(DIR) USING RELATIONSHIPS TO BRING OUT CHILDREN'S INNATE WARMTH AND NURTURING

A NEW APPROACH TO SPECIAL NEEDS : USING RELATIONSHIPS TO BRING OUT CHILDREN'S INNATE WARMTH AND NURTURING

By Carolyn Braff

To call the Rebecca School a “special needs” school doesn’t quite tell the story of this innovative facility on East 30th Street. Staff and administrators work daily to reinvent the way special needs children are educated, and the way their families are supported during the process.
Relying on the Developmental Individual Difference Relationship-based (DIR) model, the three-year-old school works with a host of counselors, social workers and an advisory board to involve families in the education process for its students, who range in age from 4 to 18.

The Rebecca School serves children with neuro-developmental delays in relating and communicating, which includes children diagnosed on the autistic spectrum. While most special needs schools use behavioral approaches, the DIR model relies on relationships to figure out where the difficulties in a child’s development lie, meet the child at this developmental level then work to move ahead.

“The thing that sets us apart mainly is the overwhelming philosophical methodology that we use, the DIR model,” said Tina McCourt, program director at the Rebecca School. “It’s very different from the way most people work with children, particularly on the autistic spectrum.”

[FULL STORY]

Related:

• Rebecca School (New York City, NY) @ Schools4Autism
  

The Developmental, Individual Difference, and Relationship Based (DIR®) Model Theory and Application with Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

This document has been developed to provide professional colleagues and parents in Australia
information on -:

• The theoretical and research support for the DIR® model, with an emphasis on the
application of the DIR® Floortime approach with children with an autistic spectrum disorder.
• Experiences and perspectives from professionals who are using the DIR® approach in their
work with children and families as well as anecotal evidence from our local Australian
parents using DIR® Floortime as an effective approach with their children.
• The levels of training and mentorship required by professionals to be able to practice as a
DIR® Floortime therapist/educator at an accredited level.
• The DIR® infrastructure and networks within Australia

Please note that this paper has been written and collated by staff from the Learning Tree
Therapy Centre, a multidisciplinary DIR® based service, which is based in Perth, Western
Australia (www.learningtreetherapy.com.au, www.sensoryconnections.com.au).

DIR Floortime Australian Position Paper

Floortime and Autism (DIR, Floor Time)

What is Floortime?

Floortime, a vital element of the DIR/Floortime model, is a treatment method as well as a philosophy for interacting with children (and adults as well). Floortime involves meeting a child at his current developmental level, and building upon his particular set of strengths. Floortime harnesses the power of a child’s motivation; following his lead, wooing him with warm but persistent attempts to engage his attention and tuning in to his interests and desires in interactions. Through Floortime, parents, child care providers, teachers and therapists help children climb the developmental ladder. By entering into a child’s world, we can help him or her learn to relate in meaningful, spontaneous, flexible and warm ways.

A DIR/Floortime clinician may prescribe a number of 20-minute Floortime sessions a day as part of a comprehensive treatment program. In addition, Floortime provides a framework that can guide various daily interactions with children; bathing, playground time, meals, etc.

Floortime is basd on interactive experiences, which are child directed, in a low stimulus environment, ranging from two to five hours a day. Interactive play involves the adult following the child's lead, and aims to encourage the child to "want" to relate to the outside world. Early intervention is encouraged as soon as possible as the child is likely to become more withdrawn and difficult to reach as they get older.

Beginning in the 1980s, Stanley Greenspan built upon research into social-emotional development to create a proprietary intervention for children with deficits in relating and communicating. This method is known as Developmental Individual Difference Relationship Model (DIR Model). Floortime, which is a specific therapeutic technique also developed by Greenspan, is often confused with the DIR Model.

The basic premise of Floortime is that children learn skills from the relationships which they have with their caregivers and other people significant in their lives. It was developed in response to the needs of the increasing population diagnosed with disorders on the Autistic Spectrum, who were then being either served by behavioural methods or cognitive skills, and other impairments of development and learning.

During the preschool program, Floortime includes integration with typically developing peers. Greenspan contends that interactive play, in which the adult follows the child's lead, will encourage the child to 'want' to relate to the outside world. Furthermore, Greenspan (1998) stipulates that the program should begin as soon as the child is identified as the longer children are uncommunicative, the more difficult parents find relating to them and the more the children withdraw. According to Greenspan (1998), intervention must transform perseveration into interaction. Once this occurs, he theorizes that the child becomes purposeful, and can imitate gestures, sounds, and play.

Relationships, according to Greenspan and Wieder, are essentially developed in playful interactions. Greenspan's theory of development is that children grow, from birth to 4 years, in six different milestones to succeed in further learning and development.

• Self-Regulation: The dual ability to take an interest in the sights, sounds and sensations of the world and to calm oneself down.

• Intimacy: The ability to engage in relationships with other people.

• Two-Way Communication: The ability to engage in two-way communication with gestures.

• Complex Communication: The ability to create complex gestures, to string together a series of actions into an elaborate and deliberate problem-solving experience.

• Emotional Ideas: The ability to create ideas.

• Emotional Thinking: The ability to build bridges between ideas to make them reality-based and logical.

Related:

• Autism Wiki on Floortime
• Floortime Foundation
• FLOOR TIME: Be Your Child's Own Personal Play Therapist!
• FLOOR TIME: Promoting Personal Interest and Attention
• FLOOR TIME: Promoting Better Communication Skills
• FLOOR TIME: Promoting the Expression of Feelings and Ideas
• FLOOR TIME: Promoting Logical Thinking
• Floortime California