understand if your child might face problems navigating their environment. Being a highly sensitive person can be stressful, so it’s important to help your child learn how to cope with these overwhelming and thoughtful questions they may face. You can start by assisting them to avoid stressors, add positivity to their life events, and set up a safe space.
Among these things, you need to remember that while a highly sensitive child may face positives like excess creativity and more awareness, they may face negatives like distressing situations. You need to help them learn how to manage these intense feelings.
So, taking the highly sensitive child test is the first step; using the results to raise your child better is the more important step.
