Floortime

Template:Alternative Therapy Autism

The DIR/Floortime Model

The DIR/Floortime Model (developed by Stanley Greenspan, MD, and Serena Wieder PhD) is based on new insights into the development of the mind which have made it possible to help children and families with special needs to build healthy foundations for social, emotional, and intellectual capacities rather than focusing on isolated behaviors. The DIR/Floortime Model is a framework to assist parents and professionals in constructing a comprehensive program that focuses on improving the child’s functioning in all the developmental capacities where there are challenges, and, at the same time, promote healthy overall emotional and intellectual functioning. The framework typically involves many elements and a team of professionals.

The D (Developmental) part of the Model describes each step in building these capacities. It includes helping a child learn how to attend and remain calm, relate to others, initiate and respond to all types of communication, beginning with emotional and social gestures, engage in shared social problem-solving involving many interactions in a row, using ideas to communicate needs and think and play creatively, and mix ideas together to think logically at successive levels of complexity to enjoy peer relationships and master academic skills.

The I (Individual differences) part of the Model describes the unique biologicallybased ways each child takes in, responds to, and comprehends sensations such as sound and touch, and plans and sequences actions and ideas. Some children, for example, are very hyper responsive to touch and sound, while others are under-reactive, and still others seek out these sensations.

The R (Relationship-based) part of the Model describes the learning relationships (with caregivers, educators, peers, etc.) that are tailored to the child’s individual differences and developmental level to enable progress in mastering these essential foundations.

Central to the DIR/Floortime Model is the role of the child’s natural emotions and interests which has been shown to be essential for learning interactions that enable the different parts of the mind and brain to work together and to build successively higher levels of social, emotional, and intellectual capacities. Floortime is a specific technique to both follow the child’s natural emotional interests and at the same time challenge the child toward greater mastery of each developmental level and movement to higher ones.

As indicated above, the DIR/Floortime Model, however, is a comprehensive framework which enables clinicians and parents to construct a program tailored to the child’s unique challenges and strengths. It often includes, in addition to Floortime, various problem-solving exercises and typically involves a team approach with speech therapy, occupational therapy, educational programs, and, where appropriate, biomedical intervention. The DIR/Floortime Model also emphasizes the critical role of parents and other family members because of the importance of their emotional relationships with the child. A program for a specific child will often involve parents and other key caregivers creating learning interactions with the child (including Floortime, semi-structured problem-solving, speech and language programs, and motor and sensory programs) for a number of hours a day.

Six basic developmental skills, or milestones, lay a foundation for all our learning and development. Children without special needs often master these skills relatively easily. Children with challenges often don’t, not necessarily because they can’t, but because their biological challenges make the mastery more difficult. By understanding these skills and the factors that influence them and by working direction on them, caregivers, educators, and therapists often can help even those children with what are thought to be chronic disorders master many of them. Appropriate emotional experiences during each of the six developmental phases help develop critical cognitive, social, emotional, language, and motor skills, as well as a sense of self.

• Milestone 1: Self-Regulation and Interest in the World
• Milestone 2: Engagement
• Milestone 3: Two-Way Communication
• Milestone 4: Complex Communication
• Milestone 5: Emotional Ideas
• Milestone 6: Emotional Thinking

Individual differences are meditated through the sensory system, the processing system and the motor planning system. Parents work with the child directly, creating an emotional,nurturing and loving relationship.

External links

• Functional Emotional Assessment Scale
• Regulatory Patterns
• Sensory Modulation Training
• Observation Chart
• The Floortime Foundation
• The Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders
• The Floortime Repository