Is it Sensory or Behaviour? Understanding the Why Behind Behaviour
In this episode of the Go Beyond Therapy Podcast, host Samantha Taylor dives into one of the most common questions asked by parents: Is this sensory or behavioural?Â
Samantha helps unpack what’s happening beneath the surface when children have meltdowns, shutdowns, or explosive reactions—and why it’s rarely ever “just behaviour.”
You’ll hear how sensory processing, emotional regulation, unmet needs, and even transitions can all play a role in how children express themselves. This episode also explores the power of co-regulation, how to track patterns in your child’s behaviour, and why responding with curiosity (not frustration) makes all the difference.
If you've ever second-guessed your response or wondered how to explain your child's behaviour to teachers or family—this one is for you.
Episode Highlights:
- How to tell the difference between sensory overload and behavioural outbursts
- Why co-regulation is more effective than correcting behaviour in the moment
- Practical questions to help you understand what’s really behind your child’s actions
Episode Transcript
Today we are diving into a question I hear all the time. Is it sensory or behaviour? So we're talking about meltdowns and tantrums and outbursts, whatever you want to call it, but that red zone of behaviour that makes a lot of parents question, what's actually going on. So if you've ever found yourself second guessing your child's outburst or [00:02:00] meltdown, or wondering if it's a tantrum, or something else entirely, you are absolutely not alone. And spoiler alert, the answer is almost never black and white. It's never one thing or the other. So grab a cuppa, take a breath, and let's go down the path of behaviour and really understand what's going on.
Let's start with a reframing of behaviour. All behaviour is communication. I'll just let that sit with you.
All behaviour is communication. When your child throws, yells, refuses shut down, it's not because they're being bad, it's because there's something inside of them that they're struggling to express. I like to think of behaviour as the tip of the iceberg and what we see on the surface is the yelling, the hitting, the running way. But that's just the very small part of what's going on [00:03:00] beneath the surface, we might be seeing unmet sensory needs. We might be seeing emotional dysregulation. We might be seeing pain, fear, exhaustion, anxiety, but it just looks like behaviour.
Instead of asking, how do I stop this? We might shift our wording to, what is my child trying to tell me in this moment? So let's unpack this. Is it sensory or is it behaviour or something completely different?
When we look at sensory based behaviours, these are usually triggered by how the brain processes the world. This might be covering ears at loud noises. It might be having a meltdown under fluorescent lines. It might be taking clothes off because the tag is scratchy. These aren't choices. These are nervous system reactions. So it is the nervous system being in a fight or flight. Lots of adrenaline being pumped through the system, and these are reactions to the sensory [00:04:00] nervous system.
On the other hand, if behaviour is looking like defiance, things like yelling when being asked to stop playing or refusing to follow directions. This might be your child not being able to process anything else at the moment. So here's the key difference. If it's sensory, it's often about input coming in and the body not being able to process it. If it's behavioural, we often need to see about needs not being met. If it's control, connection, a break, and to be honest, sometimes it's just all of the above.
So from here we need to look into what's happening before, during, and after the episode of behaviour. We need to look at getting curious, rather than being furious or getting agitated ourselves into the situation. You need to become a bit of a, like a detective around why is the behaviour occurring?
 Have a look at why? So [00:05:00] here's some questions you can ask yourself about a situation. What's happened right before the behaviour? Is it something that's triggered them? Is it a situation that they're in? Is that their inability to communicate? And from here, you can then see if it is sensory. There's been like a sensory stimulation that the child hasn't been able to cope with, which has then caused the behaviour. Is it them getting frustrated with a particular toy? Is it them getting frustrated with a schedule and not giving notice around transition times? From here, you want to see if there's a bit of a pattern too. Is it certain times of the day? Is it the environment? Is it transitions? Is it hunger related? Have a look at if your child is tired, hungry, overstimulated. Have a think of if there's any sensory triggers present. Is it noisy? Light? Textures? Is it the behaviour helping them to [00:06:00] get something or avoiding something?
Is the behaviour there because they want a cookie and the only way you can stop them from having the behaviour is to give them the cookie? Is it to avoid something? That they don't want to go to school. So they have this behaviour in the school transition in the morning to make them as late as possible to school.
And if you have absolutely no idea, that's okay too. It takes practice to be able to pick apart a day and look at what's going on. Here's something I usually suggest to my families. Have a bit of a diary, use an Excel spreadsheet, take notes on your phone. But over the course of your day, if you're starting to have these sorts of behavioural outbursts or withdrawing, whatever your child's doing, take note of what's actually going on to see if you can find a pattern and to see if you can find why.
That's all it is, the big fat "why?". Why is it happening? So that you can put some intervention and strategies in place. To prevent it from happening in the first place. If it is sensory and you've been able to [00:07:00] figure that out, try some movement breaks, weighted items, noise cancelling headphones, calm down space at school or at home if it's emotional regulation or routine and structure based.
Above all, it's absolutely all about co-regulation. Your calm helps them find theirs, and if you can model co-regulation, so if you can keep calm within the moment yourself, you are modelling the type of well behaviour as such. But we're trying to model the approach when things get difficult or things get frustrating that we're trying to get these children to mimic so that they're not having outbursts and they're not having behaviour, but they can actually advocate for what they need and they can tell us what they need and then we can just fix the environment or we can change things around or we can actually take into account how their body is absorbing the sensory information or what's going on in their day. Is it too much? So yes, absolute co-regulation is the number one thing I can [00:08:00] recommend.
Remember, you don't have to fix the behaviour in the moment either., Because your child in the moment has so much adrenaline and cortisol and their nervous system is on absolute high alert. If you're trying to teach in the moment, it's just not going to work. You're going to be talking to them and they're not going to be absorbing anything. You're probably be adding to the stress to be completely honest with you.
So sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is just be there, be there, try and co-regulate with them, and then once the storm's gone down, take a few minutes, even a couple of hours, and then regroup and talk about what happened. The child might be able to tell you what had happened and how they were feeling, but sometimes I find with little people, when they are that overwhelmed, their memory of it is just distorted.
They can't actually remember what's happened because they were so heightened in that moment that they have no idea why they went off. So just be kind to them. Be kind to [00:09:00] yourself and just start to pick away at the layers of how you can help this child and their behaviour.
Some of the common things that I get told by parents is, it feels like they're doing it on purpose". And trust me, no child, especially neurodivergent children are doing it on purpose. They don't want to feel like this.
They often struggle with impulse control, frustration and tolerance, and big feelings. They're not out to ruin your day and they're not out to change the routine or have this behaviour. They're asking for help in their only way they know how, and not just them, but their bodies too. Their body may not be able to tell you any other way.
Another one is "how do you explain this to teachers and family members, especially when they mask at school?" And this is really difficult, I find for parents that their teacher is getting so much out of them in the classrooms that they keep pushing and it just keeps falling apart at home.
Try and [00:10:00] advocate with your teacher around what's happening at home, and try and find some strategies that the teacher could put in at school that are super easy, super flexible in the hope that you can relieve some of that pressure that happens at home.
So, if today's episode has actually brought up more questions than answers, then that's absolutely a good thing because curiosity and trying to find out why is where it actually begins. So next time your child has emotional outburst or has a meltdown, take a deep breath and ask what might be going on and then start to go from there.
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