Can a 10-Year-Old Have an Existential Crisis?

My son Will can’t control the fate of the entire animal kingdom, and he knows it. But he can control what is on his plate, and this is why he became a vegetarian when he was 10 years old. It hadn’t come out of nowhere. Since he was five or six, he’d regularly talked about how much the idea of killing animals, even insects, bothered him.

This is a small, clear example of something I see often in the gifted kids and teens I work with: big, existential thinking showing up in a very young mind.

Can Children Really Have Existential Worries?

Yes. Children can wrestle with questions about death, suffering, fairness, responsibility, and the meaning of life long before adults expect them to.

That doesn’t automatically mean a child is depressed or experiencing a mental health crisis. Sometimes it reflects a young mind trying to understand a world that suddenly feels much bigger and more complicated.

An existential concern becomes more troubling when a child feels unable to set it aside, believes they’re personally responsible for solving it, or becomes so overwhelmed that it interferes with sleep, school, relationships, eating, or everyday enjoyment.

Why Gifted Children Can Ask Big Questions Early

Giftedness involves more than academic performance or accomplishments. For some children, it also means noticing more, feeling more, and thinking about complex questions.

One framework sometimes used to describe these experiences comes from psychiatrist and psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski, who called them overexcitabilities. I sometimes describe this intensity to kids as a kind of superpower: they notice deeply, care deeply, and ask questions other children their age may not yet be considering. The tradeoff is that what they notice can become hard to set aside. Oftentimes, they are thinking about ideas they may not have the emotional maturity to manage.

For some children, that intensity is directed inward. Feelings become overwhelming, mistakes feel enormous, or concerns loop long after everyone else has moved on. They may be labeled as “dramatic” when they’re struggling to regulate something that genuinely feels very big.

Other children become highly attuned to suffering, injustice, or the emotions of people around them. They can begin carrying responsibility for problems far beyond their control.

A Child’s Big Feelings About the World

I once worked with a five-year-old who couldn’t sleep after a school presentation on water conservation. Once he realized he lived in a desert, he became consumed by the idea of wasting water. He wouldn’t flush the toilet, became distraught over draining the bathtub, and felt real guilt about using water.

His parents told him not to worry and explained that the water was there to be used. But he couldn’t let it go.

Together, we worked on building some flexibility into his thinking and explored what actually constitutes waste. He and his family landed on donating money to Greenpeace, a concrete way to act on a feeling that had become too big to hold.

Why “Just Stop Worrying About It” Doesn’t Work

It’s a natural instinct to want to talk a child out of a big feeling, especially one that seems disproportionate to us. But telling a sensitive child to stop worrying tends to backfire. It doesn’t make the feeling smaller and sometimes inadvertently teaches them that the feeling isn’t welcome.

Here’s how I explain it instead, to both kids and parents: emotions are like the sun. They’re necessary. They give us information that helps us navigate the world. But some people are more sensitive to them than others, just as some people are more prone to sunburn.

That isn’t a flaw. It’s simply how they’re built.

And just as we protect ourselves from too much sun, children can learn to protect themselves when emotional intensity becomes overwhelming. Sunscreen. Sunglasses. Time indoors when you need a break.

The same is true for big emotions. Children can learn skills that keep them from becoming overexposed without ever being told that their feelings aren’t real.

That’s the message underneath all of this:

Your feelings are real, even when other people don’t understand them. You can handle them, even when they’re uncomfortable. And there are skills you can build so the intensity doesn’t have to run the show.

How to Help a Child Carry a Very Big Feeling

Take the Concern Seriously

You don’t have to agree that the problem belongs on your child’s shoulders to acknowledge that it matters to them.

Ask what they’re thinking about and what feels most frightening, upsetting, or unfair. Resist the urge to provide an immediate answer. Some existential questions don’t have tidy answers, and your child may need connection more than a solution.

Separate What They Can Control From What They Can’t

Help your child sort the concern into three categories:

• What can I control?
• What can I influence?
• What do I have to let other people carry?

A child can choose not to eat meat. They cannot personally protect every animal. They can conserve water at home. They cannot end drought throughout the world.

Recognizing the difference allows a child to care without assuming responsibility for everything they care about.

Choose One Meaningful Action

A small, concrete response can turn helplessness into agency. Your child could write a letter, change one family habit, volunteer, learn more about the issue, or donate to a cause with your help.

The goal is to help your child respond thoughtfully while recognizing that one meaningful action is enough.

Help Them Step Away

Sensitive children sometimes need explicit permission to take a break from a concern. Playing, laughing, seeing friends, or enjoying an ordinary afternoon doesn’t mean they’ve stopped caring.

Rest is not indifference.

Know When Additional Support Could Help

Pay attention when existential worries repeatedly disrupt sleep, school, relationships, eating, or activities your child usually enjoys. Frequent reassurance-seeking, persistent guilt, withdrawal, or an inability to think about anything else can also signal that the concern has grown beyond what your child can manage alone.

If your child’s big questions are turning into persistent anxiety or emotional overwhelm, therapy for gifted and twice-exceptional children can help them understand their intensity, build flexibility, and learn how to care deeply without carrying the whole world.

As for my son, learning to focus on what he could control gave him a way to live with a concern that mattered deeply to him. It is a skill that has come in handy repeatedly throughout his life and can help sensitive children care deeply without being overwhelmed by everything they cannot change.

Client examples are composites, not individual clients, and details have been altered to protect confidentiality.

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