Abstract
Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) is a developing construct for understanding a particular temperament trait, the tendency in about 20% of the population to process stimuli more deeply than average. Proposed to be biologically based, SPS is well documented in the research literature to afford a developmental advantage to children raised in supportive home environments and to produce a disadvantage to those raised in unsupportive environments. SPS is also positively correlated with psychological distress above and beyond interactions with difficult home environments. Despite the robust body of research describing the characteristics of persons high in SPS (also known as highly sensitive people), little is known about how the advent of ‘the highly sensitive child’ (HSC) as a social and psychological category is impacting families and the home environments of these children. Through a thematic analysis of data from interviews with ten mothers of highly sensitive children, the researcher drew on Ian Hacking’s (1996) theory of looping to explore the role of families in interpreting, negotiating, and deploying the HSC category. Analysis generated three overarching themes: mothers as primary drivers of the category in the family; activation of new dialogues as an iterative and negotiated process; and a shift in parenting philosophies and practices based on a new understanding of the HS child’s well-being. Importantly, the analysis highlighted the category’s non-neutrality and stigmatization, which in turn impacted parents’ decisions about the category’s application with their children. Moreover, HS children appeared to play active though indirect roles in the looping process through behavioral responses to their parents’ experimentation with new parenting practices. These themes provide insight into the familial processes of HS children; in addition, they offer an expansion of Hacking’s theory by illustrating how the family unit can participate in the looping process for children who are not yet self-conscious of their membership in the HSC category.