Super sensitive kids and their superpowers play an important role in our next book–to be released April 4.
In Bash and Lucy Say, “Love, Love, Bark!” (along with other Bash and Lucy books) Bash is sensitive to loud noises and certain smells. He feels scratches , bumps and cuts on his body intensely. He doesn’t like scratchy clothes. He’s also sensitive emotionally, quickly noticing others’ feelings. When kids are angry with him, he gets upset and worried. He often wants to do something to make them feel better when they express sadness, jealousy or anger.
In the book, Bash’s Grandma Vera–an immigrant from Ukraine–trains him to turn those sensitivities into superpowers. She shows him how to take advantage of his finely tuned ears, feelings and taste buds in ways that make him a stronger soccer player, better student and good friend.
Vera reminds Bash, “super sensitive makes superpower.”
Bash sees some of his strengths as disadvantages and doesn’t understand why others want to be like him.
“But Gramma Vera,” he says in the book, “what you say are my gifts make things hard. I can smell what my friends ate for breakfast, and it sometimes gives me a stomachache. I can hear kids when they whisper and sometimes even that hurts my ears. And when they tease me, it feels so bad I want to run, run, run, one hundred miles away.”
In the book, Bash’s friends point out that his sensitivities seem to be linked to how smart he is.
And they’re right! Super sensitive kids–who are sometimes labeled as having “sensory processing disorder (SPD)” are often smart.
A pilot study by the STAR Institute found that 35% of the kids in one large sample of gifted children showed symptoms of SPD. The link between SPD and giftedness is due in part to the fact that gifted kids’ brains are wired differently, explained Lisa Porter, a Ph.D occupational therapist, in a story Lisa wrote about these kids.
Recent studies about gifted kids found that they have more “neural connectivity” in their brains than more typical kids, says Porter. In addition, certain brain changes occur later in gifted kids.
“You have all these connections in the brain, and at some point they are whittled so the remaining ones get stronger. You keep the ones you use the most,” she explains. This “whittling” or “pruning” generally happens in toddlers and adolescents. However, in gifted kids, this pruning happens later, which helps explain why gifted kids often have sensory challenges. “They are really intelligent in some ways but can experience delays in executive functioning and other issues,” Porter explains.
One of the goals of writing our Bash and Lucy books featuring sensory-sensitive Bash is to teach people about sensory challenges–and the advantages that accompany them.
We hope you learned something from reading this!
Don’t forget to watch Michael dedicate our third book to Vera, who in real life is Michael’s surrogate grandmother.