How You’re Accidentally Teaching Your Child to Ignore Their Body Signals

What’s inside this article: How well-meaning adults accidentally teach kids to ignore their body signals, why this matters for emotional regulation and self-advocacy, and what you can do differently starting today.

It’s been getting colder outside recently. One day last week, we had flurries in the forecast. I asked my 9-year-old if he wanted to bring his coat to school.

He said yes – he did feel cold yesterday.

But then he paused.

“Actually, no. If I bring it, I have to wear it the whole time. Even if I get hot.”

At his school, if you bring a coat, you have to wear it outside. No exceptions. You cannot take it off.

So instead of being uncomfortably hot for an entire lunch hour of running around playing soccer with his friends, he chose to be a little bit cold at the start.

Now, although I was somewhat impressed that he was running his own risk analysis over breakfast (which was pizza, by the way), I was also disappointed. 

This situation was a prime example of how well-meaning adults can accidentally teach kids to ignore their own body signals.

Instead of the message being “what does your body need right now to feel comfortable?“, we get rules like “if you have a coat, you have to wear it.“

The message to kids? We don’t trust you to make decisions about your own comfort. Adults know best.

And, if he took the coat off anyway and tried to explain? He’d be breaking the rules or “talking back” – when really, he’d just be self-advocating.

What Is Interoception? (And Why Should You Care?)

Before we talk about all the ways we unintentionally mess this up, let’s start with what interoception actually is.

Interoception is your sense of how your body feels on the inside. It’s sometimes called the eighth sense.

You have receptors all throughout your body – in your organs, muscles, joints, skin, literally everywhere. These receptors send signals to your brain about what’s happening inside your body.

This is how you notice things like:

• Your heart racing
• Your head throbbing
• Hunger
• The need to use the bathroom
• Feeling too hot or too cold

Your ability to notice these body signals, understand what they mean, and know what your body needs is called interoceptive awareness.

This awareness is what helps kids (and adults) regulate their bodies, understand their emotions, and advocate for their needs.

You can read more about how the interoceptive system works here.

How Babies Learn to Trust Their Bodies

From day one, babies notice how their bodies feel.

They don’t have the words for “I am hungry” or “my diaper is wet,” but they definitely notice when something feels uncomfortable. And when they feel uncomfortable, they let you know – through crying, stiffening up, turning away or squirming, arching their backs, etc. There’s a ton of ways that babies signal to us that they need something.

What happens next is really important.

The caregiver gets curious. They make guesses.

Hungry? Let’s try feeding.

Not hungry? Maybe too hot or too cold. Let’s adjust.

Still fussing? Maybe they need movement, or a diaper change, or just some comfort.

This cycle happens every day, many many times a day. The baby feels uncomfortable, expresses it, and the caregiver stays curious and tries different solutions to comfort the baby until something works.

Through this process, babies start to learn about their bodies. They begin to notice patterns. This feeling in my belly means I’m hungry. When I eat, this feeling goes away. That wet feeling means I need a diaper change.

This is how children develop body knowledge and awareness – through caregivers who approach their distress with curiosity.

When (and Why) Does That Curiosity Fade?

Here’s what frustrates me.

When a baby cries, adults wonder what’s wrong. We stay curious. We try different things. We don’t get mad at the baby for crying.

But somewhere along the line (much earlier than it should), that curiosity fades.

Sometimes it happens as early as toddlerhood. Sometimes it’s in preschool or kindergarten. By the time kids hit first or second grade, it’s pretty much gone.

A toddler who gets up and moves during story time gets told to sit back down. 

A preschooler who says, “This is too loud,” gets told, “It’s not that loud.” 

A fourth grader who’s clearly overheating in their coat gets told “you brought it, you have to wear it.”

Somewhere along the line, our thought process shifts from “what does this child NEED?” to “why isn’t this child LISTENING TO ME!?”

We stop being curious about their internal experience and start focusing on controlling their external behavior.

My oldest son was even kicked out of daycare (this was over a decade ago now) for “difficult to manage behaviors” when what he really needed was more co-regulation and curiosity.

All the Ways We Accidentally Mess This Up

Even loving, well-intentioned parents and teachers do this. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t guilty of it sometimes, too.

Here are the most common ways we accidentally teach kids to ignore what their bodies are telling them.

1. Rigid Rules That Override Body Signals

The coat rule is just one example. Here are others you’ve probably heard (or said):

• “Sit still in your seat” – even when their body is screaming that they need to move
• “Sit crisscross applesauce” – even when that position gets uncomfortable or painful. How often do you need to shift positions while seated to stay comfortable?
• “You have to finish your supper” – even though they said they’re full
• “You can’t use the bathroom right now, you should have went at recess” – even though their body is sending urgent signals

Every one of these rules sends the same message: your body signals don’t matter as much as my rules.

We might think we’re teaching kids responsibility or discipline. 

But what we’re actually teaching them is to override what their bodies are telling them in order to comply with what adults want.

2. Labeling Their Emotions For Them

This one catches a lot of people off guard. I recently learned this myself and honestly hadn’t thought about it this way before.

A lot of us (including me) were taught that we should label children’s emotions for them.

“It looks like you’re frustrated right now.”

“You’re in the red zone.”

“You’re at a level 4.”

We’ve been told that if we label kids’ emotions for them, over time, they’ll learn to recognize how those emotions feel in their body. Then eventually, they’ll be able to communicate those feelings on their own.

The intention is good – we genuinely think we’re helping them understand their feelings.

But emotion labeling has zero curiosity in it. We’re making an assumption. We’re guessing. And anytime we’re guessing, that comes with a high likelihood that we’re wrong.

Here’s what happens when we get it wrong.

When adults repeatedly label a child’s emotions incorrectly, it creates confusion. The child starts thinking “maybe my body is wrong” or “maybe I don’t actually know what I feel.” 

Kids can stop trusting their own internal experiences. And they won’t necessarily tell you they think you’re wrong – they’ll just start doubting themselves.

There’s another layer to this, too. Neurodivergent individuals can feel emotions and other sensations in their body differently than we might expect. Actually, everyone experiences these things a little bit differently from one another. There’s no uniformity in how emotions feel physically. There are commonalities but, it still varies from person to person.

So teaching kids what emotions “should” feel like, or telling them what they’re feeling based on what we observe, can disconnect them from their own unique internal experience.

Try this instead:

Get curious. Describe what you observe without labeling their emotion.

• “I see your body doing this wiggle. I wonder what that’s about?”
• “I noticed you doing that yesterday right before you went to the bathroom. I wonder if is that happening again?”
• “I wonder what is going on in your body right now?”
• “I see you reaching for more snacks. I wonder what your body is telling you?”

These “I wonder” statements and curious questions help kids tune into their own experience instead of learning to rely on other people to tell them how they feel.

3. Dismissing What They’re Experiencing

This is another one that almost always comes from a good place. 

We want to make our kids feel better,  so we try to minimize what they’re experiencing.

An example basically every parent on the planet is guilty of – your kid falls and scrapes their knee. They start crying.

“You’re fine. It’s just a little bump.”

“Brush it off. No big deal.”

Or other examples:

• “It’s not that loud in here.”
• “You just ate this yesterday. It’s not different today.”
• “You’re not really that hungry. You just ate an hour ago.”

In these moments, the child is noticing a feeling in their body and expressing it. When we dismiss it, we’re saying: ignore that. Your body can’t possibly be feeling what you think it’s feeling. What you’re experiencing isn’t valid.

Try this instead:

Validate what they’re experiencing and get curious about what might help.

• “Ouch, you fell. I can see that hurt. Let me take a look. What would help it feel better?”
• “I hear you saying it’s loud. What would help your ears feel more comfortable?”
• “Your body is telling you something. Let’s figure out what it needs.”

When you validate their experience, you help them trust their body signals and learn to communicate their needs.

4. Teaching Them How Emotions “Should” Feel

I mentioned this above in regards to labeling emotions but we can dive a little deeper.

A lot of programs teach kids that emotions feel a certain way for everyone.

• “When you’re hungry, your stomach growls.”
• “When you’re angry, your fists get tight and your face gets hot.”
• “Anxiety is a yellow zone feeling.”

But like I mentioned, everyone’s body is different.

What hunger feels like in your body is different from what it feels like in my body. One kid might get a growling stomach. Another kid might feel it as low energy. Another might get a “zappy feeling” on their skin (yes, this is a real example from an OT we interviewed).

When we teach kids that emotions should feel a specific way, we unintentionally confuse kids whose bodies don’t match that description.

They wait for their stomach to growl to know they’re hungry. Meanwhile, they’re missing their own body’s unique signals. 

Oftentimes, you will hear experts say that many autistic individuals have low interoceptive awareness. This has actually led me to wonder – Is it truly have low awareness, or is it that neurodivergent individuals just experience these things differently than the neurotypical experience and have never had their experiences validated? 

Try this instead:

Help kids explore how their unique body feels. 

Start with body signals, not emotion labels.

• “What do you notice in your body right now?”
• “Where do you feel that?”
• “Is that the same feeling as yesterday, or different?”

Let kids figure out what emotion words mean based on their own patterns of body signals.

You can find more interoception activities and games to help with this here.

Why This Matters So Much

We’re focused on getting kids to have “good behavior” and self-regulate. We use behavior charts, token economies, consequences, all sorts of compliance-based strategies trying to get kids to “listen”.

But in the process, we destroy the thing kids actually need in order to self-regulate: interoceptive awareness.

Kids need to notice their body signals, understand what those signals mean, know what their body needs, and then take that needed action. That’s how self-regulation works.

When we teach them to ignore their body signals, override their internal experience, and comply with external rules no matter what their body is telling them – we make self-regulation so much harder.

The time you spend being curious with kids about what’s happening inside their bodies isn’t wasted time. It’s exactly what they need to eventually regulate themselves.

What You Can Do Differently

Nobody’s perfect at this. And you don’t need to get it perfect to have a positive impact on your kid.

But, when we know better, we can do better.

Here’s some things you can do to build interoceptive awareness:

Get Curious, Not Controlling

When a kid is struggling or showing behaviors that feel challenging, pause. Take a breath.

Ask yourself:

• What might be happening in their body right now?
• What might they need?
• What is their body trying to tell us?

A child who has been on this earth for three, or six, or nine years is not trying to make your life difficult. They’re experiencing something difficult. That struggle deserves curiosity. 

In fact, even adults deserve curiosity, a lot of us have grown up ignoring our body signals, too. 

Make Rules More Flexible

When you can, create rules that let kids make decisions about their own comfort.

Instead of “if you bring a coat, you must wear it outside,” try “you can decide how many layers to wear based on how your body feels.”

Instead of “everyone sits crisscross applesauce,” try “find a way to sit that is comfortable and helps your body focus.”

Instead of “you have to finish your plate,” try “eat until your body tells you you’re done.”

These small shifts give kids practice listening to their bodies and making decisions about what they need.

Ask Questions Instead of Making Statements

Instead of labeling or dismissing, ask questions that help kids tune into their own experience.

• What are you noticing in your body?
• What does your body need right now?
• Is this feeling the same as before, or different?
• What usually helps when you notice this feeling?

These questions teach kids to tune in and pay attention to their bodies and trust what their bodies are telling them.

Model Your Own Body Awareness

Talk about your own body signals out loud. Show kids that listening to your body is normal and important.

• “This room is too loud for me. I need to step outside for a minute.”
• “The lights are giving me a headache. I’m going to dim them.”
• “My body is telling me I need to move. Want to take a quick walk with me?”

When kids see adults listening to their own bodies, they learn that body signals matter and deserve attention.

You can even ask them how their experience relates to yours “This music is too loud for me, is it the same for you, or different?”. This helps kids think about their own experiences and also start understanding that everyone experiences things differently and has different sensory preferences. 

Trust Kids More

We say we want kids to learn self-advocacy, responsibility, and self-regulation.

But then we give them almost no chances to actually practice it.

Letting kids make small decisions about their own comfort is how they develop interoception, autonomy, and self-advocacy.

If we trust kids to listen to their bodies more often, they will. They’re actually pretty good at it when we give them the chance.

Changing these patterns doesn’t require a curriculum, or a program, or hours of extra time.

What it requires is changing our language, our assumptions, and our approach to kids’ internal experiences.

Remember that curiosity we naturally have with babies? The wondering what they need, trying different solutions, staying present with them through discomfort?

Older kids need that too.

When we approach kids’ struggles with curiosity instead of control, we give them the gift of learning to trust their own bodies. We help them develop the interoceptive awareness they need to regulate themselves, understand their emotions, and advocate for their needs.

That foundation will serve them for their entire lives.

So the next time a kid gets up from their seat, removes their coat, says “this is too loud,” or shows any other sign that their body is communicating something – pause.

Be curious.

Ask what their body might need instead of telling them to ignore it.

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