It’s hard to walk into a store these days without spotting fidgets, sensory toys, or sensory bins on display. While these tools can be helpful, understanding how sensory processing and behavior are interconnected is key to supporting your child’s unique needs. These foundational sensory systems influence everything from focus and coordination to emotional regulation and learning readiness.

The Eight Sensory Systems: More Than Meets the Eye

Five External Senses

Most of us are familiar with these classic sensory channels:

• Sight (visual)
• Sound (auditory)
• Touch (tactile)
• Taste (gustatory)
• Smell (olfactory)

Three Internal Senses

Less known but equally critical are the internal sensory systems:

• Proprioception (body position awareness)
• Vestibular (movement and balance)
• Interoception (internal body awareness)

Sensory processing is how our brains make sense of the world. Beyond just our five main senses, we have internal systems that help us:

• Understand our body’s position
• Process movement and help with our balance
• Recognize internal needs
• Interact with our environment
• Regulate our emotions

Critical Internal Sensory Systems Explained

Body Awareness System (Proprioception)

The proprioceptive system:

• Provides feedback from muscles and joints
• Helps understand body position in space
• Forms the foundation for body awareness
• Supports coordination and balance
• Enables efficient movement
• Guides physical interactions

How it affects behavior: When your child jumps, climbs, or pushes against resistance, their proprioceptive system activates, often creating a calming, organizing effect. Children seeking proprioceptive input may crash into furniture, push against others, or chew on objects—behaviors that signal sensory needs rather than misbehavior.

Movement Sense (Vestibular System)

Located in the inner ear, the vestibular system:

• Detects head movement
• Controls balance and postural control
• Affects coordination
• Influences emotional regulation
• Supports focus and attention
• Regulates alertness level
• Impacts speech and language development – children are often more talkative during and after movement
• Helps maintain eye contact

Behavioral impact: Children with vestibular processing challenges may constantly seek movement (spinning, rocking, jumping) or conversely, avoid movement experiences. These behaviors directly reflect their nervous system’s needs rather than attention-seeking.

Internal Awareness (Interoception)

This often-overlooked sensory system helps:

• Monitor body functions such as heartbeat, breathing and digestion
• Recognize hunger/thirst
• Signal bathroom needs
• Identify and regulate emotions

Connection to behavior: Children with poor interoceptive awareness may have sudden emotional outbursts because they don’t recognize the gradual build-up of frustration, hunger, or physical discomfort until it becomes overwhelming. What looks like a tantrum may actually be a response to unrecognized internal signals.

The Tactile System: Our Body’s Protective Wrapper

What is the Tactile System?

The touch sense:

• Helps explore our world
• Protects from danger
  • Responds to pain and extreme temperatures
• Supports emotional bonds
• Processes physical sensations
• Guides social connections
• Influences comfort level
• Supports learning

Behavioral signs of tactile sensitivity: Children who are tactile defensive may pull away from hugs, become anxious during messy play, or have strong preferences about clothing textures. These responses aren’t willful disobedience but protective neurological reactions.