As a parent or caregiver, incorporating interoception activities into your life can have many benefits for both you and your children. Interoception is the ability to sense and understand what is happening inside your body, such as your heart rate, breathing, and other internal sensations. Practicing interoception fosters a deeper sense of self-awareness and emotional regulation, contributing to a healthier and more connected family dynamic.
Many parents (including myself) wish they had known more about interoception when their children were younger. But even knowing about it now, if your kids are older, can offer essential perspective and help you to be more affirming of their inner experience. I still make tons of mistakes with my own kids! But interoception science has given me important concepts to consider with them.
As an occupational therapist since 2002, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of serving hundreds of amazing clients and their families. Over the years, I’ve grown more and more passionate about how to nurture self-understanding and self-regulation in effective and kind ways.
Learning from my clients every step of the way, I have been passionately developing a range of interoception-based supports that can be used with a wide variety of learners. These supports are never meant to change your child and are always used in a way that honors and validates their unique experience in the world.
Why is Self-Regulation Important?
Although we always manage to have some fun in OT (okay, lots of fun sometimes), I know it can be a big step to invite a therapist into your life, giving them glimpses into very private and vulnerable moments. Raising a child who struggles with self-regulation can take its toll on your child, on you as the parent or caregiver, and on the entire family system. That is why I’ve always been very focused on finding meaningful and successful ways to help.
In the past, my clients were experiencing gains with the strategies we were using, but there was this nagging feeling that something was missing, something was getting in the way of full regulation success. My clients could memorize certain regulation strategies, but they were struggling to use them ‘in the moment.’ Or their emotions would seemingly go from 0 to 100 in a matter of a few seconds, and they wouldn’t have a chance to use any of the strategies we were trying. It was heartbreaking. My clients and their families were trying so hard and wanted to do so well, and when things didn’t go the way they wanted, it resulted in deep levels of shame and guilt.
Does this sound like your experience? If so, just know that you’re not alone. Read on to learn more.
Why Does Interoception for Parents and Caregivers Matter?
Then one day, I read an article written by a scientist named Dr. Bud Craig. In this article, Dr. Craig described a sense called interoception, and this was the moment that my practice completely changed for the better.
After reading the article, I immediately wondered if interoception could be a big deal for my clients–so, being an ultra-curious person, I ran right to my clients and their families and began asking lots of questions. And at the same time, I was reading all that I could get my hands on about interoception. What we discovered between our conversations and the research is that interoception was indeed a really big deal for my clients. So many were completely unaware or very confused about how their bodies were feeling, thus making understanding and regulating their emotions nearly impossible.
It will help you teach your child how to be curious about and interact with their own body so they can become more aware of their feelings and why they feel the way they do. Many of my clients struggle with regulation difficulties, causing feelings of shame and guilt. They work hard to regulate, but the demands of daily life often become overwhelming. To make matters worse, they feel misunderstood when others label them as ‘challenging,’ ‘oppositional,’ or ‘defiant.’
Common, compliance-driven models of support only focus on observable behaviors, such as refusals, meltdowns, and shutdowns, without exploring or acknowledging their inner experiences. However, when parents and caregivers incorporate interoception into their parenting practices, they encourage their children’s interoceptive learning as well, making room for the child to become comfortable with their inner sensations instead of their observable behaviors.
Interoception has been widely studied for decades but is only now making its way into practical application, benefiting parents, caregivers, and individuals alike. Thankfully, this information is rapidly improving our ability to understand dysregulation, which in turn is driving more effective (and kinder) supports that honor each person’s unique inner experience. What strikes me the most on my 10-year interoception journey is that we are all so different in how our bodies feel. We need to be more curious, rather than assuming to understand our child’s inner experience—and maybe even worse, labeling how we think they feel—I’ve done this a lot! Exposing children to the vocabulary of interoception early on can help them become more curious about their own body experiences. Let’s encourage body curiosity in children as they continue to grow.
As a result of our interoception-based resources for parents and caregivers, my clients have made gains in areas such as:
Identifying and understanding their own emotions
Recognizing their own personal early signs of distress (before a full meltdown or shutdown)
Independently using coping strategies during times of early distress
Connecting with a wider variety of feel-good regulation strategies
Recognizing when hungry, full or thirsty
Toilet training success (daytime and/or nighttime)
Developing healthy sleep habits
Pinpointing symptoms of illness or injury
Describing the way certain body parts feel (verbally and non-verbally)
Developing more confidence within social connections
“Kelly’s work has changed my entire family’s life for the better. We all benefited from using her resources to help us better understand our body signals. My son and daughter are using so many more words to describe the way that their bodies feel during daily life. And they have grown more confident in their ability to change the way their body feels. Kelly’s work is incredibly empowering. I love that she encourages us all to validate our own experience rather than ‘fix’ or change the core of who we are.”
– Emma C.
Interoception Resources to Inspire Inner Curiosity & Discovery
The overall goal of our interoception supports is to enhance your child’s level of self-understanding:
to understand more about the sensations in their body,
to understand their own personal emotions,
to connect with the things in life that promote the feel-good sensations within their body.
Below are some of our most popular interoception resources that can help you inspire inner curiosity and discovery in your own child or when working with children. Who knows, maybe these resources will inspire curiosity about your personal inner sense as well. After all, building awareness of our interoceptive sensations is good for all of us.
On-Demand Course: A 3 Step Approach to Nurturing Interoceptive Awareness
Version 2.0 of one of our most popular courses! Interoception is the hottest topic in neuroscience and our understanding of this important sense is rapidly growing and shifting forward. Learn the latest about how interoception vastly influences our daily lives, providing a foundation for mental health, emotion regulation, self-understanding, communication, language, toileting, eating, health management, social connection and many more. This 3.5-hour course provides an overview of what research tells us about interoception, as well as a step-by-step process for nurturing interoceptive awareness that is rooted in evidence and lived experiences.
$149.00 USD
The Interoception Curriculum
Are you struggling to find a professional that can effectively support your child’s interoception growth? Take matters into your own hands with The Interoception Curriculum. Originally written for professionals to use with clients and their families, hundreds of families are now implementing the curriculum on their own. The Interoception Curriculum (IC) provides an evidence-based, step-by-step framework for helping a variety of learners discover more about their own unique body-emotion-action connections.
It’s a good value, too. The IC comes with a book containing 25 lesson plans plus access to 600+ pages of downloadable instructional materials (hint: less prep work for you!). The IC will help you empower your child better to understand their personal body sensations and emotions.
$199.00 USD
Interoception Card Decks
If you are looking for fast and fun mindfulness activities to enhance interoceptive awareness in your child, these cards are for you. These card decks provide hundreds of unique interoception activities that require little to no equipment or materials. Use them to help you guide your child to notice body signals in a variety of different body parts—or better yet, do the activities together and discover the similarities and differences between how your bodies feel during each activity.
Interoception Activity Cards
$89.00 USD
Interoception Yoga Cards
$49.00 USD – $69.00 USD
Interoception Exercise Cards
$49.00 USD – $69.00 USD
Body Check Ring
Does your child struggle to put words to the sensations they notice in their body? This convenient resource for parents and caregivers serves as a visual and language support that can help. Simply print the Body Check Ring and go (or if you love to laminate…do your thing!).
Added value: if you are looking for fun interoception activities to do with your child, check out the BONUS that comes with this resource: a mini-online course and booklet that gives you instructions and demonstration of five super engaging and effective interoception games.
$59.00 USD
My Interoception Workbook: A Guide for Adolescents, Teens, and Adults
If your child would benefit from exploring their current interoception levels, this interactive workbook provides a highly structured, concrete and visual guide for doing so. This resource can be completed collaboratively with your child, which allows you to gain valuable insight into their inner experience while empowering them with a higher level of self-understanding.
The 70+ strategies presented in this workbook can serve as a guided exploration, where you can work together with your child to find effective and meaningful strategies that will help to outsmart interoception difficulties. Although this workbook was originally intended for use with adolescents, teens and adults, there are many parents breaking it into smaller sections for successful use with younger children.
The best part about the workbook?: I co-wrote it with two self-advocates that have personally benefitted from the use of interoception supports—so much so that they felt called to write a book on the topic to help others. Hopefully, this can inspire your own child.
$39.00 USD
Live Online Courses
Our LIVE online courses are about two things: cutting-edge topics + fresh, evidence-based strategies. All of this helps you better nurture your child’s growth. Connect with us LIVE each month for a dynamic learning experience filled with practical information you can begin using immediately in your practice.
Can’t make the live date? No worries. All registrants will receive unlimited access to the recording for two weeks following the LIVE online course.
All courses are $69 each
