I'm not sure I'd call it a "gift" so much as a sensory sensitivity, which can be a gift and a curse at the same time.
ITA with Dude - my dd11 has an extremely sensitive sense of smell.... and there are times that it causes her a *lot* of discomfort when she has to be somewhere that doesn't smell good to her.
I'll also add that it can be completely beyond embarassing to parent a child with an extreme sense of smell in some instances... I can't tell you how many times we've walked into a room (school, stores, people's houses, wherever) where my dd will immediately pipe up with some comment like "Oooh! This house smells like (insert icky embarassing smell here", no one else can smell it... but then there's also some type of obvious proof that she's right.......... so in addition to my other "messages I repeat over and over again" to my sensory seeking dd ("don't touch everything", "don't wiggle when you are talking to people" "stop incessantly playing with your hair").... I also find myself constantly reminding her "Now when we go inside this house, remember to NOT announce what it smells like!"...
polarbear
