Interoception: The Hidden Sense Behind Toileting, Emotions, Hunger, and Meltdowns

What Will You Learn?

• Explain what interoception is and describe how the brain uses internal body signals to regulate behaviour, emotion, and basic needs
• Identify specific behaviours in children that are likely driven by poor interoceptive awareness rather than defiance, laziness, or inattention
• Connect a child's toileting accidents, food refusal, emotional dysregulation, or failure to report illness to disrupted interoceptive processing
• Apply at least five low-demand, practical strategies to gently build interoceptive awareness during everyday routines at home and school
• Explain the relationship between interoception, sensory processing, and emotional regulation to another parent, carer, or educator
• Audit your home or classroom environment and daily schedule to reduce the impact of interoceptive difficulties on a child's functioning
• Recognise the signs that a child's interoceptive difficulties are significant enough to warrant a referral to an occupational therapist
• Support a child to build a personalised body-signals toolkit they can use to notice and respond to internal cues before reaching crisis point