How to Help Kids Identify What’s Going on in Their Bodies

Interoception—the awareness of one's own senses and body—plays a crucial role in every child's development. Most of us are familiar with our five senses (sight, touch, sound, taste, and smell). Did you know in pediatric occupational therapy, we refer to eight senses? Beyond our basic five, we refer to vestibular (of the ear and balance), proprioception (sense of body position, location and action), and interoception.

Understanding Interoception

Interoception enables children to feel and understand what is happening within their bodies, and in turn, develop the understanding of what their body needs.

Children who need help with interoception might find it difficult to understand when they are tired, hot, cold, hungry, thirsty, experiencing pain, or need to relieve themselves. Children with poor interoception may also suffer from sensory processing issues.

Benefits of Therapy for Children with Interoceptive Challenges

Pediatric therapy helps to support children with interoceptive challenges, build the child's recognition of the sensations that they receive from their bodies, and process how those sensations make them feel.

With therapy, like that provided at Metro, children gradually learn to understand these sensations and improve their emotions in physical self-regulation.

Improving body awareness can be accomplished through physical therapy, occupational therapy, or a co-treatment, where both disciplines combine to simultaneously provide intervention for a child.

If you think your child is struggling with any of these tasks or physical self-regulation, give us a call at (763) 450-9400.