Supporting Sensitive Children: Stories for Big Feelings
The World of a Sensitive Child
To highly sensitive children or children with anxiety, navigating the world around them can often feel intense and overwhelming. They often have a stronger response to daily occurrences such as loud noises, bright lights, and sudden, unforeseen routine changes than their peers do. While it’s true that being highly sensitive creates unique challenges for children and their parents alike, there is a high upside.
Some of the common traits of these children include a deep sense of compassion and empathy, enhanced creativity and imagination, and close attention to detail (to name just a few). That’s why, as a parent, its essential to know that while you can’t always protect them from moments in life that feel unsettling, you can use methods to calm and soothe them and help them feel supported, loved, and understood. One excellent method is through stories.
Common Positive Traits of Highly Sensitive Children
While every child is one-of-a-kind, highly sensitive children and children with anxiety often have:
- Deep empathy and compassion
- Heightened creativity and imagination
- Enhanced observational skills
- An aptitude for deep thinking
- Good intuition
- Thoughtfulness
- Highly receptive to art, music, and storytelling
Why Stories are Magic for Anxious Kids
Whether a highly sensitive child is upset, calming down, or starting to process after a moment of high emotion, stories can be instrumental in helping them regain their emotional equilibrium. Reading, being read to, or listening to stories on an app or website gives them a unique opportunity to reflect on their emotions, process the experience that upset them, discover relatable characters and storylines that can validate them, and make them feel empowered.
Stories also have a great way of calming the nervous system with their rhythmic timing and engaging characters. Stories can also be effective at reducing anxiety by adding structure to the chaos, by reducing the noise and thoughts inside their brains with a calming narrative and offering children something with a clear beginning, middle, and end.
Story Archetypes That Heal
| Story Type | Best For | Example Theme |
| From Overwhelmed to Overcoming | Sensory Processing | A character who discovers a place of calm in a world that can be chaotic and overwhelming. |
| The Anxiety Conqueror | Overcoming Anxiety | A hero who finds a way to defeat their anxiety and find peace and calm. |
| Coping With Intense Sensations | Sensory Overload | A protagonist who leans when their senses seem overwhelmed, it doesn’t have to be a cause for alarm. |
Engaging Storytelling Tips
Storytelling can sometimes be more impactful when you make it interactive, pausing to give children a moment to reflect on key plot developments or important character traits. Keep in mind sometimes children just want to get lost in a story without any outside interaction, and that’s okay, too.
Four Ways to Maximize Story Magic for Sensitive Children
- Create Story Rituals Read stories during calm moments—perhaps during afternoon snack time or as part of your bedtime routine. Consistency helps children anticipate and process the emotional content.
- Let the Story Do the Work! Pick a story that suits the issue at hand and just press play! Giving it time to sink in (sometimes this means playing the story over a few times). This sometimes will prompt your child to bring things forward — so when this happens, ensure you’re ready for a conversation.
- Create Story Extensions Draw pictures of story characters, write letters to them, or imagine what happens next. This deepens emotional engagement and processing.
- Use Story Language Reference story characters during real situations: “Remember how Clancy felt nervous but discovered he belonged? I wonder if you’re feeling something similar?”
The “Big Feelings” Reading List
Leo the Hermit Crab – This delightful story tells the tale of a young crab who feels confined in his cramped, uncomfortable shell, until one day his shell breaks, leaving him with no shell at all, prompting his determined parents to find him what he needs.
The Dark – As autumn arrives and the days begin to get shorter, Martin is anxious and unable to sleep. He can’t see as well, and he worries about the shadows. Sensing this, his Momma hatches a plan to encourage him to use his other senses so he can finally fall into a restful sleep.
Minka the Tasmanian Devil – Minka, a Tasmanian devil pup, is sensitive to bright lights, sounds, touches – practically everything. Because of this, she stays inside her mother’s pouch until one day she becomes too big to stay there and has to venture into the world.
You can listen to each story here!
Leo the Hermit Crab
Leo the hermit crab feel uncomfortable in his too tight shell, and when it finally breaks his family quickly take action to get…
Story Details »
The Dark
Martin is feeling nervous about the dark, so Momma guides him through a hearing, smelling and feeling exercise that not only reassures him,…
Story Details »
Minka the Tasmanian Devil
Minka is more sensitive than her siblings and doesn’t want to leave her mothers pouch, but learns from her mother that sensitivity has…
Story Details »
Conclusion: You are Their Safe Harbor
For parents of highly sensitive or anxious children, the responsibility of helping them feel comfortable in a world that can seem scary and unpredictable can seem daunting. What’s important to remember, however, is that these children just need a little more time and effort before they feel comfortable taking on the world at large. By choosing stories with characters that their children can relate to and be inspired by, parents let their children feel seen, loved, and inspired while letting them know that they’re not alone.
Looking for more stories to help support your sensitive child? We encourage you to check-out our Stories for the Sensitive Child collection here.
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About the authors
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Lisabeth Sewell
Doer of Many Wonderful and Odd Things (including CEO)Lisabeth Sewell has worn many hats at Sparkle over the years, from Sparkle Kitchen Blogger to Editorial Director to Doer of All Odd Jobs. Her primary role is as CEO.
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