Big Reactors takes a deep dive into the key traits of highly sensitive children: intense reactions to emotional and sensory experiences, anxiety, inflexibility, perfectionism, sore losing, hesitancy to try new things, and relationship challenges with siblings and peers. It shows how these traits translate into common and vexing behavioral challenges, and how to support these kids’ amazing strengths while helping them learn to manage their emotions and reactions so they can: cope with not getting everything they want when they want it, cooperate with necessary tasks, adapt to new people and situations, muscle through challenges, and form healthy relationships with family and friends.

Through detailed case descriptions from my decades of work in the trenches with these complex and sometimes confusing kids, I reveal the process—the “detective work”—I guide parents (and teachers) through to understand the root cause of their child’s challenges and to come up with sensitive, effective strategies that work in real life, not just in theory. This provides a reality-based roadmap for how parents and other caregivers can find solutions to their unique experiences with their amazing, fierce and feisty kids that takes into consideration that every child and family is different, and that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach. 

This book fills a very necessary gap. Parents today are bombarded with messages about and strategies for being a “gentle parent” that rarely work for big reactors. These kids go from 0-60 in a nanosecond, often in reaction to seemingly minor events, such as their parents: cutting their sandwich the wrong way; parent paying ANY attention to the new baby; not letting them have more screen time; or, not getting their blankets on exactly the way they want after 20 minutes of trying at bedtime. ⁠⁠When triggered into distress, these kids can have epic meltdowns that may be destructive—hitting, kicking, spitting, or hurling objects.

This book shows how to thread the needle of being a loving, calm, connected parent while setting the limits and boundaries that create peaceful homes with strong relationships and happy kids and families.