Perhaps you know a child who goes from zero to one hundred in a snap, or gets easily overwhelmed and either shuts down, cries, or gets angry for seemingly minor things. In this article, we will explore the importance of helping children build their interoception skills. You’ll learn what interoception skills are, why they are essential for children’s emotional health, and how to support kids in recognizing and responding to their body’s signals. You’ll also discover practical, everyday strategies to help children build awareness, regulate emotions, and feel more in control of their experiences.
Interoception is your internal sensory system. It allows you to notice and understand what your body is telling you. Interoception is the superhighway to your insula—a part of your brain’s cerebral cortex—sharing a vast amount of physical and emotional information.
The insula processes this information to determine what is important—particularly in relation to feeling safe and balanced—and decides what the body needs to do. Then it sends those signals back to your body, so you can act. The interoception system and the insula processing hub are often referred to as the “sixth sense.” Strengthening interoception skills helps children better interpret these internal signals and respond effectively.
Your body reacts to your environment before your mind begins to comprehend it. These body signals are called sensations. Emotions are simply the words your mind assigns to your physical sensations. For instance, a racing heart and butterflies in your tummy might be called anxiety or excitement, depending on the circumstances.
Have you ever told someone, “Listen to your gut,” or “Follow your heart”? Interoception skills help us decipher the body’s signals to determine if there is real danger, rather than the natural anxiety that arises when something is unfamiliar. Developing interoceptive skills allows children to pause, interpret, and respond instead of reacting.
Once the mind catches up, beliefs, assumptions, and judgments can get in the way of sensing what you need to do with that emotional energy. If you miss the cues from your body, that emotional energy can get stuck. Building interoception skills supports emotional flow and helps prevent overwhelm.
Make friends with your body and trust it to guide you. Learning to slow down, notice, and respond to your body’s sensations will keep your emotional energy flowing so it does not get stuck. Your body knows what to do. Strengthening interoception skills is key to this process.
According to Family Psychologist Ashleigh Warner, “Beneath every behavior there is a feeling. And beneath each feeling is [your body communicating] a need. And when we meet that need, rather than focus on the behavior, we begin to deal with the cause, not the symptom.”
Research highlights that building interoceptive sensory skills is vital for maintaining balance in the body, regulating emotions, and developing a stable sense of self.
Interoception skills help us to
The good news is that interoception skills can be taught. With consistent practice, children can improve interoception skills and strengthen their ability to regulate emotions. Knowing the vocabulary around interoception can help us understand it and build important skills.
Co-regulation with kids is a process where an adult’s calm, regulated nervous system helps soothe and stabilize a child's emotional state. This is essential when developing interoception skills.
Emotional regulation is the ability to manage emotions by shifting internal states. Strong interoceptive coping skills support this ability.
Felt safety is the internal sense of being safe and stable, which supports learning and growth.
Our internal state is the internal experience of emotional and physical energy.
Interoception is the ability to notice signals from internal systems like the heart, lungs, and gut.
The insula is a part of the brain responsible for sensory processing and emotional awareness.
The learning brain is a calm, curious, and receptive state that supports learning.
Parents, teachers, and counselors can effectively help a child build their interoceptive skills, but co-regulating with the child is essential. Adults must first slow down and pay attention to their own bodies, taking care of personal needs in order to be in a state of relaxed alertness and “allow the child to borrow your calm nervous system.” This will help keep both parties in the learning brain.
Read picture books with your child, like Tummies Flip, Hearts Skip: A Book About How Feelings Feel that include rich, descriptive language around physical sensations and sensory experiences and a free downloadable Leader’s Guide for grown-ups.
When your child describes the sensations in their body, keep a list of their words and use them often. Sensation words may refer to physical experiences, images, or fantastical experiences. There are countless ways to describe physical sensations.
Describe your own physical sensations when talking to your child about your emotions and experiences. Include what your body wants to do with that energy. For example:
Tune in to your child’s body language and share what you observe in a nonjudgemental way. The goal is to invite your child’s curiosity about their body. “It looks like you have a lot of energy in your body, and it’s hard to sit still.” Connect this to an emotion. “I wonder if you’re feeling anxious about something?’
Be sure to include good emotions, too, like happy, safe, peaceful, excited, and brave. Ask, “What does your body want to do with that feeling? What would help your body to feel better?”
Make activities fun and playful to foster a sense of felt safety around “being in the body.” Include a range of activities that shift your internal state up and down.
Describe how energy feels in your body before, during, and after the activity. Calming activities involve different types of breathing, grounding and centering, soothing touch, or moving slowly.
Stand facing each other, at least an arm’s length apart. One leads, moving slowly, while the other mirrors their partner’s movements and facial expressions. The goal is to stay in sync. Take turns leading.
Take turns making a pretend pizza on your partner’s back using soothing, deep touch to smear on the sauce, sprinkle the cheese, and press on the pepperoni. Touch activities should always reinforce a sense of safety and include the child’s consent before using. Make up a safe touch for whatever your partner wants on their pizza. Then press both palms into their back to bake the pizza. Deep touch is soothing and calming. Light touch may be activating and uncomfortable. Consider adaptations for kids who are very touch sensitive, like using their hand rather than their back.
Energizing activities release energy and foster good feelings. Try “follow the leader” with dancing, shaking, jumping, and marching. Take turns leading.
Connecting activities encourage cooperation vs. competition: physical challenges, singing and humming, reading a story or a poem together. Here are a few ideas.
Create a special handshake that you and your child use routinely.
Create a pretend peaceful, happy place and then draw, paint, or collage it together. Hang it in your child’s room. Practice using it when you want to feel calm.
Make up a story. Take turns adding a new line to the story until its conclusion.
Find things that feel good to your child, like a favorite stuffy or blanket, tactile sensory objects and fidgets, special books or songs, favorite smells, favorite photos, drawing materials.
Create a calming corner in your child’s room that incorporates features to relax.
Check in with your child about what activities work best for them. Reinforce the activities that work well. Incorporate them into bedtime, waking up, greetings, starting homework, or doing something hard. Think about times when your child might need extra energy, or when they need to release energy so they can settle. These rituals will become valuable resources for you and your child when they need to regulate their emotions.
These picture books from Free Spirit Publishing highlight physical sensations.
In Tummies Flip, Hearts Skip: A Book About How Feelings Feel, children learn to notice body sensations, name emotions, and respond to feelings through engaging text and vivid illustrations. The book includes a glossary of sensations and emotions, and a guide to help children respond to the body’s messages by taking action to feel better.
Your amygdala works hard to protect you from danger, but what about when it gets things wrong? This amusing character-driven narrative helps children learn to calm their amygdala and control their fight-flight-freeze impulses.
This Imaginative picture book helps children recognize their feelings and discover ways to regulate big emotions.
As a caring adult, you play an important role in helping a child build strong interoception skills. Teaching children to notice and understand their physical sensations—and connect them to emotions, thoughts, and behaviors—is a powerful way to support their overall well-being.
When children develop strong interoceptive skills, they gain tools to navigate emotions, build resilience, and feel more in control of their bodies and experiences. This foundation supports both emotional health and lifelong self-awareness.