Sensitive and Extraordinary

A blog about the joys and challenges of parenting a highly sensitive child

Welcome! I'm so glad you're here. I started this blog in 2013 when my highly sensitive son was three years old and decided to stop it in 2018, partly because I got too busy to post regularly, but mostly because I didn't have as much to say on the topic anymore. The blog is still visited by many every day, which is why I didn't want to delete it, but I did have to cancel my website (www.sensitiveandextraordinary.com), and my old posts now live here.

I hope more than anything that you find comfort in these stories. Although my son, my family, and I have changed drastically over the years, these stories remain true. If you want to chat about your journey or ask me about mine, please don't hesitate to reach out. I would love to hear from you.

To find out more about my picture books for highly sensitive children, you can do that here.

My best,

Leila, 04.2022

Finding the right children’s books for highly sensitive children

leilaboukarim

Nov 13, 2015
5 min

Finding the right children’s books for highly sensitive children

For as long as I can remember, reading three books at bedtime has been part of our nightly ritual. Three books is our rule—at least until the kids are a little older and the books become a little longer. Our kids love their books. Our highly sensitive son, who is now almost six, has had a love for books I have never seen in anyone else. By the time he was one, we owned over one hundred picture books. And now, almost five years later, we’re struggling with finding space in our

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Do you ever envy parents with non-Highly Sensitive Children?

leilaboukarim

May 8, 2015
4 min

Do you ever envy parents with non-Highly Sensitive Children?

My toddler started attending daycare three time a week about a month ago. He cried the first three times I dropped him off. On the fourth day, he said good bye and didn’t look back. That’s the way most “When My Kid Started Daycare” stories go, but it’s something I simply cannot take for granted. It’s not something I expected, and not something I can easily get used to, and that’s only because I know just how badly that same story can go. It’s actually all I’ve known, until no

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leilaboukarim

Dec 9, 2014
4 min

The different forms of creativity

While reading about other Highly Sensitive Children in online forums and other blogs, I very often find moms and dads who talk about how creative their children are; how they love to draw and paint; how good they are with building blocks; how they can make incredible works of art out of almost nothing. And every time I read these wonderful stories of other kids, it made me observe mine all the more closely. Our son was never especially good with his hands. I tried everything

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It’s what kids do: The Highly Sensitive Child and disappointment

leilaboukarim

Nov 13, 2014
6 min

It’s what kids do: The Highly Sensitive Child and disappointment

I have a confession to make. I got mad at my five year old because he failed to properly rip a piece of paper. On the occasion of the Saint Martin’s Day celebrations this year, I volunteered to make lanterns with the children in my son’s class. Being a lover of crafts, I got busy looking up lantern-making tutorials that would be easy enough for the kids to make, yet fun and as creative as can be when making something with a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds in under 30 minutes. Afte

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5 Outdoor activities our Highly Sensitive Child loves

leilaboukarim

Oct 24, 2014
6 min

5 Outdoor activities our Highly Sensitive Child loves

A few years ago, when my 5 year old was just an infant, I didn’t know many things. I knew some, but not many. One of the things I was sure of from the very beginning was the fact that my baby loved being outside. Whenever he got restless and cranky after I had tried everything to comfort him, taking him outside for some fresh air always did the trick. Another thing I was certain of was that my son didn’t like to be around too many people at once, and he became inconsolable if

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leilaboukarim

Sep 10, 2014
4 min

Facing fear to enjoy the thrill of life

Dr. Elaine Aron recently wrote about her experience white water rafting in the Grand Canyon. In a beautiful post, she tells the world about how this experience was both incredible, and incredibly scary. She shares with us the fears she had to face on this trip, and not just the fear of the risks that come with white water rafting, but also the social fear of spending 13 days with a bunch of people who are nothing like you, who might make you feel like you don’t belong there,

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leilaboukarim

Sep 4, 2014
5 min

Even before Google, my mother knew

Being Highly Sensitive isn’t easy. Being Highly Sensitive and not knowing it is even less easy. I didn’t always know what I was, or why I was the way I was. But there was a time when I wished I wasn’t. I only discovered Dr. Elaine Aron and her work about a year ago. That was when it became clear to me why my son behaved the way he did. And through my discovery and my new understanding of my son, I realized that I was also a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), which explained why I

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Why we travel with a sensitive child, by guest blogger Bronwyn Joy

leilaboukarim

Sep 3, 2014
5 min

Why we travel with a sensitive child, by guest blogger Bronwyn Joy

For those of you who missed this incredible post by my lovely guest, Bronwyn Joy from Journeys of the Fabulist. Enjoy! No one ever said traveling with young children was easy. And anyone with a Highly Sensitive Child can tell you that doing anything that requires leaving the house, be it flying to Italy or going to the supermarket for eggs, can be a challenge. We try to do everything in our power to make our trips, short and long, as easy and comfortable as can be. My bottoml

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If we were having coffee – A blog linkup

leilaboukarim

Aug 24, 2014
4 min

If we were having coffee – A blog linkup

Last week, I read a wonderful post titled If We Were Having Coffee. It was written by Suzie81 Speaks, a fantastic blogger. It was nice to feel like I was actually sitting with someone for coffee, and to hear about all the things they had to say. It felt so natural, so friendly. I loved it so much that Suzie, being as lovely as she is, told me about the let’s-have-coffee-together weekend blog linkup, of which Gene’O is the founder and host. I thought I’d take this wonderful op

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Packing for a trip with a Highly Sensitive Child, and other “unnecessarily complicated”

leilaboukarim

Aug 19, 2014
6 min

Packing for a trip with a Highly Sensitive Child, and other “unnecessarily complicated”

I remember a day, not long ago, when packing up for a trip was something we absolutely dreaded. It was something that could potentially bring on a full blown panic attack on my part. Something that required endless lists to be put together during an entire workweek. Something so physically and mentally exhausting that I needed a week to recover, only to have to repeat the whole process again. The “trip” I am talking about isn’t some month-long journey halfway around the globe

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leilaboukarim

Jul 29, 2014
4 min

Why we travel with a sensitive child, by guest blogger Bronwyn Joy

No one ever said traveling with young children was easy. And anyone with a Highly Sensitive Child can tell you that doing anything that requires leaving the house, be it flying to Italy or going to the supermarket for eggs, can be a challenge. We try to do everything in our power to make our trips, short and long, as easy and comfortable as can be. My bottomless “Mary Poppins” diaper bag (which only contains two diapers) will be filled with anything we might need: sweet snack

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Being Mean Mommy was never part of my plan

leilaboukarim

Jul 15, 2014
7 min

Being Mean Mommy was never part of my plan

Mealtimes in our house are excruciatingly long. We could be at the table for hours at a time, try out several meals before my kids will accept one each, followed by me repeating the words “eat your food” over seven hundred times before they’ve eaten about a third of it while managing to get the other two thirds anywhere but into their mouths. My baby will magically get food in his diaper while fully dressed. Proof that a dirty baby is a happy baby It’s a painful process most

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leilaboukarim

Jun 23, 2014
8 min

Pushing a Highly Sensitive Child

The last two weeks have been quite eventful, to say the least, jam-packed with incredible and surprising achievements by both our kids: milestones reached, habits changed, risks taken, fears overcome. What’s funny is that it seems that the last two weeks have been eventful for many mothers of Highly Sensitive Children. I have read a great number of stories from moms whose kids have done amazing things; things that point in the direction of positive change; things that have le

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Lessons From a Highly Sensitive Mother: Empty Your Bucket, by guest blogger Amanda van Mulligen

leilaboukarim

Jun 17, 2014
5 min

Lessons From a Highly Sensitive Mother: Empty Your Bucket, by guest blogger Amanda van Mulligen

It is my pleasure to introduce to you a fellow blogger and very active member of the HSC community. Amanda van Mulligen is a freelance writer. British born, she was whisked off to the Netherlands on a promise of a windmill wedding and now raises three sons with her Dutch husband. She writes about expat life, about living life in a second language and an alien culture, about all things parenting and on the topic of highly sensitive children over on her blog Happy Sensitive Kid

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leilaboukarim

Jun 10, 2014
7 min

This thing we call empathy

The other day we adopted a panda bear. I wasn’t planning on doing it, but my son drove me to it. The panda now lives with us. He sleeps in my son’s room, and even though my son isn’t really interested in playing with him, his mind is at ease knowing that we saved him from his potentially dark destiny. Who knows what the future can hold for the hundreds of thousands of poor plush panda bears, lying in huge piles inside those cold wire cages all over IKEA. It’s heartbreaking re

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leilaboukarim

Jun 6, 2014
2 min

Let it Go!

The lovely Brenda Dronkers from Highly Sensitive Souls invited me to write a guest post for her lovely blog. Brenda is one of the few very active people in the Highly Sensitive Child (HSC) community. She does amazing work in spreading the word of the magic and wonder that we have all seen in our little HSCs. I encourage you to visit her Facebook page and join the incredibly supportive community. She also runs a closed group where discussions are kept private. I also hope you

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Thank Goodness for Different – A children’s eBook about feeling, well, different.

leilaboukarim

Apr 29, 2014
2 min

Thank Goodness for Different – A children’s eBook about feeling, well, different.

Meet Lilly. Lilly feels different, and that doesn’t make her very happy. Lilly’s mother explains to her that we are all different, and shows her how the things that make us different can make our world a better, more beautiful place for everyone. She beautifully illustrates to Lilly what the world might be like if everyone and everything was the same. Lilly starts to see that the world needs “different”, and starts to think about all the things that she is that make her uniqu

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leilaboukarim

Mar 11, 2014
8 min

We know our children best

This will be a difficult post for me to write. Sometimes in life we will hear negative things being said about us or even worse, about our children, and after we let the news sink in, we deal with it in our own way. We will decipher and process and analyze what we’ve heard until we forget what it really was or where it came from. It makes us crazy with fear and worry, wondering if there is any truth to it, or what may have triggered it in the first place. And after we’ve driv

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leilaboukarim

Feb 17, 2014
11 min

Blog Hop: Why Do I Write?

I started blogging in mid-October last year. I never really planned on it. Never saw myself doing it. But now that I am, I’m loving every minute of it. Exactly one year ago, I left a wonderful job at a big multinational, packed up our things, and moved to Singapore with my family. The transition from working-mom to stay-at-home-mom was one of the most difficult things I’ve had to go through. I’ve always loved my job, and always worked hard to strike a healthy balance between

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leilaboukarim

Feb 4, 2014
5 min

The superpowers that make us parents

As I sat in front of my sick and miserable baby boy the other night, I found myself wishing with all my might, yet again, that I could somehow magically suck out his illness and take it into my own body so that I could deal with it instead. When we were little, every time one of us was sick, my mother never failed to say “I wish it were me and not you”. Every single time. Having been a Highly Sensitive Child, I always knew where she was coming from with her wish, but I never

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LEILA BOUKARIM

Children's Book Author and Developmental Editor

Sensitive and Extraordinary

A blog about the joys and challenges of parenting a highly sensitive child