How sensitive are you to your surroundings and experiences? Would you say you’re more like an orchid that needs a very particular environment to thrive? A dandelion, which can grow practically anywhere? Or, a tulip — somewhere in between those two extremes? Why?
Sensitive children are keen observers of the world, but tend to get overstimulated. They often live intense inner lives and are highly creative, but they are wary of new situations and of people they don’t know.
They also easily intuit the moods of others and feel their pain. This empathy draws their peers and sometimes even adults to confide in sensitive children. Later in life, they often go into helping professions like health care and counseling, where their natural gifts are put to good use.
Roughly one in five children are highly sensitive, according to the research psychologist Elaine Aron, whose 1996 book “The Highly Sensitive Person” popularized the term. Dr. Aron developed a 23-question test, which is often used to help determine whether or not a child is highly sensitive.
Sensitivity is an inborn temperament, she says, that comes hard-wired and remains with highly sensitive people for their whole lives. Michael Pluess, a professor of developmental psychology at Queen Mary University of London, has found that our life experiences, particularly those early in life, also have a big impact.
“We found that about 50 percent of differences in sensitivity between people are due to genetic factors, the other half by environment, including the prenatal environment,” Dr. Pluess said.
He said people fall roughly into three groups: highly sensitive, whom he calls “orchids,” which are beautiful flowers that need very particular environments to thrive; hardy “dandelions,” which can grow virtually anywhere; and a middle group — the largest — “tulips,” which fall somewhere between the two extremes of the sensitivity scale.
“The idea is not that one is better and one is worse,” Dr. Pluess explained, “but that these are different personalities, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses.”
He added: “It is important to communicate consistently to the child that their sensitivity isn’t a problem, that it’s a strength so that they can develop a healthy sense of what they can do well.”
In what kind of environment do you thrive? Are you able to be at ease regardless of what is happening around you? Or are you sensitive to the sounds, sights and people nearby? If you were to create your ideal atmosphere to grow and learn, what would it look like?
How do your friends, family, teachers or others in your life talk about sensitivity? In general, is it viewed as a strength or a weakness? After reading this article, how do you think about sensitivity?
Do school, parties, family gatherings or group activities tend to overwhelm you? Do you find that you are able to “intuit the moods of others and feel their pain”? And has the pandemic and staying home more offered you welcome respite to “explore, create, read and think on [your] own”? Or do you miss the energy, crowds and noise that were part of your daily routines?
Do you think that people understand you and the way you relate to the world? What is one thing that you wish people better understood about your nature? If people better understood this part of you, how do you think that would change the way they treated and interacted with you?
According to the article, research has found that being highly sensitive is not specific to one gender; boys who are perceived as more sensitive, however, are sometimes viewed as being less masculine. Is this true in your experience? What roles do gender or other identify factors play in how sensitivity is viewed by your peers, teachers, family members or society? How does this make you feel?
If Dr. Pluess’s flower metaphor doesn’t resonate with you, what is an analogy you can come up with to describe where you fall on the sensitivity scale?
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
