Paraproducts are a special subclass of the multilinear Calder\'on-Zygmund operators, and their Lebesgue space estimates in the full multilinear range are characterized by the $\mathrm{BMO}$ norm of the symbol. In this note, we characterize the Sobolev space boundedness properties of multilinear paraproducts in terms of a suitable family of Triebel-Lizorkin type norms of the symbol. Coupled with a suitable wavelet representation theorem, this characterization leads to a new family of Sobolev space $T(1)$-type theorems for multilinear Calder\'on-Zygmund operators.