When I was a little boy, the label inside my shirt felt like a thorn. It scratched the back of my neck all day long. I could not sit still. I could not think. In the end I would tear it out — and often tear the shirt along with it.

No one understood. I had two siblings, and neither of them ever complained about a tag or a fabric — so to my parents, the problem was not the clothes. It was me. They were not unkind; they simply could not see what they had never felt themselves. I thought something was wrong with me, and I carried that quiet shame for a very long time.

Some Clothes Hurt Me

As a small child, woollen and synthetic clothes did not just feel scratchy. They gave me rashes. My skin would turn red and sore. Wool on my bare body felt like fire.

For most of my life, I could not wear a suit unless I first covered my skin in soft cotton — a full layer underneath, over my legs and my upper body — so that the suit fabric never touched me directly. Even today, if the wrong fabric reaches my skin, it burns, and I lose all focus. I have gotten better. I am not fully better. And I have made peace with that.

Shoes are their own quiet battle — and clothes are no different. Even now, I buy four or five pairs of shoes just to find the one I can actually wear, and it is the same with shirts and suits. In the shop, I cannot tell which pair, or which shirt, will be kind to my body and which will hurt — they all feel fine for those few minutes. It is only later, after wearing them for real, that my skin and my feet tell me the truth. A comfortable pair, a comfortable shirt, is rare — and finding one feels like luck.

It Was Never Bad Behaviour

For years I believed I was weak, or difficult. I was neither. My body was simply built to feel more.

There is a name for this. It is called sensory sensitivity, and it shows up again and again in gifted children. Their skin, their nose, their ears feel everything more strongly. A tag, a smell, or a sound that others do not even notice can feel enormous to them. It is not drama. It is real.

When a Tag Steals a Whole Day

This is the part most grown-ups miss. When clothes hurt a sensitive child, the pain does not stay small and quiet in a corner. It fills the whole room inside their head.

The teacher is talking, but the child hears nothing — because the seam at the ankle is screaming. I know this, because I was that child. People saw a boy who would not pay attention. They never saw the real reason, sitting right against his skin.

The Whole World, Too Loud

It is not only clothes. Often the same child smells things no one else can, hates bright lights, and jumps at loud sounds. The world comes at them turned all the way up, every single day, with no button to turn it down.

Online, you will find thousands of grown-ups who do the very same quiet things I do — cut out every label, wash new clothes again and again, buy the one soft shirt in many colours. We are not strange. We simply feel more.

One Honest Thing

Feeling things strongly does not always mean a child is gifted. The same thing happens with autism, with ADHD, and with other sensory differences. Some children are both gifted and neurodivergent at the same time.

So if the pain is very strong, or it is hurting your child's daily life, please talk to a professional. Knowing the real reason is how you find the right help. This is exactly the kind of thing our co-founder, Dr. Inderbir Kaur Sandhu, has spent her life understanding.

What Truly Helps

Your child is not broken. Nothing needs to be "fixed". They just need to be believed — and that one thing changes everything.

Believe them. "The tag really does hurt" may be the kindest words a parent can say.

Take the pain away. Choose soft cotton. Cut out the tags. Wash new clothes before they are worn. Buy tagless, seamless clothes.

Let them choose. Let your child pick what feels safe on their own skin.

Give it a name. So they never grow up thinking, as I did, that something is wrong with them.

And have hope. It can get easier with time. Mine did — not fully, but enough that I stopped fighting my own skin every day.

A note to parents — and to the sensitive grown-up reading this

If your child cries over a sock seam, a label, or a smell you cannot even notice, they are not making a fuss. They are feeling the world louder than you can hear. And if you are a grown-up who has quietly built your whole life around soft fabrics and gentle smells, never knowing why — you are not strange. Your body simply feels more, and that often comes with a gifted mind. You were never broken. No one ever told you, that is all.

For forty years, I tore the tags out of my shirts and said sorry for it. No child should ever have to feel that way. That is one of the reasons we built GiftedKids.in — so the next sensitive child is understood early, and never has to wait as long as I did.

— Kunwer Sachdev, Founder, GiftedKids.in | June 2026