EP 16: Why Kids Have Big Feelings They Can't Explain: Understanding Interoception

Episode 16 | Why Kids Have Big Feelings They Can't Explain: Understanding Interoception

Have you ever watched your child completely fall apart — hungry, overwhelmed, or just off — and they couldn't tell you why? They weren't being dramatic. Their nervous system literally didn't have the language yet.

That's interoception. And in this episode, I'm breaking it all the way down.

Interoception is your body's ability to sense what's happening inside — hunger, fullness, a racing heart, a tight chest, the need to move. It's the sixth sense nobody talks about, and it turns out it has everything to do with how our kids eat, regulate emotions, and eventually learn to trust their own bodies.

This one is close to my heart. As a pediatrician and dietitian, I see the downstream effects of poor interoceptive awareness every single week in clinic — and most of the time, no one has ever named it for these families.

In this episode we cover:

• What interoception actually is (and why it's not woo — it's neuroscience)
• How hunger and emotional signals share the same internal wiring
• Why kids who struggle to "calm down" often also struggle at the table
• The low-pressure ways you can support this at home without a therapy degree

→ If this episode landed for you, share it with another parent or save it for the next time your kid has a meltdown you can't explain. That moment is exactly when you'll want this.

Book Recommendations: 

Listening To My Body by Gabi Garcia

A Little Spot: Emotional Regulation Box Set by Diane Alber

NEW COURSE! "Read the Pattern: Feeding Your Baby 0–4 Months" — because a healthy relationship with food starts earlier than most people think. Course Link!

Transcript

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This is not about only eating because you're hungry. This is about understanding that emotional regulation piece is just as important as hunger is too. And when kids can say, I feel nervous, and notice butterflies in my belly, they can do something with that. Then they can ask for a hug. They can do deep breathing. They can learn what else in their body will feel good to help them with that feeling than just eating. And then they can name what they need. And that mapping process builds real neurologic pathways for self-regulation. And it starts young. Welcome to the Nutrition for the Early Years podcast with Dr. Liz, your guilt-free guidance for feeding your family. This podcast is for folks who are craving better nutrition for their kids, but are tired of the whiplash of nutrition claims and diet culture influence. You're reading labels, paying attention to ingredients, but you still doubt yourself, and for good reason. Food goes deep, and often we fear making costly mistakes that as parents we hope to prevent. If you're ready to explore the ins and outs of your child's actual nutrition needs and nourish the whole child from the inside out, hang with me, Dr. Liz Daniels. I'm a board-certified pediatrician plus registered dietitian, and we're gonna dig deep into real deal nutrition science, honest talk about barriers to health, and real stories that I help address. So let's dig in. Let me talk to you for a second. Because if you're listening to this podcast, there's a good chance you're already doing the research. You're reading the articles, you have all the apps, and you're still not sure if what you're seeing is normal or if something is off. The uncertainty? That 2 a.m. Google spiral, that same conversation you've had 12 times with your partner. That's exactly why I built read the pattern. And this is my course on feeding your baby in the first four months. Without the overwhelm, without the conflicting advice, and without the shame. You'll lock away knowing how to read your baby's cues, understand their patterns, and trust what you're seeing. The course has six modules, about two plus hours of content, and a downloadable guide with scripts that you can use to help guide you through some of the most stressful but yet beautiful days of your early infant's life. Because you'll finally have a framework that makes sense. One course, one clear lens, and you'll use it every single day for these first four months. The link is in the show notes. If you've been on the fence, this is me telling you you're ready. Go register. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Nutrition for the Earliers podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Liz Daniels, pediatrician, dietitian, and mom of three amazing kiddos. And today I'm going to teach you a word that will make you sound a little more impressive at your next little kid birthday party. The word is interoception. Say it with me. Interoception. Not interception. This is not like a football term. It's actually in kind of neurologic term. Interoception is actually so simple and so important. And I want every parent to have it in their back pocket because it's not just about food. It's connected to how your child handles big feelings. Anxiety, frustration, overwhelm, the meltdowns you can't explain, the I'm hungry at 7 p.m. right after dinner, the tears that seem to come from nowhere and everywhere, all at the same time. All of it's actually quite connected. And today we're going to untangle a little bit of it. So, quick note before we dive in deeper. If you've been listening to this for a while and you know we spend a lot of time on babies and toddlers. And today we're going to talk about kids that are a little bit older, like three to nine, okay? And honestly, though, the sweet spot for this particular kind of conversation and intervention is actually five to seven. But the roots of this skill, the place we actually start thinking about this, they actually start really young. Because even if you have a two-year-old, stay with me, okay? Because you are actually in the ideal window to start building this. And I want to put this in your mind well before we are trying to figure this out in the middle of the storm, okay? And if you're just getting started with an older kid, or maybe you've got grown-ups, no guilt. Okay, I mean that. Just use this as a conversation piece to forgive yourself and understand the situation you have already lived through. And trust me, your kids, no matter their ages, they are more forgiving than you think. So the simple definition interoception is your body's ability to sense what's happening inside itself. Like when your stomach growls and you think, I'm hungry, that's interoception. When your heart speeds up and you notice, I feel nervous, interoception. When you're in a car too long and your body says increasingly loud tones, which you feel the older you get, I've noticed. That need to move, that's your body talking to you. And your ability to hear and correctly interpret those signals. That's this skill. Here's the thing most parents don't realize interoception is not automatic. Not for all the things. It develops over time. And sometimes we actually learn it really well in the beginning, but forget somewhere along the way and need to relearn it again. This doesn't always develop accurately. Some kids are really tuned in, and others, which is also normal, can hear those signals but misread them. It can be really confusing and also really basic in the same sense. So, what I mean here is that kids will use the words that they know, but not always for the right thing. And some kids have actually started to ignore those signals entirely, sometimes because no one ever helped them figure it out, and we didn't necessarily even know to teach our kids this. But we can help them understand what these signals mean so that they can grow these skills and also understand how to get what they do need when they have them. Let me give you a little story because it can feel a little bit arbitrary. And I want to teach you about something called the ABC technique. I want to share a little story about a family that I care for. Mom came in with her four-year-old daughter and she was genuinely worried. Her daughter was saying, I'm hungry, I'm hungry constantly. And she felt like she was turning into this like snack monster, no matter how much she fed her. And that didn't necessarily worry her, except for that she did notice that her daughter was starting to grow in directions that she felt nervous about. The growth curve trends were showing mom concern too. So it wasn't just all in her head, right? But this is a pattern that had her wondering: is this just a growth spurt? Is she actually hungry? Is something else going on? Is there a thyroid issue? What is really happening? And I could tell right away this was not just a nutrition question from mom. She told me she had always struggled with her own weight, and she'd watched her daughter say, I'm hungry, all the time, seeing those patterns on the growth curve, and it was really triggering for her. It brought up a lot. And this was a conversation that we couldn't have just in front of her daughter because even though she was young, her ears were always on. Mom came to me because she didn't want to restrict her daughter's eating or create more problems down the road, making her feel monitored for her weight or her food. She knew how that felt herself as a kid, and she wanted something better. But she also didn't know what to do. She was stuck in this impossible feeling of I need to do something, but I'm scared that whatever I do is gonna make this worse. Sound familiar? I think a lot of parents know that feeling. So here's what we did. We didn't restrict anything. We did not change the diet. Shocker, I know. Instead, I taught her a technique called the ABC method. And this is can be restart. And this ABC method is actually taken from behavioral psychology that can be applied to a lot of other behaviors. But in this context, it made so much more sense. Here's how it works B is the behavior. And in this case, the I'm hungry statement or the request for a snack was the behavior that we would start and notice. So we're going about the day, and then when the child says that, it cues us as the parent to look at that behavior and then ask the A, the antecedent, what happened right before this behavior? And then C is the consequence. What happens after? And I ask mom to just notice, just watch for a week. Take notes, don't change anything, keep offering what you would, keep treating it just like we weren't doing anything different. And when she says, I'm hungry, ask yourself, what's happening right before this? And what happens after you respond? And what mom had noticed completely changed how she understood the situation. And it taught me a whole heck of a lot, too. Almost every time her daughter said, I'm hungry, it was right after she was watching TV. Mom tested it actually. She swapped out TV time one evening, and then it was that after dinner window when she's cleaning up in the kitchen, and usually she'd flip on a show to buy herself 20 minutes, and instead she started a game with her daughter at the same time, same tired end-of-the-day slot, same amount of dinner eaten. And to her surprise, no snack request. None. Then she tested it again, put on TV at a different time of day when she's not normally asking for a snack. And to her surprise, she saw the behavior. Not every time, but it was enough that it cued her in to this pattern. And she came back and said, wait a minute, I don't think she's actually hungry. I think she's associating TV with this eating behavior. And so then that led us to the question of what is that association built around? What is she actually feeling in her body that reminds her of this feeling of hunger? What's the wiring there? And we started asking, okay, is she bored? Is she tired? Is she looking for connection? Is she just looking for mom's attention? Or is she truly hungry? And the snack request is the way she knows how to ask for it. That's the interoception work. What they discovered when they went back and started exploring was that what actually was happening in her body during those moments, mom was able to settle on something that felt really true for her. Her daughter wasn't always hungry. She wanted connection. At that point, she was tired, she was overstimulated, and she learned that asking for a snack meant mom stopped what she was doing and paid attention to her. In her four-year-old body, I'm hungry had become the language for, I need you, I'm tired, reassure me. And once mom understood that, everything could shift. She didn't need to restrict food. She didn't need to fight against hunger. It gave her the freedom to respond in a way that her daughter actually needed and was so much more nourishing than just a snack. And that gave mom the opportunity to actually reset this question and say, oh, I hear you're hungry, but let's check in with our bodies. What would feel really good right now? And that's what interoception is all about. I want to pause here and connect this to why I care so much about it as both a pediatrician and a dietitian. When kids can accurately read their own signals like hunger, fullness, tired, anxious, boredom, they will eat more intuitively. They'll stop when they're satisfied, not when the bowl is empty. They'll notice when something doesn't agree with them. They can start to tell the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger. And that distinction, some adults spend decades still trying to figure this out. You as a parent may still be in that space. And that is okay. The earlier we can help kids build this vocabulary for their bodies, the better equipped they're gonna be. We want them to be their own guide. And listen, we want to also enjoy our food and enjoy the company around our food. This is not about only eating because you're hungry. This is about understanding that emotional regulation piece is just as important as hunger is too. And when kids can say, I feel nervous, and notice butterflies in my belly, they can do something with that. Then they can ask for a hug, they can do deep breathing, they can learn what else in their body will feel good to help them with that feeling than just eating. And then they can name what they need, and that mapping process builds real neurologic pathways for self-regulation. And it starts young. So, how to build this. Okay, for parents that have kids about four to nine, this is something that we can really practice. Let's talk about some practical tools. Number one, body mapping. You can help your child connect a feeling to a place in their body. Instead of just, I'm scared, try where did you feel that? Is it in your tummy? Is it in your chest? Does your body feel shaky? You're not diagnosing them. You're just inviting them to get curious. Number two, navigating boundaries without shame. Here's something that I think about a lot. We all say things like, that much candy will make your stomach hurt, and one more, and then we need to go move our bodies. Those kinds of statements are reasonable because we do need to set limits. I understand where that comes from, but there is a delicate line between setting a necessary boundary and accidentally planting a seed of shame about food or our bodies. And I don't want to say this to make you feel like you've already done it all wrong. Listen to me when I say this, that I have said all the things that I wish I'd never said as a parent. Okay, not saying this out of perfection. I just want to say this to invite you to think back. What were you told about your body when you were little? Or about feeding practices around celebrations or holidays. Anytime there was excess. Was there also some Aunt Karen who made a comment about eating too many calories or not eating something because it was going to make her fat? Those kinds of comments stuck with us as kids. And we need to recognize that as adults and take care of that part of our inner child too. And I say this to give you permission to yourself to be more in tune with your own body. Because we can't teach our kids what we ourselves don't know. And you don't have to be perfect at this. I just want to invite you into this as a way to learn with them if this is still something you're learning and working through. You have permission to practice different scripts and phrases. You have permission to notice what your own body needs and wants without shaming yourself for eating the leftover Halloween candy or finishing the holiday treats. Because when we love ourselves enough to do that, then we can forgive ourselves and move forward. And that's when we can take the next step into more mindful eating and modeling it for our kids as well. And that's something I genuinely love. Mindful eating is powerful and it is really a beautiful thing, especially as an adult. I have learned though that mindful eating doesn't necessarily work well for kids. Let me get into this a little more. Kids often need more support navigating this, and part of this is because they need a lot of opportunities to learn. And some kids will, right off the bat, with one consequence of eating too much of something, are gonna feel sick in their belly and make that association and then not do it again. But kids who may be neurodivergent or who need a lot of repetition to learn a skill may need a lot more boundary setting to help them learn this. And sometimes they need really strong boundaries. And so this feels uncomfortable, especially if in your home you have children that learn at different rates and have different relationships with their bodies and foods. This is where it gets delicate, and this is precisely where these conversations come up for me in my clinic. When I have a family member that needs this thing and a family member that needs this thing, how do we help families all together? I say this because I need you to know that this is not a character flaw, okay? This is neurology. What we want to do is help our kids get more connected to their whole body so that as they grow, they can keep building the skill and listening inward instead of just responding to those external cues around them. Number three, the ABCs at home. Like you don't have to be a therapist to use this. The next time your kid says, I'm hungry, at an unexpected time when they've just eaten, just get curious. You don't have to tell them, oh, you're not hungry, you just ate. You can just say, What's happening right now? What happened right before? Has this been happening a lot in the same situation? You're not investigating them or interrogating. You're just learning their patterns. And when you can observe instead of react, it helps you be much more intentional and move with the right clarity. Number four, mindfulness, movement, and body play. Yoga, barefoot in the grass, deep breathing, silly games where you have to notice your heartbeat, all of it can build body awareness. And schools are doing a lot of this in their social emotional learning, and the research here is actually really cool. I have another practical strategy here that I often reference in my office, and it's a book that I really like. It's called My Body by Gabby Garcia, and it is an awesome book that gives kids real vocabulary for what's happening inside their bodies, and not in a clinical way, but in a story and in the language that makes sense to a young kiddo. It helps them connect the words to the feelings without it feeling like a lesson. It's the kind of book that you can read once and your kid might even ask for it again, or you might come back to it multiple times and each time they're kind of building a little bit more of that interoception skill. But it also helps you as a parent practice some phrases that you can use to help your kid when you're not sitting in front of the book. I've also linked it in the show notes for those of you who are listening and not able to watch the video. And if you have a kid in that four to eight range specifically, this one is awesome to have on the nightstand. Another one that I really like a lot is a book series called A Little Spot Emotional Regulation Box Set. And these are awesome. They're written and illustrated by Diane Albert, and it's also going to be linked in the show notes. It goes through a bunch of different emotions as well and comes with little stuffed and stuffed plushies that kids can hold that can help them to each of them come over a different emotion, and it can be a great resource for kids as you are trying to navigate these conversations. Because I think one of the things that is apparent is that when these emotions get really big and you're feeling them in the moment, we react. It's hard for us because inevitably these happen when we are tired and hungry and stressed too, or in the middle of a restaurant or Christmas shopping. Like these moments come at sometimes the most inconvenient time. And so it's okay if you need to say, you know what, I can't deal with all of those things right now, but we're gonna come back and talk about this later. It's okay to pause and come back to it and apologize if you didn't get it right the first time. Because that's resilience, and that's where we teach our kids some of the most amazing parts of humanity, right? That we can make mistakes and without shame, we can forgive ourselves and love ourselves and try again. So that's my invitation for you. I would love for you to have the chance to think through behaviors. If there's an eating behavior that is going on in your home that worries you or a trend that you've noticed and it triggers you, the first question is actually to think about why that triggers you. How can you understand that behavior within yourself a little bit more? And then think about one of these opportunities or tools to help build that skill for your own keto. And then we go from there. I hope this has been helpful. And this is just where I want to leave you today. Interoception isn't built in just one conversation, it's slowly, in small moments. A check-in before dinner, a question at bedtime, getting curious instead of reactive when your kid says something that doesn't quite add up. You're not going to get it perfect, and neither have I. But every time you help your child pause and listen to their body, you're building something real. You're laying the groundwork for a lifetime of knowing themselves. Next week I'll be back, and we're gonna talk about a companion to today's episode: body gratitude. Because these two things go together in a really beautiful way, and I think it's going to resonate with a lot of you. So if today's episode hit home, the best thing you can do is go share it with another parent who needs to hear this. Maybe that's your partner, maybe that's your parent, or someone who has been through a challenging journey in their own relationship with food. And if you're not already subscribed to my newsletter, head over to NewStorynutrition.com. I send something real and useful every single week. No spam, no gimmicks, just me. Thanks for being here. I'll see you guys next week.