Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Overexcitablitys and Scared of everything! Help!!

Im just wondering if anyone else is expieriencing this with their LO my DS/2.8yrs has what i call an over active imagination

He is scared of loud noises and the dark but also certain stuffed animals, bugs, stepping on certain surfaces(the high gloss/soft floors at botanical gardens), being alone, shadows, and many other random things.. He watches movies at night to go to bed and its hard to find ones he isnt scared of (he was even scared of a fairy on his sisters tinkerbell movie)

He constantly says there is something in the livingroom/kitchen/bathroom/bedroom.

He still wakes 2-5+ times a night and gets very hysterical if he cant reach me (if my doors shut) He was sleeping okay in his bed (he shares a room with his older 4yr old sister) but hes regressed again

he is also very sensitive emotionaly he FREAKS OUT over little things but when he is happy he is SO HAPPY

sometimes he worries me quite a bit because if he gets yelled at he will sometimes curl up in a ball and quiver or just have an emotional out burst (i try to uliminate yelling from his life but DH yells and sometimes his sister yells at him) he has always been emotional as a newborn he cried real tears from birth and he always looked truely hurt/sad when he cried (i also believe the loudness of yelling bothers him)

the other thing he has done more resently is he has become a bit of a picky eater and i try to make him eat what hes given and he will reluctantly let me put a bite in his mouth (giving an effort at trying it) and then kinda gag a little and spit it out... (usually the thing he wont eat is a bite of meat chicken or steak or mooshy foods like potatos or white rice i over cooked a little ...

Oh and He also has a great imagination in general he really gets into imaginary play to wear he insists that he "IS" whatever character hes pretending to be.
I have three kids ages 4.5yrs 2.8yrs and 7mo. and im exhausted because DS never lets me get unbroken sleep he also would go to bed at 11pm. (if i would let him) and get up at 5-6am. he naps once during the day for an hour (no matter how much he sleeps the night before) and otherwise hes not tired or grumpy or anything...

i believe my two other children are gifted as well and between the three of them my heads spinning sometimes i feel like i am in WAY WAY over my head!

i really just need someone to commisorate and tell me they are going through this or have gone through it and it will be okay...

My DD6 was and is very sensitive and fearful. When she was your sons age she would have night terrors which were bad because she was not even awake. The night terrors were just a phase but the fearful personality was not.
When she was that age I did'nt let her sleep in my room at night. If she woke up afraid, I would lay in a sleeping bag on her floor. Someone gave me this advice and said if the problem happens every night, to move the sleeping bag further away from her bed each night. It was not every night with us, so I did not try this trick.
Now she is now almost 7, and will still wake up afraid once every few weeks. I usually just let her crash on my floor.
Sometimes when she is overly tired she can have a hard time getting to sleep for fear of the "moving shadows" and the spiders she swears are there. On those nights I spray lylsol in her room and tell her that it will kill any hiding spiders. hehe
The good part about having a sensitive kid is that diciplining our DD only consists of a dirty look.
As for the picky eating and freaking out over little things.. This is a normal phase for almost every 2-3 year old. It is usually more about control than anything else, but some kids really are texture sensitive.
I also have a DS who is almost 3. He is more stubborn than sensitive but he runs me ragged as well!
Please keep posting! There are many of us here dealing with the pressures of the terrible 2-3's and this is agreat outlet.

iv only posted here a couple times and that was 6-7mo. ago. iv been busy with the new baby (shes 7mo. now) im doubting their giftedness less now then i was 6mo. ago but i still think what if im wrong what if im making something out of nothing and i have no support system... my family believes me but dont really talk about intelect they were all gifted too but in my family they are very religious and i am constantly told it doesnt matter all that matters is that they know God which i agree but also cant ignore that they are gifted.. im just frustrated and have no one to talk to....

Hi, FaithHopeLove19, welcome. Some gifted people are especially sensitive to loud sounds. I know my husband is pretty sensitive this way even as an adult; running the vacuum when he is around is a big no-no (not that I mind too much).
I think it is not too out of the ordinary to have stops and starts with good sleep at that age, but with gt kids they do seem to let that imagination fly into high gear and the things they end up imagining can get them pretty scared really quickly, so it does seem 'exaggerated'. At least that is our experience around here.

Our dd3 is now working through the kinks of sleeping in her own room, some nights it's blissful quiet though it still takes a while to get her to stay in her bed at all. Other nights it's much more fraught with out-spoken dissatisfaction over the whole arrangement. If I sit with her for about 10 minutes with my arm in her arms she will usually settle (after 30 minutes of reading, of course).
She offers no guarantees, however, and I have just decided to get ok with the idea that she's not falling asleep anymore at 8:30, more like 9:30, sometimes later. But she/we are getting there, slowly.
Good luck to you!

ps
We have bugs all around our house, and some days it seems like dd is scared of every single one of them, and on bug-patrol to alert me to what I am trying to ignore...there is a bug there, there, no there! Ah. I try to ignore them for the most part they are harmless or good for us, like spiders, but my sister tends to be a bit more 'DEFCON 4' about bugs so that is definitely rubbing off - how you react to bugs etc., could play a role for him.

He shares a room with his older sister and i have a 7mo. old so i cant always stay with him till he falls asleep (sometimes it takes 20min. other times up to 2+hrs)i do go in thier room (with the baby) and read for 30min. to an 1 hour. and sometimes he falls asleep other times not his older sister goes to sleep almost everytime while im reading then i put a movie on for them and leave and go in my bed with the 7mo. (7mo. old DD breastfeeds/cosleeps)then i usually have to tell him over and over to get back in bed sometimes he does other times he has an emotional break down where its obvious that hes just terrified

yesterday he started talking about God and saying that God protects him in the Dark and that God protects him in his bed at night... he actually seem to be trying really hard to over come his fear the other night after behaving in a very fearfull manner got some bravery and confidence and said in a strong tone "Im not afraid of the dark anymore" but then later he was still quite scared

We used the book "Where is God When I'm Scared". It's a veggie tale book and might even be a DVD. He also has the Fisher Price aquarium. It has a remote which we don't use but I just put the aquarium in my DS's bed and he turns it on whenever he wakes up at night. You can adjust the volume and movement however you want and it turns off automatically after a certain time frame. He is a light sleeper and has always woke up numerous times a night since birth. This is what has worked for us since we moved him into his own room at 3 to a "big boy" bed from the crib in our room. The humor is that it was bought by grandma for the coming baby and he adopted it the day he switched rooms.

Hi, have you tried giving him something of yours to sleep with so that he "has a bit of you with him"? I used to give my older DS my husband's rugby jersey to sleep with when he was younger and that used to help. My youngest DS (almost 5) is also a very anxious child and worries about death, bugs, thunderstorms (he starts crying if he sees a cloud that looks like a cumulo-nimbus) etc. Last night he wanted me to get the washing in off the line before he went to sleep (as it might be stolen) - he got himself into a real state because I said that I would do it once they were in bed. I can definitely identify with the "Freaking out". We have been trying to teach him to close his eyes and count slowly to ten and then things don't look/seem so bad - it has been helping. Hang in there because it does get better

Oh, can I relate. My DS6 is VERY sensitive. He was "diagnosed" with Sensory processing Disorder when he was 4 but there were other things we noticed that made us think maybe the diagnosis wasn't entirely correct because he never seemed to fit the descriptions....he's not on the autistic scale or aspergers - those have all been ruled out by several people. When we met with a psych a few weeks ago to do the RIAS and Woodcock Johnson she informed us that she really believed he did not have SPD but that he was HG and had OE issues. We are really beginning to see that that description seems to fit him MUCH better.
His newest thing is that a few months ago when we were in Lowe's and I was checking out something on a shelf, he was messing around with something next to the cart. When I looked, I noticed he had run his hands through a spilled bag of purple pellets - 'joy' - ant poison pellets. I didnt freak or anything, just told him that we needed to go back to the bathroom and wash his hands off. He asked a million questions about why and what would happen. I tried to explain that everyone just washes their hands after touching things like that. I realized that I have always really been open about letting him explore/touch things because he is a hands-on, kinesthetic learner and rarely tell him no when it comes to touching something...well we are now dealing with him being afraid of touching things. He takes things VERY literally and tends to worry now if he has touched something that he shouldn't have. He refuses to go down that aisle at Lowe's anymore and freaks out if we come even close to it.

I totally sympathise. Our little'un used to see ghosts and auras (when he was 7 and 8) and it used to scare me. Now, I am not a believer in these things but some people do, and friends said maybe he has a wonderful gift - which further freaked me out. But we just have to live with it.

He has imaginary alien enemies, (wish he had some friendly types) so we can't open windows in his room at night even when it is really stuffy.

Every little twinge is pointed out repeatedly because he thinks there is something wrong with him - we all laugh at it to alleviate the frustration, and he knows he is being silly but still does it.

Things have got better, and he moved on to other things - but he still says there are ghosts in the house - who knows, maybe there are.

He hardly sleeps - never did - and both me and mum were exhausted because he needed constant stimulation while he was awake. Now he is a little older (he is 9y 6m) he stays up later anyhow. Still needs little sleep tho'. I feel sorry for you having more than 1!

One thing that did calm him down a bit when he was very young was Omega 3 supplements. They didn't knock him out or anything, but his head just got a little less busy. Don't know if there is any science for this, but that's our experience.

Good luck anyhow and hope this helps - you're not the only one believe me.

My son has always been very sensitive. He knew too much about germs when he was in Kindergarten (from those science encyclopedias he liked to read) and washed his hands excessively until I convinced him that he had a really good immune system that would take care of those germs. He also worried a lot about getting a head injury and brain damage any time he bumped his head--he had to know what that area of the brain controlled. This was after his grandmother went in for routine surgery and came out with brain damage and severe memory loss and we had to explain that she couldn't remember who he was even though she saw him every day because her brain was damaged. I was surprised when he didn't develop a fear of getting cancer when his dad was diagnosed with cancer but we had told him that we thought it might possibly have been the result of exposure to Agent Orange many years ago and that seemed to calm any fears that he might get it.

I have to come up with reasons why the particular thing that scares him is not likely to happen to him. We have to talk about what precautions we can take to keep the feared event from happening and he keeps asking questions until he feels that I have told him the whole truth and not left anything out. I understand this because I have always been like this too, just not as extreme.

At 11, he still sleeps with the light on. He still hears every noise. I still sometimes have to read to him until he falls asleep and he can go all night without sleeping. If you are in a tent with him trying to sleep, every time you fall asleep, he wakes you up asking if you heard something he heard, asks what could it be and are we really safe out here, etc.

He has never been stung by a bee or wasp but has seen people get stung, one was his best friend. He developed a fear of flying insects that he can't identify as they are buzzing past his head. He still has this fear especially if he is with the insect in an enclosed space like the car or tent (one reason I am worried about the Boy Scout camp). If the others found out about this fear I am sure they would tease him about it instead of being sympathetic and he would be very embarrassed. He is at an age now where he does care about what others think about him.