Читать книгу The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping our children thrive when the world overwhelms them - Elaine N. Aron, Elaine N. Aron Ph.D. - Страница 22

One reason for the variation among HSCs is that temperament traits seem to be caused by several genes, each having small, cumulative effects. Thus each different flavor of sensitivity—sensitivity to the subtle, the overwhelming, the new, the emotional, the social, or the physical and nonsocial—may be caused by a different gene. Yet there is still something common to these different sensitivities and they may tend to be inherited together. (If the underlying trait was not one trait, my questionnaire would have uncovered several different “factors,” but there was only one.)

Here are more examples of the range of HSCs. Yes, Rhoda’s youngest, Tina, had tantrums, as do many HSCs when young and overstimulated. But in this book you will also meet Alice, who is three and has never had a tantrum. She is strong-willed and opinionated, but when she wants something, she says it in a way that is almost uncanny in its maturity.

You will meet Walt, seven, who hates sports (but loves chess); Randall, nine, who will only play baseball, and only if his mother coaches the team; and Chuck, also nine, who will play any sport and be good at it. He climbs high and loves to ski, but he knows his terrain and his limits. (On a recent skiing trip, Chuck was caught at the top in a blizzard. He cried from the stress of it, but insisted on going down anyway.)

Chuck is an indifferent student; Walt and Randall are doing great academically. Catherine has been advanced almost every grade, starting with a move from preschool to kindergarten. And Maria was her high school’s valedictorian and graduated summa cum laude in chemistry from Harvard.

You already read about Tina being an extrovert. Chuck is also extroverted, popular, already discovered by the girls. In contrast, Randall has limited friendships, mainly because he does not like to go to other homes—he dislikes the unfamiliar family members, food, and routines.

Sometimes the quality that parents notice most is their child’s emotional sensitivity. You’ll meet River, a teenager so aware of others’ emotions that he begged his mother to take in a homeless person he found in the park. (His mother decided to let the man stay until her son realized the problems with the situation and found another solution, which he did after three months.)

Melanie, eight, is another HSC with emotional sensitivity. She cries if she feels embarrassed or if someone else is teased. Her sensitivity also extends to physical pain. Afraid of falling, she did not learn to ride a bike without training wheels until her sister, three years younger, learned. Her pride finally forced her to take the risk.

Walt is mostly sensitive to new situations and people. Consider Walt’s first experience with grass: He crawled to the edge of a blanket, continued onto the grass, and cried from the shock of it. His mother remembers that two years later his sister crawled to the edge of the blanket, felt the grass, and just kept going.

Larry, thirteen now, is mostly sensitive to sound, clothing, and foods. Until kindergarten he only wore sweatshirts and sweatpants. He could not bear the roughness of jeans. Like Walt, he also doesn’t like new situations—he refuses to go to camp or take long vacations.

Mitchell, five, seems to have all the characteristics of an HSC. He is sensitive to social novelty, so he’s really struggling with starting school. He does not like birthday parties and will not wear a costume at Halloween, not wanting everyone looking at him. He is slow verbally because he’s thinking so much before he speaks—he developed some stuttering after his older cousins came to visit because he had trouble speaking as quickly as they did. He has the physical sensitivity, too, so that he does not like foods that have been mixed or socks that rub. His mother cuts the tags from his clothing because they bother his neck and waist.