Category Archives: Overexcitabilities

6 Things You Need If Your Child Has Intellectual Overexcitability

08/02/2016OverexcitabilitiesIntellectual OELucinda

6 Things You Need If Your Child Has Intellectual Overexcitability

Intellectual overexcitability is sometimes described as ‘perpetual toddler syndrome’ (Living With Intensity). Children with intellectual OE ask questions. Lots of questions.

“How many people exactly are there in the world? That book in our bathroom says 278 babies are born in the time it takes to read to the bottom of the page. Who counts them?”

“What do you think dogs dream about?”

“Who invented scooters?”

These children have an insatiable thirst for knowledge, love solving puzzles, often have a deep interest in moral issues, and can ponder problems for hours.

“Which two animals would you like to cross, Mummy?”

“I’m not sure, sweetie. Let me have a think. How about you?”

“Well, for land, my answer would be a lobster and an elephant. My sea animals would be a swordfish and a jellyfish. For air, it would probably be peregrine falcon and a mosquito. And if I could cross land, air and sea…”

Parenting these incessantly curious children is a delight – and can be exhausting! Here are a few of the things I’ve discovered you need to make the most of the delight and minimise the exhaustion . . .

1. Books

I’m sure no one reading this needs telling that kids with intellectual OE love books. For most parents the biggest problem is probably how to prise the book out of their child’s hands during meals or at bedtime. {When I was a kid I used to cover my lamp to stop my parents seeing my reading light under my bedroom door. That stopped the day my mum came upstairs saying she could smell smoke and discovered I’d burned a hole in my dressing gown. ? }

If your intellectually OE child, like mine, has other special needs which make reading challenging (like dyslexia or ADHD), audiobooks can be a godsend.

My ten-year-old’s headphones are as permanently attached to him as a book was to me when I was growing up. With an Audible subscription each book only costs a few pounds, so your twice-exceptional child’s book habit needn’t break the bank.

6 Things You NeedIf Your Child Has Intellectual Overexcitability — We also love non-fiction compilations with plenty of pictures, like these in our bathroom ‘library’. The Bill Bryson is also available as an audiobook.

2. Smartphone

Books are all very well but what about those need-to-know-now emergencies that happen while you’re out of the house? Like when you’re walking along the beach and can’t remember the word for someone who does magic with water {hydromancer}. Or in a restaurant and you want to know which country has most vegetarians {India}. Or on a London bus and wonder how tall the tallest building in the world is {2722ft – the Burj Khalifa, Dubai. Thanks, Google!}

3. Quiet zone

Engaging with intellectually OE kids can be wonderfully stimulating, but keeping up with their energy at the same time as doing all the other things adult life requires can be a challenge. You need time to recharge, especially if you’re a sensually OE introvert like me.

As a homeschooling mum I spend almost all my time with my children so it’s crucial for me to look after my energy and emotional wellbeing throughout the day. I’ve learned the hard way that no one benefits if I ignore my body’s signs that I need a few minutes’ quiet time.

If making a physical retreat isn’t possible, like when I’m in the middle of cooking dinner or back when I had to keep an eye on little ones, I create some virtual space with a white noise app like Brain Wave.

4. A relaxation technique

Make your time in your quiet zone as restorative as possible by finding a relaxation technique that works for you. Whether it’s meditation, yoga, prayer, mindfulness or just five minutes curled up with a grown-up book, the time you invest in relaxing will allow you to give better quality attention to your intellectually OE child later.

My kids think of my 15-minute meditation sessions as ‘Mummy reboots’. I usually find my mind wanders less if I listen to guided visualisations while meditating. Other people prefer to listen to relaxing music or just to breathe deeply. I also like the Buddhify mindfulness app which has over eighty short meditations suitable for all sorts of locations and moods.

5. Thick skin

For me, one of the most challenging aspects of raising a child with OEs is dealing with other people. Whether your four-year-old is asking a woman on the train why she has a moustache or your nine-year-old isn’t letting other children get a word in edgeways at a workshop, you’re all-too-often aware of other people judging your parenting skills. This can be especially stressful if you have emotional overexcitability.

If only growing a thicker skin really was an option. To be honest I’m still working on this one, but two things I’ve learned so far are:

(1) Try not to take other people’s reactions personally. They don’t know about OEs or what it’s like to bring up a child whose insatiable need to know can drive them to ask question after question, long after social convention would have them stop.

(2) Focus on the positive side of intellectual overexcitability by cherishing the gift of curiosity and remembering that behind all of history’s greatest engineers and scientists was probably an (at times) embarrassed mother.

6. The ability to explain complex ideas in child-friendly terms

When my kids were little, older relations used to warn me against explaining myself to them. “They should just learn to accept ‘Because I say so’”, they reasoned.

But even if I’d agreed with that advice, my kids had other ideas. Children with intellectual OE won’t be fobbed off, so in my experience there’s no point wearing yourself out trying. (Besides which, you’d miss out on some great conversations.)

A child with intellectual OE needs to understand. So whatever your child’s age, be prepared for lengthy debates on such matters as why we have to clean our teeth, whether parallel universes exist, what should be done about homelessness and why the long division algorithm works, from the second they wake up until the moment they go to sleep. (See the importance of quiet time and relaxation, above!)

Over to you

What does intellectual overexcitability look like in your family?
Have you had any embarrassing moments when your child hasn’t been able to stop themselves from blurting out a question in public?
What are your top tips for recharging your energy?

I’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below or on the Laugh, Love, Learn Facebook page, or drop me an email.

Intellectual overexcitability resources

Living With Intensity by Susan Daniels and Michael Piechowski

* * *

This is part four of my series on the five types of overexcitability. See also:

7 Signs Your Child Has Psychomotor Overexcitability,

What Is Sensual Overexcitability? and

The Ups and Downs of Imaginational Overexcitability.

Next week I’ll be ending the series by talking about emotional overexcitability.

* * *

To find out if you or someone in your family has OEs, take my free online OE questionnaire. (Results come back by return email.)

Imaginary friends and playdate meltdowns – The ups and downs of Imaginational Overexcitability

01/02/2016OverexcitabilitiesImaginational OELucinda

Imaginational overexcitability

True story…

Seven-year-old Cindy peers through her tears at the kind face of the St John’s Ambulance lady.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” asks the lady.

“I’ve got a headache,” the little girl eventually whispers. It’s only half a fib. The noise of the fair has caused her head to ache, though that isn’t why she’s crying.

The lady means well, but Cindy knows that nobody can help her. As she lies down in the quiet ambulance, she can’t stop thinking of the awful thing she’s done. Her imagination is filled with the dreadful consequences that will surely follow.

Magical unicorns, or terrifying dragons

Cindy has imaginational overexcitability. What she sees in her mind can seem almost real. Her imagination is able to conjure magical worlds that delight and entrance her. But it can also create bleak, scary scenarios that would never even occur to most children her age.

Cindy enjoys school but her teacher sometimes have trouble getting her attention. On one summer’s day Cindy pauses in the middle of a subtraction problem, entranced by a shimmering pattern in the air outside her classroom. What could be causing the air to move in such a magical way? Perhaps it’s a mirage, the kind that lures thirsty travellers to trudge miles through the desert to imaginary oases. Cindy can almost feel the sun beating down on her as if she were right there in the desert, desperate for water.

Outside in the school playground Cindy and her friend Andrew whizz through time and space in their Tardis, visiting far-off worlds and battling imaginary monsters. On other days Cindy stands alone, gazing up as the sun shines in radiant lines through chinks in the clouds. Cindy smiles to herself, basking in the secret knowledge that she’s looking at a window into heaven.

When Cindy gets home from school she has a long chat with Paddington Bear. Paddington listens with interest and tells her about the adventures he’s had while Cindy’s been away.

Later Cindy visits her friend who lives next door. Alison has a big dog kennel which becomes a log cabin in which Cindy and Alison have to survive the long, harsh winter, making desperate forays into the wilds to keep from starving. Cindy and Alison both have big imaginations. They invent wonderful imaginary worlds together, but can have terrible arguments and even fights when they disagree about what should be happening in their games.

Imaginary friends

Many children with this overexcitability have imaginary friends. Parents sometimes worry that their children can’t distinguish truth from fiction, but they could console themselves in the knowledge that some of the most creative people through history have had imaginary playmates as children.

Their ability to put concepts together in novel ways usually gives these kids a delightful sense of humour, and they can invent fantastic pretend games to entertain their friends. However they may struggle if their playmates fail to fully appreciate the complexities of their sophisticated made-up worlds.

Imaginational overexcitability and playdate trouble

Playdates can be challenging in other ways, too. A guest can inadvertently cause upset by giving a beloved stuffed animal the ‘wrong’ voice or personality. And walking into a roomful of toys at a friends’ house can be overwhelming – the child knows he should politely join in the game his friend wants to play, but how can he resist immersing himself in the imaginary worlds he is instantly dreaming up?

Nightmares and night terrors

Nightmares and night terrors can be a big problem for children with imaginational overexcitabilities. They might also keep themselves awake at night making up stories, fact and fiction intermingling as they lie down to sleep.

My daughter recently reminded me of one of the many times she woke us in the night when she was younger. “Do you remember that time I told you I’d had a nightmare that Tom and Jerry were throwing tomatoes at me? You know, I didn’t really have a nightmare, I just couldn’t sleep because I had too many ideas. I felt silly saying that so I pretended I’d had a bad dream. I remember you and Daddy trying to hide your smiles when I said about Tom and Jerry throwing the tomatoes!”

Teaching children how to channel their imagination

We can help children with imaginational overexcitability harness their imaginations to serve them in positive ways. Over the years I’ve used a number of way to help my kids do this, often drawing on my training in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming).

One simple technique is to engage their imagination listening to guided visualisations. My kids – inspired by the CDs I make for my hypnotherapy clients – have even made their own visualisations. Their recordings usually start off calm and relaxing and then become louder and more animated as the story takes an exhilarating turn!

What was worrying Cindy?

Are you wondering what happened to Cindy – as I was known back then?

Well, for a few weeks more she was troubled about the raffle ticket she’d bought on a band trip to the fair.

What if hers was the winning ticket?

Where would her family find room for a pony in their tiny house?

How could they afford to feed it?!

Eventually Cindy realised she couldn’t have won the raffle. But she didn’t tell anyone about her fears for many years.

Whenever I’m tempted to laugh off my kids’ worries I remember that day when I cried in the St John’s Ambulance and told the nice lady I had a headache so she could feel better.

Imaginational overexcitability

Find out if you or your family have overexcitabilities by taking my free online quiz.

Further resources about imaginational overexcitability

Living With Intensity: Giftedness & Self-Actualisation

Living with Intensity, by Susan Daniels and Michael Piechowski

This is part in my series on the five types of overexcitability. Here’s the complete set:

Part 1: 7 Signs Your Child Has Psychomotor Overexcitability

Part 2: What Is Sensual Overexcitability?

Part 3: The Ups and Downs of Imaginational Overexcitability

Part 4: 6 Things You Need If Your Child Has Intellectual Overexcitability

Part 5: 15 Things Your Child With Emotional Overexcitability Might Say

* * *

Do you or your child have imaginational overexcitability?

How do you help guide that imagination away from worry and anxiety and towards creativity and wellbeing?

What is Sensual Overexcitability?

25/01/2016OverexcitabilitiesSensual OELucinda

Sensual overexcitability

Does your child hate the feel of labels on her clothes? Is he picky about what socks he’ll wear, or the texture of foods? Does she find certain noises excruciating?

If so, or if he’s more sensitive than most children to other types of sensory input, he might have sensual overexcitabilies.

Sensual overexcitability means you experience sounds, sights, touch, smell and/or tastes in a heightened way. You might intensely enjoy or even crave certain sensory experiences, while other forms of sensory stimulation make you feel stressed, angry or upset.

In this post I’ll share some examples of how sensual OE looks in my family. I’ll also consider whether or not it matters that we identify the underlying cause of the sensitivity.

1. Touch

People with sensual OE are often very sensitive to the feel of fabrics. They might spend ten minutes lining up their socks so that the seams don’t rub (and choose to go bare-footed as often as possible).

A woollen jumper can feel like a hair shirt. Women might need to wear a bra size too big in the back, because tight or constricting clothes are intolerable. My poor husband jokes that he only gets to see me dressed at weekends, but that’s not as exciting as it sounds – I’m always in my pyjamas (oh so comfy!) by the time he gets home from work at 7:00pm.

When it comes to temperature, layers are a sensitive person’s best friend. Right now I’m sitting on a train with my shoes off, pulling my cardigan on and off again as the train’s heating blasts out and a cold draft whips through the train whenever the doors open. Before I knew about sensual OE I would marvel at the willpower of people who could leave their coats buttoned up on in a hot, crowded underground train. Now I know they just don’t experience temperature in the same way I do.

Other tactile experiences can feel really good. When he’s upset, my ten-year-old curls up with our dogs or cat, letting the feel of their soft fur instantly calm him. Some children with sensual OEs stay attached to their soft toys or blankets until long after their peers have outgrown them. Cuddles and hugs can feel heavenly.

Some kids with sensual OEs crave the feel of things in their mouths. My son has a drawerful of chewable toys, but I still find his desk littered with bits of half-chewed plastic (I’m usually glad that at least he’s not sucking on his T-shirt). Chewing gum makes a visit to the hairdressers a whole lot more bearable. I think the cupfuls of ice my kids munch through every day might also have something to do with their sensual OEs.

And you know those deep baskets in Starbucks, filled with bags of coffee nestled among springy shredded paper? No? I’d never noticed them either, until I set out to solve the mystery of the soggy piles of paper I kept finding in my washing machine. It turned out that while I was ordering my Americanos, Jasper had taken to filling his pockets with the springy stuff, ready to crinkle deliciously to his heart’s content. 😀

2. Sounds

I’m personally affected by this one to such a degree that I can’t imagine living in a world where the everyday sounds of modern life wash over you unnoticed.

When I’m trying to focus, I find noises at best distracting and at worst extremely stressful. My solution is to carry ear plugs, earphones and a white noise app wherever I go. Ahh the bliss of instant peace!

In restaurants I try to sit next to a wall so I can focus on my companions, protected from the cacophony of clanging crockery and other diners’ conversations.

On a more positive note, nothing begins my day better than standing at my bedroom window and listening to the birdsong for a few minutes. At concerts, I can experience an intense high as the energy of the music flows through my body.

People with this OE also commonly experience misophonia – an intense dislike of certain sounds (for example people eating, cutlery scraping on plates, or what my daughter describes as ’the sound of fingernails running down a school blazer’).

3. Sights

A person with sensual OEs might be intensely moved by a colourful sunset, a beautiful view or the sight of a raindrop glistening on a petal.

Sensually OE people can also be distracted or stressed by repetitive movements in their field of vision.

4. Tastes and smells

Kids with sensual OE can be sensitive to the tastes and textures of food, which can require their parents to be extremely resourceful when it comes to ensuring a balanced diet.

Smells often also trigger extreme reactions. My daughter, for instance, can’t step foot in a fast-food restaurant. I know of other children whose full-on flight or fight response kicks in when smells are too strong for them or who plead with their parents to “turn the smell off!”

The positive side of sensual OE is that pleasant tastes and aromas can be enjoyed intensely. My kids love theme parks, but when we spent two weeks in Disneyworld a few years ago Jasper’s holiday journal was filled with descriptions and pictures not of the rides, but of hot dogs and ice cream!

Sensual Overexcitability

Sensual overexcitability, sensory processing disorder, highly sensitive or autism?

All these sensitivities might be the only non-average aspect of a person’s make-up, or they might form part of a bigger picture. Do we need to know their underlying cause, or is it enough to manage the ‘symptoms’? In my experience it’s helpful to do both.

First of all, a child with sensory issues needs help learning strategies to manage his sensitivities. If I’m on a train and the person next to me starts noisily eating an apple, I can change seats or block out the noise with headphones. Kids have much less control over their environments. We don’t need to know the underlying cause of a child’s sensitivity to compassionately address their needs and start to teach them coping skills.

On the other hand, dealing with sensory sensitivity in isolation can lead to an inaccurate or incomplete diagnosis, which could obscure the bigger picture and delay the child receiving help with other issues they might be facing.

I remember the relief my husband and I felt when we were told that our seven-year old had sensory processing disorder. We thought the diagnosis meant our son would get the right sort of help. But we felt more lost than ever when, after a year of occupational therapy, there was no change in his behaviour. It wasn’t until we finally looked at what was going on in the light of Jasper’s other overexcitabilities [intellectual, psychomotor and imaginational] that we were able to make sense of the whole picture and start to deal with all his needs.

In the UK especially, some children with sensory issues are incorrectly diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome. These kids’ parents might know the label is an awkward fit, but in the absence of an alternative explanation they don’t know where to turn. My intention in creating this blog is to help share information about those other possibilities. I don’t claim to be an expert, but it’s no understatement to say that my life was transformed by the PowerWood OE workshop I went to last year – finally all the pieces of the puzzle came together and we were able to move forward.

If you suspect that you or someone in your family has overexcitabiliites, you can find out by taking my free online OE questionnaire.

Sensual OE – Further Resources

Living with Intensity, Daniels and Piechowski

* * *

How does sensual overexcitability look in your family? Perhaps you’ll share the example that will help another person solve the puzzle of what’s going on with herself or her child.

This is part 2 of my series on the five types of overexcitability.

Sensual overexcitability

7 Signs Your Child Has Psychomotor Overexcitability

18/01/2016OverexcitabilitiesPsychomotor OELucinda

When my son was born we treated ourselves to a lovely new play arch. I had fond visions of my baby contentedly engaging with the arch as his sister and I played alongside him. But my newborn son had other ideas.

Within weeks, J had rolled onto his tummy and was trying to air-swim his way across the room. He literally turned his back on the toy I’d offered, in search of what he wanted to explore. He hasn’t stopped moving since.

When he was two, J’s ‘afternoon nap’ involved lying on his bed, legs kicking against the wall, happily chattering and singing to himself for an hour. I didn’t mind as long as I had time to recharge, ready for another afternoon with my busy little boy.

J has psychomotor overexcitability – an abundance of energy (or an inability to keep still, depending how you look at it. We prefer the former ;-)).

Here are seven signs your child might have psychomotor overexcitability. Remember that even if your child only has one of these behaviours, he might still have psychomotor OE – it’s more a case of degree than number.

1. He’s always in motion

Whether he’s gesticulating wildly as he tells you about his latest Minecraft creation, standing up at the table as he eats his dinner, or rebounding against your bed when he comes into your room at 10:30pm to share an idea that can’t wait until morning – this child is never still.

J, now ten, has two bins in his bedroom. It’s not that he makes a lot of rubbish, it’s just that he can’t keep his feet still and I got tired of picking pencil sharpenings out of the carpet. Now as he sits at his desk, J kicks an empty bin to his heart’s content and throws his trash in a second bin a few feet away. The wall under his desk is a bit scuffed, but that’s the kind of compromise you get used to when you have a child with psychomotor overexcitability.

2. She talks quickly and all the time

This child may never seem to stop talking, and when she gets excited or overwhelmed, speed and volume increase even more. Everyone in our family speaks quickly. When C and I get together with my aunt and her daughters I marvel at how we seem to all speak at once, yet everyone follows what everyone else is saying perfectly. To us it doesn’t feel like we speak quickly, but that other people speak slowly. Thank goodness for the triple speed button on Audible.

3.He’s always singing, often his own made-up tunes

I love overhearing J’s joyful voice when he’s in the bath or playing with his dinosaurs. If he’s had a meltdown, I smile with relief when I hear him humming to himself a little while later – a sure sign he’s re-found his equilibrium.

4. She’s a prolific art and crafter

When she was at pre-school, C would bring home so many paintings that I used to wonder how the nursery could afford the paper. Then one day a teacher mentioned that for every painting the other children made, C would make ten. Now twelve-years-old, C still paints, draws, makes popsicle stick houses and spray painted T-shirts and – her latest passion – intricately decorates her nails with a different design every day.

5. He’s extremely competitive

In my post You Know Your Family Has Overexcitabilities When… I mentioned that although everyone in my family loves board games, we rarely manage to finish one.

I’ve always encouraged my kids to value participation and enjoyment over beating other people, so before I learned about OEs I used to wonder how I’d ended up with such a competitive child. I was almost relieved to discover that competitiveness is a common aspect of psychomotor OE. Now, instead of blaming myself, I can focus my energy on helping J manage his reactions.

One of the great OE ironies is that kids with psychomotor overexcitability often lack the emotional regulation skills needed to participate in team sports. It takes a lot of parental commitment and creativity to find outlets for all that energy!

6. You know he’s very bright, but his teachers may not see it

According to psychologist and OE expert Susan Daniels, psychomotor OE is significantly correlated with high intelligence. Unfortunately, a child who’s not challenged in school and can’t keep still or stay quiet when he’s bored is more likely to be seen as disruptive and annoying than placed in the gifted class. So instead of being given more appropriate projects and the freedom to approach them in whatever way inspires him, this child is at best sidelined and at worst misdiagnosed, which brings me onto …

7. Someone’s suggested he has ADHD

When you put a bright child with heaps of energy in an under-stimulating environment he’ll often fidget, interrupt and fail to do tasks. Even when he’s highly engaged, a child with overexcitabilities might not be able to stop himself blurting out questions and answers. While it is of course possible to have both psychomotor OEs and ADHD, experts suspect that the latter is widely misdiagnosed in children with OEs.

Psychomotor Overexcitability – Further Resources

2026 Edit: Nearly ten years have passed since I first wrote this post. I now specialise in working, in my coaching and hypnotherapy practice, with people who have overexcitabilities.

If you’d like to talk about how OEs impact your family and get a few tips to help life run more smoothly, you can book a free (no obligation) half hour chat with me here.

Books

Living With Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability and Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults (Daniels and Piechowski)

Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults (James T Webb)

Over to you

Can you think of anything I’ve missed?
What does psychomotor overexcitability look like in your family?
Can you recommend any other resources?
What else would you like to know about psychomotor OE? Here are some ideas I’ve had for future posts:
- What do you do when your child has psychomotor OE and can’t do group sports?
- How to help your child learn when he can’t keep still.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below, or feel free to drop me an email or book a call with me.

My aim in writing this series on the five types of overexcitability is to help you recognise whether overexcitabilities are present in your family. I spent years doubting myself as I searched for the best way to parent my two non-average children, all the while completely in the dark about what I was dealing with. Discovering OEs was like being handed the missing instruction manual.

If you recognise OEs in yourself or your child, I hope you’ll stick around to share my journey of discovery into how to enjoy the many positives OEs can bring while learning to manage the accompanying challenges.

Next in this series I’ll be looking at sensual OE.