Janet responds to three parents who are worried that their kids seem overly anxious and sensitive in social situations. Each parent has tried to be patient and trusting, but they wonder if their child’s temperament may be abnormal, especially when compared to their peers. Aside from frustration and concern, one parent says: “I’m so lost… Sometimes I feel shame — not about him — but because I want to do fun things with him, but he always pulls back and retreats.” Janet offers advice and a lot of encouragement.
Transcript of “My Boy Seems Anxious, Sensitive, Easily Overwhelmed… Is This Normal?”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today, what I hope I’m going to be doing is encouraging you. Especially if you have a child who seems extra anxious maybe, they’re sensitive, they get overwhelmed. Maybe it seems like they’re different from their peers or other kids that you see, and we worry. So that’s why I thought it might be helpful to share that several people have written to me about this topic recently. While maybe this is a less common temperament, or it seems to be, a lot of children have it. I relate to it, where maybe we’re a little awkward socially. Maybe it could be referred to as reserved, introverted, slow to warm, shy, I guess, although I never love that term. Maybe because it was used about me by my parent in a disapproving way, like telling people when I wouldn’t say hello right away, “She’s shy,” and I could tell that that wasn’t a welcome way to be.
But is this a deficiency? Is this a problem? Is this something we should be ashamed about? Absolutely not, in my opinion and in my experience. Because children that have this, they can do just fine when they’re one-on-one with a friend, socializing in small doses or in ways where they feel like they have some control over the situation, but when it’s kind of unmanageable and coming at them, it’s unsettling and exhausting. Like I said, I relate to this kind of temperament.
And what I would like to help these parents do is, well, they’ve all asked if they need to do something to help their child. What should they be doing differently? They’re getting a little frustrated, they’re obviously concerned. One of them had this subject line: “Encouragement Needed.” So that’s why I said right from the beginning I just want to encourage these parents to trust their children, accept their children, and therefore support their children to be who they are. And I want to talk about some of the things that get in the way of us being able to do that.
I’m going to dive right in. Here’s the first note:
I’m a long-time listener and this is my first time ever writing in to anything, but I’m paranoid that I’m ruining my child. My son is three years old and very independent. He’s always been very comfortable playing by himself, or so it seems. Even when he’s with friends he enjoys, eventually he will get tired of playing with them and walk away and do his own thing, even if they’re at our house because he wanted a friend over.
He does seem to get overwhelmed easily. During his own birthday, everyone shouted “Happy birthday!” and he buried his face in my shoulder and bit me hard. I had to ask the kids to sing to him quietly. He will swim with his dad or I individually, but if someone else shows up, he no longer wants to stay in the pool. When kids invite him to join in dancing or play, he will join if it is one kid. But if another kid comes, even if it is one that he knows and likes, he will not join. He will just hover around the group. I try to ask him privately if he wants to join, and I offer to hold his hand while he asks if he can play.
But there are some times where we’re all having fun and he will try to do it with us and then will suddenly stop or leave and do his own thing. Do I go after him or let him do his own thing? I’m so lost. I’m not going to lie, sometimes I feel shame. Not about him, but because I want to do fun things with him. He always pulls back and retreats. He loves when I sing and will sing along, but if I sing or dance out of the house, he gets so overwhelmed.
How do I support him? My husband says he can’t force us to stop dancing or singing every time, and he’s doing a normal thing by leaving and doing his own thing if he doesn’t like it. But I want to show him it’s okay to get overwhelmed and maybe in the future how he can regulate himself when he is feeling overwhelmed. I don’t know.
Thank you for any advice you have.
Yes, so this child is showing all the signs. He’s independent. I mean, that’s a good thing, but when it comes to navigating with others, it’s a little more challenging for him. He gets easily overwhelmed. It sounds like he’s taking care of himself quite well. He’s managing this, not exploding at his friends or doing something that’s inappropriate, but he moves away. He sounds pretty competent around taking care of himself and his needs in these situations, and he’s only three years old.
“He gets tired of playing with them and he walks away and does his own thing, even if they’re at our house because he wanted a friend over.” Yes, so he wanted the friend over, but it just got too much for him, too exhausting, and he needed to move away. That seems reasonable and understandable to me.
Then she said about the birthday that everyone was shouting happy birthday, and he buried his face in her shoulder and bit her. Well, obviously we don’t want him to bite her, but that is a sign that he’s overwhelmed and doing this very impulsive behavior that children do when they’re just trying to deal with feeling overwhelmed. So that wasn’t okay, but it just got too much for him. And I think it was great that the mom asked the kids to sing more quietly.
And then in terms of somebody else coming when he’s in the pool and he doesn’t want that, that makes sense. I mean, especially in a pool, it’s something to navigate in itself, being in the water. Then he’s got his one parent there, and when other people come, it’s too much.
So all of this to me seems very, very reasonable, including that he can sing and dance with us at home, but if we’re singing and dancing out in public, that’s uncomfortable. I mean, you could ask my children about me singing and dancing in public and how unwelcome that was maybe until just recently. Oh, even now, as adults, they would probably be mortified. It would be too much for them. But anyway, I’m not laughing at this parent’s concern.
And she says she’s paranoid that she’s ruining her child. So I don’t see anything she’s doing as ruining her child. And when she says that she wants him to know it’s okay to feel overwhelmed, that’s actually the message that he’s going to get when she allows him to take care of himself in the ways that he’s choosing to. The appropriate ones, not biting her, but the other ones like moving away, getting out of the pool if he’s not comfortable with the vibe there. That is teaching him that it’s okay to be overwhelmed.
I think what she might be worried about here is if she’s supposed to teach him to get over being overwhelmed, that that shouldn’t be getting in his way or he shouldn’t be handling it the way that he’s handling it. And while that makes sense, and he may grow out of some of this, that’s actually going to give him the opposite message: that it’s not okay for him to be overwhelmed, that she wants him to feel better when he’s overwhelmed and just manage it and continue with whatever he was doing.
I just want to encourage this parent to see this as typical behavior, that she doesn’t have to do something to fix this. Maybe just work on accepting more and having reasonable boundaries so that she’s not trying to accommodate him. So when she says that she tried to help by asking his friends to sing more quietly, I wouldn’t consider that that she’s accommodating by helping him to feel less overwhelmed. Because I think that that’s very reasonable, if kids are yelling it really loudly and you know that you have a child or you see that you have a child who’s not comfortable with that, that you ask the friends lightly, “Let’s sing a little quieter, because this is a lot for him.” So she’s helping him to manage that situation a little bit better, but she’s not trying to rescue him from it, move him away or get him out of there, tell all the kids to leave or something. That would be more accommodating the behavior, which does tend to feed into it.
I have some more comments about this note that I’m going to share in reference to all three of the notes. For now, I’m going to move on to the next one. This was the “encouragement needed” note:
I’m an avid follower and, as a first-time mom, I’m very thankful for the immense help that your work has provided me for the last five years since my son was born. I didn’t think I would come to this point where I would write to you. Today it feels like I lost it.
A quick background on my son: his temperament has always been on the reserved side. He was born in the pandemic and it was just us with my husband in the house. In the rare occasions that we see relatives, he would cry so hard when they try to cuddle or even just give the slightest attention to him. I would give him space by telling them he’s not ready and we just keep a distance that is comfortable to him.
At four years old, we send him to a playgroup to sort of prepare him, and us, for kindergarten. His socialization improved a lot, but still we can see him cry sometimes, even after a year in the same school. During his moving up pictorial, his pictures were either in tears or sad looking [and she put a sad face]. My observation is that he’s extremely anxious around social situations involving interaction or performance with new people.
While for the past four years plus I’ve tried my best to trust him and not force anything on him, today I felt really exhausted. We enrolled him for football class, which he has enjoyed with his dad since a couple of weeks back. However, he’s extremely clingy during the class and won’t stay in the group without us. We are just at a stone’s throw away, but he still cries if we don’t stay beside him.
He’s the only one in the group acting that way. Even the younger ones, who would lose focus or get shy for a time, don’t cry and just go back to the group after some time. Admittedly, this made me more frustrated. He is tired because it is his nap time, but he has acted better in similar no-nap cases before, but without a crowd.
I feel that we might be missing something here. Any practical advice or words of encouragement? Other than this, he’s a bright, sweet, calm, and caring kid.
This child also, she refers to him as reserved. He’s sensitive, he’s easily overwhelmed. He’s not a big-group kind of kid, at least not at this point in his life. And he’s emotional about it, which is a positive thing because sharing the feelings helps him to move through the feelings.
She mentioned about the relatives, that he would cry so hard when they try to cuddle or even just give the slightest attention to him and that she would tell them that he’s not ready and we just keep a distance that is comfortable to him. So I’m not sure what age that was happening, but there may have been a little bit of messaging there, that this parent didn’t mean to give, where she was being kind of protective of him there. I’m not sure how this looked or how it played out or what her mood was like when she was doing this. If she was light and just matter-of-fact about it, Oh, let’s give him a little more room, but not really trying to rescue him there, which of course that’s an impulse that we all have. There’s a line there that would help him more than if we’re intervening too much. And that line is where he can express some of these feelings with the people that are coming too close to him and we can help them to read that this isn’t working for him a little bit more, so he has more of a chance to move away or work through some of this himself.
Then the playgroup, it sounds like that was a great thing for him. And she said, “we can still see him cry sometimes, even after a year in the same school.” Crying when you’re feeling stressed about something, crying when you’re feeling sensitive. That’s, again, a positive thing and something we want to encourage and for ourselves, if possible, see as normal and healthy. But she said, “during his moving up pictorial, his pictures were either in tears or sad looking.” That’s a transition. And if they made a big deal out of the ceremony, that can be intense for a child that’s sensitive like this. Again, I would try to see it as positive that he’s expressing that with his expression and his tears, that he’s not holding it all in.
And she says, “my observation is that he’s extremely anxious around social situations involving interaction or performance with new people.” Whenever we have these observations, they’re usually spot on. And I’m sure that’s spot on, but I would not see that as something negative that we have to change. And that’s what she said: “For the past four plus years I’ve tried my best to trust him and not force anything,” but then she got exhausted because of the football class. So a football class for a five-year-old, that’s not something I would think of as comfortable for a child with this kind of temperament. With the playgroup, he could probably move away if he was uncomfortable and maybe his mom was there and he could go sit with her or something. But this is a lot for a child this age that is more sensitive to other children and groups. So even here, his clingy behavior makes sense.
But this is where I would do something that I want to suggest to all these parents, and that’s have reasonable boundaries. Reasonable boundaries around what you’re willing to do and allow him to do. And where the reasonable boundary comes in here is that I would not continue with this class if he couldn’t allow you to sit in a reasonable place and feel free to come to you if he needs to, but not expect you to be right next to him. It’s understandable that that would be frustrating and exhausting for the parents. We need to have a boundary there for ourselves so we’re not doing this thing that gets to be ridiculous where we’re right next to him and he’s trying to be in a class and play football.
You may have heard me say in other podcast episodes around sports and classes and lessons and things like that, that we can’t really expect a child to be able to do this kind of thing at this age. Football is pretty complicated. I remember back in the day when my kids were little, they would maybe have soccer for kids that were as young as five, not younger than that, but they might have a soccer team or a soccer class. And the kids were all over the place, but all they were doing is kicking a ball and it wasn’t really a big deal. I mean, even football is a little more organized. You’ve got to throw, you’ve got to catch. I don’t know what this class is looking like, but that seems like a lot for a five-year-old to be doing coordination-wise, everything. And then this group situation where he kind of has to perform sometimes. So all the things that he’s sensitive about. And this feeling of being out of control with what the other kids are doing. I think it’s this expectation that got this parent overwhelmed herself, and then the fact that she was trying to go along with what he wanted instead of having a reasonable boundary.
So when she says, “Am I missing something here?,” that’s all I think she’s missing. I do want to encourage her that her child seems like he’s doing just fine and that it’s perfectly valid to be this kind of person. And again, a lot of this he may grow out of, but it’s a sensitivity that can be very positive and very powerful. It’s okay for him to feel anxious in these situations, and when he has to perform, too. I mean, I get anxious just thinking about that, social situations where there’s performance required. I don’t understand why there’s people that don’t get anxious about that, to be honest. But anyway, it sounds like this parent is right there, tuned in. And she knows her child really well, she’s obviously being sensitive to him. I don’t see any problem here or anything she has to worry about.
But I wouldn’t sign up for things that are going to frustrate her like that, where his behavior is going to be like that. And you could give him the option: We can do this, but this is the way it’s going to go. Do you still want to do it? We’re not saying it in a threatening or negative way, but just putting it out there, honestly. Look, you want us right next to you. We don’t want to be right next to you in that situation. If that’s what you need, let’s not do this right now, and that’s okay.
And know that there’s so much time for kids to take these kinds of classes and do these kinds of sports and things. There really isn’t a rush, I have this long view. There’s no reason to start something earlier than a child wants, or to even put them in anything that isn’t totally their thing, that isn’t something that they actually have their own interest in doing, an interest that comes from them.
Here’s one more, and then I’m going to make some general comments about all of these. This one is a pretty unusual situation, but it sounds like the child’s sensitivities and everything fall into this category of all these children:
I have a question to do with our nearly six-year-old son’s request for us to not attend school events. This isn’t because he doesn’t want us there, but rather he says he knows he will get upset and cry when he sees us because he won’t want us to leave without him at the end. He is anticipating being sad when it’s time to say bye.
As some background, he’s been at school for about six months and at the beginning would sometimes feel sad when saying goodbye in the mornings, but now has no problem happily waving me off. He loved it when I came along on a full-day school trip with him, but shorter events during school time seem to be different.
When he had athletics a couple of months ago, he told us he wasn’t sure about us coming to watch because he might get sad. But on the morning of, he changed his mind, so we went along. He did indeed get upset when he first saw us and cried for five to 10 minutes, missing out on part of an event. We were with him while he was upset and the other children were too focused to really notice. Once he had worked through this, he had a great time and enjoyed us being there to watch. When it was time for us to leave, he was actually totally fine about it.
In the present example, he has 10 class swimming lessons that parents are invited to watch. He has clearly and repeatedly told us he doesn’t want us to come along because he says he will get sad. We’ve listened to him and won’t go. However, I do wonder if this keeps happening, is it better to gently encourage him to face this difficult emotion, process it, and then enjoy the school event with us there to share it? Or is it better to respect his choice every time without trying to encourage him to face this fear/worry?
I would be so interested to hear what you think would be the right approach. Thank you.
So this is interesting, right? When we feel that our child is anxious or easily overwhelmed or very sensitive like the children in these stories, what we want to try to take out of the equation is our own worry or anxiousness about the feelings our child is having and the way it’s showing up. Which also means we don’t want to try to fix or change the feelings, because those really aren’t in our power to change anyway. And when we’re fixing or changing the feelings, kids sense that, and what it’s teaching them is that it’s actually not okay to feel what they feel. And they can’t change what they feel, so we want to start with that full acceptance of them.
And the reason it’s so important to know that this is a pretty common issue that kids have—I don’t even want to call it an issue—it’s a pretty common type of personality that kids have, is so these parents can see it as normal and they can not worry and be anxious about it. I know I can’t wave a wand and make people put their worry and anxiety away about things, but it really is okay to be anxious. This is appropriate to feel anxious and sensitive in these situations, and overwhelmed.
So it’s wonderful for us to be sensitive to our child in that way, that their anxiousness makes us anxious and all that. All these parents have that going for them and it’s lovely. But then if this becomes anxiousness or worry about their anxiousness, we’re making it harder for them. We’re amplifying the feelings through our own feelings about it, which our children will always pick up on. No matter what we say or do, they’re just going to pick up on it. We’re never going to meet anyone more aware than our young children are of everything. It’s kind of wild and intense and a blessing and a curse, obviously. But what our kids need is for us to normalize this for ourselves and trust our child.
And then from there, because we trust our child and we don’t want to accommodate or try to fix it for them, we need to have reasonable boundaries. I talked about this in the first two notes. It didn’t really come up in the first one so much, except that I would encourage her, she was saying, her husband says he can’t force us to stop dancing or singing every time. Right, absolutely not. So I wouldn’t let him decide what you’re doing, but allow him to decide to move away, put his hands over his ears and over his eyes, whatever he needs to do. But don’t let him stop you from doing the things that you want to do. That’s where the boundary comes in here. So if we can be ourselves and do what we want to do, but at the same time allow him to be himself and not take it as a problem that he wants to retreat and not dance with us if there’s too many people or whatever, then he feels a comfortable place in this relationship with us where we can all be ourselves. So we don’t want to be changing ourselves or doing things we don’t want to do for our child. That’s where the personal boundaries come in.
And then in the second one, it was about having him do this football class where he was demanding they stay right by his side. That wouldn’t work for most people and it is going to make us frustrated. So with trusting that our child is okay as they are, we can trust ourselves to do what we want to do in the relationship.
And then in this last note, this is interesting, right? That he wants them to be there, but there’s a part of it that’s bittersweet for him, that makes him sad. And I don’t even know if it’s sad. They said he describes it that way, but it sounds more like he’s moved by them, maybe how much he loves them or that he always wants them to be with him. I mean, this is really a precious thing he’s going through. And as much as it’s concerning these parents and they kind of want him to stop feeling like that I bet, this is a really special time in their life when they’re treasured like this and he’s showing it so openly. Sensitivity, it’s a gift. And as these parents are noticing, not all children have it to the extent that these kids have. That’s okay, other kids have other gifts. But this quality is very positive.
It’s also interesting all these children are boys. I don’t know if that makes it harder for the parents or not, if the gender’s an issue for them in that way. But they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, which is having feelings about things and expressing them, being themselves. And we can help them continue to have that attunement to themselves and that acceptance. That acceptance makes us strong, confident in who we are.
But in terms of boundaries for this last family, they had this incredible experience where he changed his mind. First he said he didn’t want them to come, but then he changed his mind and they came and he did cry, and then he got to share that, and he had a great time. What I would recommend to these parents is what I was saying to the other two parents, which is to do what you want to do that’s reasonable. If you want to go to watch your child swim, you don’t need to try to accommodate what he’s saying there and not show up. I mean, they said, “we’ve listened to him and won’t go,” so they already made that decision.
But she asked, “if this keeps happening, is it better to gently encourage him to face this difficult emotion, process it, and then enjoy the school event with us there to share it? Or is it better to respect his choice every time?” So my boundary would be that if I really want to go to see him perform or do this school thing or just to be there with him, I would say, “I know you’re afraid and you’re worried you’re going to cry. It’s okay if you cry. I really want to come, and I’m not afraid of you crying. I want you to share that with me.” That’s how I would open this up a little for him.
And I know it’s scary because we don’t want to do something our child says no to, but it sounds like that is his fear talking, and there are decisions around this that he needs you to make, and make with courage and openness. Hey, I want you to be able to cry if you need to cry. It’s okay that you have those feelings. I love that you feel so strongly about us, and I always want you to share that. We don’t want to let him stop us from all these things that we would otherwise go to and enjoy with him.
It’s our attitude about the crying and the situation that makes this work. If our attitude is, Hey, bring it on, you can cry. I’m not worried. I’m not ashamed. I don’t feel there’s something wrong with you for that. I’m not saying these parents do, but those are all thoughts that can go through our mind. I think it’s a lovely thing. So that’s different from trying to condition him in some way, like with any of these, that we’re deliberately showing up when he doesn’t want us to to try to teach him something. We’re only going to go because we really want to go and share that with him. And we’re not afraid of him sharing his healthy feelings around that. And by us not being afraid, he doesn’t need to be afraid of crying and maybe feeling sad or whatever that is that’s getting touched off in him.
That’s why our kids need us to be brave about their anxiousness or their vulnerability, so they don’t have to worry about us too. And then it gets so complicated, all these layers of, Well, I’m anxious and that’s making them anxious and that’s making me more anxious. As a child, we just get swallowed up in that, right? It’s like my mother being disappointed that I was shy. I loved my mother and she loved me, I know that. But she was ashamed that I wasn’t able to always greet people the way she wanted me to. And I internalized a lot of that shame, too. So we just don’t need to do that. These sweet and deep children, I want to meet all of them.
And it may be if these are their biological parents, that maybe there’s some reflection of themselves that the parents are seeing too. And that can be hard. If we were maybe shamed for certain things or not accepted for our vulnerabilities, our social awkwardness or whatever, then we see that in our child and it’s hard to accept. So it always starts with accepting ourselves first, then accepting our child, and then being brave about our boundaries.
I really hope some of this encourages. That’s all I ever want to do. Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.
