Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Visual sensitivity and perfectionism

DS 3.3 is the younger brother of my PG DS 5.4. I have a couple of issues that really confuses me and hope somebody has experience with this.

1. DS 3.3 is an EXTREME perfectionist. He is very reluctant to answer any questions when he doesn't absolutely know the answer. He will whisper it if he says anything at all. I am thinking this might be due to his older brothers constant criticism of him not knowing what he "should" know. (his brother, who is a crazy workaholic at age of 5 will say "You play too much, you need to work more") The other day he was writing and made an A that he didn't like. He freaked out crying trying to erase what he had written. It as written with a marker so that didn't work. He begged me to rip the A out of the book. DS5 was nice and said that "Your A is nicer than mine" trying to calm him down.

Any suggestions how to deal with this and make him relax a bit?

2. This is what I am really wondering about. He is EXTREMELY sensitive to what he sees. Examples: The other night I was about to put on a new pajamas that was camo pattern. He got very upset, crying saying he didn't like the pattern. He refused to let me put it on him. I asked why he didn't like the pattern and he said "It looks like people that are crying". (He is very sensitive to others feelings) Looking back to when he was just over 1 years old he wouldn't wear PJ's that had ears on the feet either. Cried hysterically.

He is also not wanting to go to school because they have a new circle time rug that he doesn't like. He says "I don't like the new one because it is blue with letters, I want the red one with NO letters" It is very upsetting to him. I am sure he will get over it but still...

He looks at paintings around the house saying "Why is that deer staring at me", "What is in that water" (upset wondering).

Tons of other things too. Hard to explain, but he will look at things and wonder why it looks a certain was, see things I had never thought of and ask questions I can't answer. Sometimes he is upset, sometimes just curious. Just seems he has an extreme intensified view of the world. This goes for things he hears too, like music.From about 1 years of age he has been very particular about what songs he wants to hear and will cry if there is a song he doesn't like. I have always thought, you are a toddler, how can you pick up on this and CARE??

I was thinking for a while he could have SPD and talked to the pediatrician about it. She said he doesn't fit that profile at all and suggested the sensitivities being because of overexcitabilities. We do not know that he is gifted at this point although we suspect it. He has no tactile issues, mild loud noise sensitivity, somewhat sensitive to light but none of the other check marks that comes along with SPD.

It is just mostly emotional. He gets very upset when there is even a HINT of criticism, condescending and has been like this before he was 1. Extremely observant to others feelings, things going on around him and REALLY sympathetic, to the point where he will cry if something happens to a character in a book etc.

Just wondering if anybody has had a kid like this, how you handled it and what the reason was for this behaviour. I am not wanting to accept that it is just part of his possible giftedness until I explore other reasons, if there are any.

Thanks all!

My DD8 has some of these same characteristics.

Regarding perfectionism... that's a journey. It takes tons of time to deal with that one. We're still dealing with it, though we're seeing improvement. Our primary strategy there is to put her in classes where she gets to be challenged, and can overcome those challenges. Along the way she gets to see how practice makes better, but nobody is perfect.

For clothing, I would recommend you start letting him pick out his own clothes... not only at dressing time, but also when you're shopping for new ones, because there's no sense in spending money on something he won't wear. That's what works for us. DD never cried about it, but she will flatly refuse to wear anything she finds objectionable, and has been picking out her own clothes since she was 4-6 mos old. Her bedroom and play room are decorated according to her tastes, too.

The music thing makes complete sense when you think about it, because music is something that plays directly to the emotions, and as an emotionally intense little guy, it's going to hit him hard. So I'd definitely cater to his tastes for now, and look to broaden his horizons gradually as he matures.

With our DD, emotional intensity is just part of the total package. Resistance is futile. We help her out by validating her emotions when they're appropriate, but also helping her channel them into appropriate outlets. For example, we used timeouts pretty liberally in the past for frequent meltdowns, but their only function was to give her some time to get a grip on her emotional state, and she could come out as soon as she was ready. Sometimes that took a few attempts, and sometimes she'd go into an emotional death spiral on timeout, so we'd have to go in every few minutes and try another way to pull her out. Over time she has learned to self-regulate better, and it's very rare for her to go on timeout these days.

One of the parents here posted a great suggestion that was helpful to my DD. It was a metaphor where negative emotions are a liquid accumulating in a cup, and if it fills up too high, it spills out all over and makes a huge mess... in this case, a meltdown. So the trick is to recognize when your cup is filling up, and pour some off before it overflows. Some suggestions for pouring-off activities are exercise/sports, computer games, music/dance, reading, quiet time, etc.

I wonder if he will be very artistic in some way. My DD is a bit like this. She has synesthesia (Google if unfamiliar) and some of what your son says made me think of that. You could easily ID if he has this, not that it is a diagnosis, per se.

DD3.5 has some of what you describe. She can't take any mistakes on her part or others. If she hears two conflicting things and figures out one was wrong, she gets very upset with the person that gave her the wrong info and makes them admit they were wrong and they take their words back. She will yell," mom, you were wrong. Erase what you said." Sometimes ( very rarely), she has made me write what I said wrong on a piece of paper so I can tear it and trash it. Also, if she makes a mistake and if someone points it out, her eyes well up. My sister suggested "beautiful oops" book and my dd loves it. The book has helped me use humor to calm her down.
Regarding music taste (dd listens to the same set of songs everyday till she decides it is time to move on) and clothing, I just let dd make the decision. I don't fight it bcos to me it is not worth it. For things that must change, we talk about it at length and let her know that we cannot control everything and sometimes must accept it. I try to make it more of an intellectual discussion to deemphasize the emotional aspect. For example, if school rug changes, I would ask her what it is specifically she does not like, how many kids like the change vs not, what I like or don't like about the change. If she cries, I tell her I can't understand what she is trying to tell me. She usually stops. I also suspect spd ( she has many of the symptoms) but haven't discussed with a health professional yet. Sorry for the long response. I hope it helps.

Thanks guys. It sure is confusing a lot of the time trying to figure this little guy out.

Dude, you are right about music hitting him hard because he is so sensitive. He hears details in songs that even I had not noticed. (and I am a musician!)I think he feels the music and hears the details so strongly it gets overwhelming to him. It goes so much deeper for him than just liking or disliking a song. I really, truly affects him on a soul level.....at age 3....

Ultramarina, I read up on synesthesia and it was a very interesting read. Hard to know if that is a possibility at this point. Not sure he would be able to express it for me to know if he experiences this or not. I guess time will tell.

Lovemydd, "You are wrong!", I hear this a lot! I try to be casual about things he freaks out about, but he is impossible to distract (always has been). If I were to ask how many kids like the rug he would say "NO ONE!" He doesn't fall for anything. He knows what you are trying to do and won't play into it. Like when he asks me to look at something and I am doing something else so I just SAY "Oh yeah, I see!", even though I didn't. (Please tell me we all do this....:-) He will say "No you didn't see because you were turned THAT way so you couldn't see it!" Or if I say "Mmhmm" he gets very bothered. He says he wants me to say yes or no, not mmhmm.

Ahhhh....

I am pretty sure SPD is not an issue so maybe it is like you said Dude, just part of the total package. I like the idea of the cup filling up. I have to be more aware of that.

DS was having the drawing circles problem, so we got him a compass.

He had stopped drawing completely, and now he's drawing again...

It looks a bit.. odd... but at least I have something for my fridge.

1111, how does your son do with transitions/change? Could that be part of his clothes issue or the new carpet at school?

I know DS3 is very similar in some ways. He doesn't handle change well unless we prepare him for it in some way. Getting him to try new things is very hard. I tend to give him plenty of warning ahead of time and plenty of time to adjust to the new 'thing'.

We also do a lot of 'choice a' and 'choice b' for getting him dressed. This started being a must after about 18 months or so. He has toned down his objections lately, but I think that is because he has input and I've learned what he tends to prefer.

As for the perfection part, we are totally with you there. I mean, DS3 has a full fledged meltdown if his banana breaks while he's peeling it. It has to be peeled all of the way down to eat it and it has to be whole. I used to have to put a toothpick in it to keep the broken pieces together to calm him down enough to eat.

Jolaine83, he doesn't do very well with transitions either. Neither did my oldest who used to flat out refuse to move when they were going into a different room at preschool. He has come a long way though, no issues now in Kindergarten, so I have hope for my little one...:-)

Very possible the rug issue was him not liking change. He gets comfortable in a situation and wants it to stay that way. A new rug...not good. So you are right, in a way, that is a transition as well.

As far as the clothes. He doesn't really care what he wears usually. So I don't think it is one of those things like some of you experience. And I don't think the PJ's was a transition thing either since he was fine with the other new PJ I had bought and introduced at the same time. It was just the pattern that upset him.

Just spent 1 hour torturing him since he needed a haircut and a bath. Haircuts are horrible. I have a machine that is very quiet but he screams his lungs out. Also baths are a nightmare. Actually we don't do baths anymore. I sit him down on a step stool in the tub and use a hand held shower head. It is faster that way and easier. Still, he can't stand water dripping from the over head shower head so I have to tie a plastic bag to it that picks out the water that drips out. (It leaks a tiny bit....I put it in and I am not a plumber.....guess I should have it fixed ;-) Then of course he doesn't like the feel of the water very much, especially when washing his hair. I think that is pretty normal though. Seems it is the whole experience that is just too much. Too overwhelming.

I totally see how the banana would upset your little one, and I also see myself doing just what you did with the toothpicks. It is amazing the things I do to keep him balanced and calm when he is upset about "strange" things....

Lol! And I thought only my kid has this peculiarity. Broken bananas= meltdowns at our home too. So does broken egg yolks, peanuts that are not whole, etc.

At 3... I don't know. (This was my DD). I didn't figure it out until she was older: she needed to be pushed out of the "perfection is possible" zone so that she would just learn to "suck it up and deal with it."

At the moment she's the weakest student in an advanced skating class, populated with older kids who get more ice time every week. It's AWESOME for her. In the beginning there were tears (she's 10, btw) and talk about how awful she thinks she is. I told her this set of lessons is not about skating skills, it's about bravery skills. Now that the set is almost over, she's a lot more relaxed. She's still the weakest skater, but now she's openly saying that she enjoys it "because it's hard."

I'm not sure if I could have put her in that situation at 3, though, without her traumatizing everyone involved with the intensity of her meltdowns...

This actually triggers another memory of my DD10 when she was younger (although it's not quite the same)... she was VERY VERY VERY insistent that her stuffed toys had feelings, and it went well beyond the age when she should have known they were toys. I'm certain that on some level she knew they weren't real, but she insisted they were and that they had awareness and likes and dislikes. She would become quite upset and emotional if you contradicted her. I want to say this continued until she was 7 or 8, but I can't quite remember. My suspicion is that she was just taking some of her intense sensitivity and displacing it somewhere (sharing it, maybe... with her stuffed toys... so that it was easier to handle? I don't know).

You might consider looking at Elaine Aron's work on highly sensitive children: http://www.hsperson.com/pages/child.htm. My boy has some of these issues, particularly with baths. We've tried the visor, to no avail (didn't like the way it felt on his head, etc). He's now mostly dirty...

My DS6 is a perfectionist. He had a hard time with free writing in class. He had so many great ideas, but when the teacher cued more and more, he hesitated to a halt. But when he brought the work home, with no one interrupting him, he would finish the story writing swiftly.

FWIW, the broken banana thing is age-appropriate for toddlers and a typical developmental thing. I read an explanation of it once, though it sounded a bit Freudian. Anyway, lots of kids do this. I think it is sometimes worth it to just let them cope with the broken banana.

At that age with my explosive toddler (my older son)...I used to eat the last banana at night if we only had one left. If we only had one left and he asked for it and the damn thing broke then there wasn't another one to try...he expected me to drop everything and go to the store for another bunch of bananas. If I ate the single left banana before he could ask for it, we were not in that position. I even stopped getting bananas for a while and switched to different fruit until his flexibility on bananas was better...and for a while I told him he could only have them sliced up with a dollop of whipped cream or yogurt (thus avoiding the whole "it broke so now it is no good" problem).

We had the bath issue with DD as well. Since she's always had long hair, it wasn't something we could just let go. She was HORRIFIED at the feeling of water trickling anywhere down her face.

What finally worked (but it was still a fight) was to have her stand, lean slightly towards the wall with both hands holding the wall for support, then tip her head all the way back so that her forehead was horizontal with the ceiling. Then I'd use a cup (not the shower head - it scared her too much) and slowly pour the water on her hair so that it would run down her back, talking her through it the entire time. I'm not sure why she had to stand - maybe she felt further from the water and not as likely to get her face wet? I don't know. All I know is I couldn't get her to stay calm when she was sitting.