Imagine this...

It's the day after the fall festivities. Your sensitive child's treat bag is overflowing with candy.

They've already had several meltdowns begging for "just one more piece". You've said no multiple times, but the badgering won't stop.

You're at your wits end, ready to just lock up the candy stash and be done with it.

But you wonder, is that really the best approach? Will restrictions just make candy even more enticing and lead to sneaking treats later?

I get it. Food battles with a highly sensitive child can feel like an impossible situation.

Traditional approaches like the "one treat a day" rule or hiding the candy often backfire into more obsession, not less.

So what's a weary parent to do?

Here are 3 key principles to keep in mind:

Restriction Leads to Fixation

The more you restrict access to a desired food, the more your child will fixate on it. It becomes like a forbidden fruit. Instead, try to...

Imagine your child struggling to walk, falling down constantly at home, but miraculously having perfect coordination in public.

You wouldn't assume they were just stumbling for attention, right? 

You'd know they genuinely needed help building that physical skill.

Well, the same is true for emotional skills like regulation and distress tolerance.

Meltdown behaviors at home (hitting, kicking, screaming, refusal, shutting down) are a sign of lagging abilities, not a manipulative bid for attention.

Just because they can "hold it together" at school doesn't mean the struggle isn't real. 

It just means home is a space to let it all out…. (another post for a different day– it’s not because they feel “safe” either.)

As parents, our job is to guide them from this emotional crawling stage to confident walking (and eventually running!) with a calm, regulated nervous system.

But here's the thing......

Have you ever stopped to consider why time-outs might be ineffective?

I get that your kid’s pediatrician, therapist or school counselor probably recommended this tactic, or maybe you remember it “working” for you as a kid… 

But let’s face it– time-outs just don’t work for your sensitive kid. 

Why?

Because it is an outdated practice that is simply not based in brain science AT ALL.

With all the noise out there on parenting, I totally get that you may have felt like you can rely on a basic old school tactic that wasn’t as harmful as spanking.. 

And, time-outs expect a level of self-control that isn’t effective. 

You can absolutely improve your child’s capacity for self-control, don’t get me wrong.

However, the use of time-outs assume that your child already has the self-control skill that they clearly don’t… otherwise, why would...

Do you ever wish you could hang a sign on your head that says “Out of Order,”

Just so everyone would leave you alone for five seconds?

Every parent has this experience. 

Between managing the household for multiple people,

Keeping dinner on the table,

Making sure everyone’s shoes has a pair,

And trying to find the seconds in between to brush your own teeth,

It’s easy to feel extremely burnt out after a while.

Throw the meltdown cycle in there and you feel like you don’t even have a chance for peace.

But I’m not going to sit here and just talk about how burnt out you are.

That’s what most mommy bloggers do, and they never really get to the point…

Other than reminding you to wash your hair and put on clean socks. 

Which I am in favor of!

But I’m even MORE interested in talking about what you can do to fix this problem. 

Not only this problem of the pervasive meltdowns…

But this problem where you feel burnt out...

The most dreaded sentence: “Mom, I have to poop.”

Who knew there would be so much emotion around using the bathroom?

It’s something we all do… we don’t really have a choice.

Yet, your HSC is struggling BIG TIME when it comes to number 2 (or sometimes, number 1).

Since you’ve been a human longer than your kid has, you understand the human body.

When you get the urge to go…

You go. 

And then you move on.

There’s nothing more to it.

Tune in to learn why it may be so hard for your HSC, and what this really means.

https://www.megghanthompsoncoaching.com/talk

For Highly Sensitive Teens:

https://www.megghanthompsoncoaching.com/teentalk