Why Won't My Child Take Their Jumper Off in 35 Degrees?
It is the hottest week of the year so far. You are wilting in a vest top, the dog has given up, and your eight year old is sitting on the sofa in a fleece, insisting they are not hot, refusing the water you keep offering, and getting more irritable by the minute. By teatime there are tears, and nobody is quite sure why.
If this sounds familiar, you are not imagining it and you are not doing anything wrong. There is a good chance your child's body is simply not sending them the messages it sends most adults. The system responsible has a name, and once you understand it the heatwave behaviour starts to make a lot more sense.
Meet interoception, the sense nobody taught you about
We all learned the five senses at school. Interoception is the quiet eighth sense that rarely gets a mention. It is your ability to feel what is happening inside your own body: hunger, thirst, a full bladder, a racing heart, tiredness, the flush of feeling too hot or too cold.
For most of us these signals arrive loud and clear. We feel thirsty, so we drink. We feel too warm, so we take off a layer. We barely notice we are doing it.
For a lot of children, and especially those whose development is taking its own path, those internal signals are turned right down. The information is muffled, delayed, or simply not landing. It is a bit like a smoke alarm with a flat battery. The heat is building in the room but the warning never sounds.
This is more common than parents often realise. Interoception differences show up frequently alongside things like sensory processing differences, autism and ADHD, but plenty of children who fit none of those labels also have an internal thermostat that runs a few steps behind. It is a difference in wiring, not a behaviour problem, and crucially it is a skill that can be built over time. It is also exactly the kind of thing occupational therapists spend their days helping children with.
Why heat turns the volume up on everything
A heatwave is interoception on hard mode. Here is what is often going on behind the scenes.
Your child cannot feel that they are overheating, so they do not ask to cool down. The discomfort builds quietly until it spills out as a meltdown, clinginess or a sudden refusal to do anything at all. To you it looks like it came from nowhere. To them, the body was sounding an alarm they could not hear, only feel as a vague awfulness.
They are not registering thirst, so they do not drink, which makes everything worse. Dehydration and overheating feed each other.
And then there is the clothing. The jumper that makes no sense to you may be doing an important job for them. Familiar, snug, heavy fabric can feel safe and organising when the inside of their body feels like static. Bright sun, sticky skin and scratchy summer clothes are their own sensory assault, so the fleece is not stubbornness, it is comfort. Take it away by force and you remove a coping tool, which is why it so often ends in tears.
Put these together and you get the child who is too hot, too dry, dysregulated and unable to tell you any of it. The behaviour is the message.
What actually helps
The golden rule is simple. Do not wait for your child to feel it. Their body is not going to give them reliable warnings this week, so you become the warning system for them. Here is how to do that without turning the whole day into a battle.
Put cooling on a timer, not on demand. Offer a drink every 30 to 45 minutes whether they ask or not, the same way you would for a toddler. Make it a routine rather than a request. A repeating phone alarm does the remembering so you do not have to.
Make hydration sneaky and appealing. Ice lollies are basically water in disguise. So are watermelon, cucumber, jelly and ice cubes to crunch. A novelty cup, a straw or letting them choose the squash flavour can do more than any amount of nagging. Cold water in a flask they picked themselves tends to vanish faster than a glass you handed over.
Negotiate the clothing, do not confiscate it. Look for lighter versions of whatever they love. A loose cotton long sleeved top instead of the fleece, light coloured fabric that reflects heat rather than soaking it up, seamless or tagless options if seams are the issue. Offer two heat appropriate choices and let them pick, so they keep a sense of control. A damp flannel on the back of the neck or cool water on the wrists can take the edge off without a full outfit change.
Cool them down proactively. Keep curtains and blinds closed on the sunny side of the house during the day, then open windows once it cools at night. A paddling pool, a cool bath, a flannel on the neck and wrists, or just a shadier room all help. Do this on a schedule rather than waiting for a complaint that may never come.
Name what their body is doing. This is how the skill gets built. Narrate the signals out loud for them. "Your cheeks have gone pink and your hair is damp, that is your body telling us it is hot. Let's have a drink and sit in the cool for a bit." Over weeks and months this kind of gentle commentary helps the internal signals start to connect with words and meaning.
Try a simple body check. Some children respond well to a quick traffic light check a few times a day. Green means I feel fine, amber means I am a bit hot or thirsty, red means I need to stop and cool down now. It gives a vague internal state a name and a number, which is far easier to act on than a feeling they cannot locate.
Protect sleep and routine. Heat wrecks sleep, and a tired child has even less capacity to cope. A cooler bedroom, a lighter duvet or just a sheet, and a calmer, less ambitious plan for the day will all reduce the load.
Know the signs that need action
Most of the time the steps above are plenty. It is still worth knowing what heat exhaustion looks like, because a child may not tell you they feel ill. Watch for tiredness, dizziness, headache, feeling sick, cramps, very pale or clammy skin, fast breathing, or being unusually sleepy, floppy or out of sorts.
If you spot these, act quickly. Move your child somewhere cool, take off any extra clothing, give them water to sip and cool their skin with a cold damp cloth, especially the neck and under the arms. They should feel better within 30 minutes.
If they do not improve within half an hour, if they stop sweating despite being hot, become confused or very drowsy, or have a very high temperature, treat it as an emergency and call 999. Heat exhaustion can tip into heatstroke fast in children, so when in doubt do not wait.
A gentle word for the worried parent
If your child's wiring works a little differently, a week like this can leave you anxious about what it all means. Try to hold on to two things. First, an internal thermostat that runs quiet is a difference, not a failure, and it is very often something that comes more online with age and gentle practice. Second, the fact that you are reading this and adapting around it is exactly the support your child needs.
Interoception sits right at the heart of what occupational therapists do. We look at how a child takes in and makes sense of the world, including those quiet internal signals, and we use playful, practical strategies to help the connections strengthen over time. If the pattern you are seeing goes beyond the weather, or you would simply like to understand your child's sensory world a little better, an assessment can make everyday life calmer for the whole family.
For now, keep the water coming, pick your battles over the fleece, and be the alarm system their body has not quite got round to switching on yet. You are doing better than you think.
About Equal Chance OT
Equal Chance is a paediatric occupational therapy practice in Sevenoaks, Kent, helping children aged 3 to 12 develop skills for life through play. Our small team offers assessment and therapy at home, in school or in our clinic, working as a team with you and your child's school.
If you would like to talk through how we can help, get in touch via the website https://www.equalchanceot.co.uk/contact
Email info@equalchanceot.co.uk call 01732 755 483.
