For the last several weeks you have read about the Developmental, Individual differences, Relationship-based (DIR®) model and Floortime. This week let’s dive into a video example of doing some Floortime.
Today’s Floortime video example displays a beautiful little girl. At the time she was 3 1/2 years old and had a number of strengths and challenges, developmentally speaking. I had the wonderful opportunity to hold a few Floortime sessions with her as part of one of my early courses in DIRFloortime®. Below, I point out some different techniques I tried to get shared attention with the child, how some of the things I did weren’t helpful, and opportunities that I missed.
THE ‘D’: DEVELOPMENT: This child has significant challenges at the first functional emotional developmental capacity (FEDC 1: Self-regulation and Interest in the World) due to her biological underpinnings. She shows competency at FEDC 2 (Engaging and Relating) and at FEDC 3 (Intentionality and Two-Way Communication) from time to time.
THE ‘I’: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: Her sensory processing profile includes a lot of sensory seeking and under-responsiveness to sensory stimuli, so she moves around a lot, shifting from activity to activity. She has some visual challenges, is easily distracted by visual and auditory stimuli, and is constantly exploring with her mouth, biting and chewing. She has a few words and is “delayed” (by neurotypical standards) in expressive and receptive language.
THE ‘R’: RELATIONSHIP: Although I had established a relationship with this little girl over many months, I hadn’t worked with her in Floortime before, so it always takes time to build trust between two people. Working with her, I found that she responded to high affect, interesting sounds, fun gestures and tone to entice her into interactions–including warm and happy smiles, warm tone and high voice–funny sound effects and noises, and energetic movement and affect. However, because we are both high energy people, I also had to be sure to modulate my energy level to not over-stimulate her.
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At the start of the video, you can see that it is difficult for me to get a meaningful interaction with her. I followed her lead mostly with imitation here, but I’m struggling to get shared attention with her, so I don’t want to expand on it by adding a new element just yet.
- For the first 2 minutes of the video footage, I am using imitation to entice her into engagement and we see a bit of interaction with her in the swing, bumping into the ball. The swing is giving her proprioceptive input into her body and vestibular input with the movement.
- She enjoys bumping into the ball so I am waiting for her to respond and she says “This” and “More” to indicate she wants more before getting restless. By waiting, I am giving her an opportunity to interact rather than just continually swinging her without an interaction.
- When we get to the chalk board, she is very interested in drawing and I continue to imitate what she is doing. We see a little bit of back and forth with eye contact, gestures, and her naming the object “heart“. She also visually references what I am doing from time to time.
- In the gym, she gets to move around and again I’m imitating and following her lead. I decided to present a new idea by rubbing the mat and saying “up up up” and “down down down” and she imitated me, exploring the feel of the mat. We ideally want the child to initiate a new idea and interaction, but if the child can imitate our new ideas, it is a start.
- At the 3-minute mark, we are back in the swing and this is where we see the best interaction between us. The swing is providing her body with proprioceptive input, and I am adding to this by driving a toy train where she can feel it, along her legs and back. She enjoys it and is telling me–both verbally and non-verbally–that she wants me to continue.
- She gets to hold the train and shows me that she wants me to do it again, gives me smiles and eye contact, and initiates wanting to continue. When I change it up by adding the “chugga-chugga” and change my tone to a high voice, she imitates me verbally.
- At the 5-minute mark until the end you see she is really engaged now. She is initiating interactions, wanting to move the train herself, making the sound effects of the train, and as my Floortime course instructor put it, “you got her…you got her mind activated, wondering where the train would go next…you could see her mind waiting, watching, and wondering, realizing she had to initiate to continue“.
Self-reflection is an important part of Floortime and reviewing videos of playing with your child can really help you reflect on how to approach the next Floortime session and get better at meeting and supporting your child’s needs.
- Floortime is about respect. Throughout the video I respected her space and did not force her to do anything. I watched her move and followed her lead. I did not have an agenda for her to follow. If I added a new element to the interaction, I waited for her response before proceeding.
- With her high arousal levels, the proprioceptive input is essential for this little girl. The hard banging on the mat got her attention and the swing provided her body with the input her body requires in order to get to the higher capacities and have moments of sustained engagement.
- We even got to capacity 3 in the swing with a nice two-way communication in the video with the train as we saw 15-20 circles of communication between us. She pushed my hand indicating with her body, vocalizations, and gestures what she wanted and she was intentional. You could see her mind working as she contemplated what to do next to keep the train game going.
- I was modulating my interactions with her, enticing her with affect, but then slowing things down to stay engaged and work on the back-and-forth interactions. The “up up up” rubbing the mat and the “chugga-chugga” in the swing are examples of when I slowed the interaction down.
- She needs a lot of sensory input to register information which keeps her seeking the sensory input. Going forward with this child, we would want to see her on a sensory diet frequently each day to help her central nervous system continue to integrate her senses. By providing her with the input her body is craving in certain moments, we will be able to work on reaching the higher capacities and begin to challenge her to move up developmentally.
- When I drove the train along her body, I was assuming she had meaning for what a train is, and that it makes the noise, “chugga chugga“. She may not have had this symbolic meaning yet, however, it seemed to work regardless. But it is a reminder to be aware of assumptions we can inadvertently make when interacting with young children.
I hope you enjoyed the example of a Floortime session. No session is perfect and we could have discussed it in a lot more detail than was done here, but hopefully it gave you an idea about the information I’ve presented over the last several weeks on this site.
Does this video help you understand how we focus on regulation in Floortime? Do you have an example of how you have supported your child by co-regulating to get their shared attention or how it has been a struggle to do so? If you liked this post, please consider sharing it on social media. Next time, we’ll go over some stumbling blocks that come up during Floortime, and how to proceed with the session despite them.
Here’s to choosing play and experiencing joy, every day!
We are opening up this blog for comments! Please share your experiences doing Floortime with a child you care about. What did you find challenging? How did you help to keep the child regulated? What did you notice about what you did that engaged the child? How did you try to maintain the back-and-forth interaction between you?
Hi. My 6 years old son likes playing horse on my back. He gives me eat, drink, we are jumping over obstacles, we move slow and fast, I show him that I am tired or want sleep. Do you have any others ideas how to expand this play?
Welcome to the site. All of the examples you give sound great! Please see this blog: https://affectautism.com/2015/11/12/the-nuts-and-bolts-of-the-floortime-session for specific examples. How you expand can depend on what capacities your son is demonstrating in play. You can do one thing a bit different each time. Maybe the horse wants to eat something different, maybe the horse takes a new route around the house, maybe instead of a horse you do pony or a camel or an elephant one day, for example. It sounds like he is showing capacities in FEDC 5 (symbolic play), so maybe you can pick up a 2nd passenger–maybe a stuffed animal. You can think up anything! But, you always want to follow what your child is enjoying and motivated to do and focus on shared pleasure together. There are many books about “interactive games” online you can find as well to encourage interaction with your child. I hope that helps! You gave me some ideas for future blogs…how to expand play at each developmental level. Thank you!