Episode 6
Most people who have heard about DIRFloortime® probably think about getting down on the floor and playing with your child. But Floortime is so much more than that.
Chapter 13 of Engaging Autism is entitled “Floortime as a Family Approach.” Dr. Greenspan makes such an obvious point that is overlooked in most approaches: a family with a child who requires extra support is really a family requiring extra support.
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Certainly we and most other people I’ve met in our shoes have willingly rearranged and changed our entire lives based on wanting to support our child in any way they need.
Last time we talked about Floortime. Within the DIR® model, Floortime also involves listing the strengths and weaknesses of each member of the family and determining how each affects the environment of the child in terms of the functional emotional developmental capacities (FEDCs).
How we behave and cope with the stress of providing extra support to a child and all the accompanying challenges affects our child’s ability to feel at ease and self-regulated, engage, communicate, and problem-solve with us.
The material in this chapter and in my DIR® training was so insightful for me because as parents we experienced the frenzy of getting the diagnosis, then feeling the need to determine what would help support our child as soon as possible.
In the carousel of therapies and services we received, there was no mention of the family. It was always about the child.
And even when we discovered DIRFloortime® and had coaches come to our place, we didn’t think of it as a family approach.
I took that as my opportunity to do the dishes or have time to myself. We hired the therapist to do DIRFloortime® with our son.
This is the downside to not having DIRFloortime® clinics here where all the services are under one DIR® umbrella with a team working together for our children and where the family is taken into consideration.
By looking at family patterns, a good therapist—or even the families themselves—can see how each member plays out with each other and with the child. There may be negative patterns at play that do not promote the best environment in which to promote the child’s development.
Dr. Greenspan’s solution to a very complex problem is to work towards the strengths. Expert DIR® therapists can coach the family members how to bring out the best in the child and in themselves. Dr. Greenspan explains it very well in this radio show below (or read the transcript HERE).
Dr. Stanley Greenspan Radio Show
This means being aware of your own weaknesses and not poking at your spouse’s weaknesses. There needs to be a conscious effort to avoid the negative patterns in order to support the child.
To achieve this benefit, though, families have to be willing to open up to therapists and be honest about family patterns that can be quite personal.
The goal is to bring out the best not just in your child, but in each other when working with your child and in everyday family interactions.
And isn’t this a great goal for any family, let alone a family with the extra challenges that come with caregivers raising a child who requires extra support.
Whether it’s one parent being too directive or another doing too much for the child instead of appropriately playfully challenging the child, the negative patterns can be consciously avoided with practice and coaching.
Read the transcript from Dr. Greenspan's radio show "The Developmental Approach to Family Functioning"
When I asked a very competent and experienced expert DIR® trainer about why DIRFloortime® hasn’t been embraced more, the answer wasn’t what I expected, but makes sense. The reply was that it is just a fact that many parents are unable to go to that emotional place you need to go to to be available for your child, and thus ABA is easier for them.
On page 172 Dr. Greenspan says, “A child’s progress with a DIRFloortime program requires parents who are emotionally very available”… “the heart of Floortime is the warmth and nurturing that you’re conveying to your child so he will want to play with you rather than retreat into his own world.”
Siblings should also be included in the mix by involving them in supporting the child and showing them how they can contribute.
Many families do come together and connect in order to support their child, but many other families are totally conflicted and bombarded by the diagnosis, competing with each other and arguing.
This has been a challenge in our household, to some extent, and we hope through the blog we can explore this topic in more detail with video examples so we can all learn together and share tips that support each other.
Dr. Greenspan urges families to ask for support if they are finding it difficult to cope or are not bringing out each other’s strengths: support not only from family and friends, but professional support or coaching in order to break the negative patterns.
Next time we will begin to get into how to implement a DIRFloortime® program for your child. We will start with helping you understand your child’s individual profile which affects everything else in the DIR® approach.
Until next time, here’s to choosing play and experiencing joy every day!
