What is Attunement?
Attunement, or emotional connectedness, is an essential component of any relationship, and as such, is probably the most essential part of Floortime. Attunement is being ‘in tune’ with your child’s emotional state, being ‘in it’ with them, and your child feeling that they are understood in that moment.
Attunement comes naturally to some people and is quite difficult for others. When we meet new people for the first time, sometimes we just have that feeling that “this person completely gets me“. This is attunement in that moment. Other times we get frustrated when a person just doesn’t seem to get it. We need to be the former for our children with developmental differences.
A large part of life for our children is not being able to communicate with us what is going on for them. This causes a tremendous amount of anxiety for them. The more we can be attuned with what they are experiencing in each moment, the more we can help to ease their anxiety.
What Happens With Attunement?
The complimentary .pdf document entitled, “10 Things You Can Do Now to support your child” that you receive when you sign up for blog updates at Affect Autism provides you with tips on applying the developmental approach with your child right away. When you are attuned with your child, all of these tips follow naturally and automatically.
When you are emotionally connected with your child, you automatically and intuitively…
- Understand how his or her sensory profile affects them and you respectfully modify the environment in whatever way you can to ease the stress to your child so they can remain in a regulated state of shared attention.
- Make space for all of his or her emotional expressions whenever possible. You don’t try to control the child’s behaviour or thwart what (s)he is feeling. You naturally co-regulate with your child because you want your child’s emotional experience to be validated.
- Accept all behaviour as communication and attempt to understand what your child is communicating to you in that moment, no matter how aversive the behaviour might be. You intuitively understand that doing this will promote trust and understanding between you.
- Respect where your child is at, developmentally. You understand what (s)he is capable of at his/her current developmental level and while you always want to aim for his/her highest potential, you are patient and set appropriate limits and expectations.
- Slow down and stretch out your interactions with your child because you understand that this will help them process what is happening and give them the time it takes for them to respond. You use a lot more non-verbal communication rather than words because you can see how your child responds to your facial expressions, gestures and affect which brings you into the moment of what they are taking in and understanding or relating with.
- Try to prolong the interactions you have together using techniques such as ‘playing clueless’ and ‘playful obstruction’ because you want to pull your child into a shared world that is fun.
- Self-reflect on how your interactions went each day with your child to evaluate how you related and communicated.
- Do everything you can to have fun with your child by fostering shared pleasure and playfulness in all of your interactions.
Are You Feeling Emotionally Connected?
When you think about your relationship with your child, do you feel attuned with him or her? If you are struggling, take advice from the late Dr. Stanley Greenspan who created DIR/Floortime: He would suggest that you just sit back and observe your child with nothing else in your mind.
Observing your child means you are not judging his or her behaviour or holding an agenda in your head of what you want him or her to do. You are simply watching and noticing what your child is focused on, doing, or interested in. That’s it! If you can clear your mind of everything else, you should be able to attune yourself to the child.
Specific Examples of Emotional Connectedness
Personally, I find that I notice emotional connectedness–or lack thereof–in moments of transition. This is a time when our son is transitioning from one activity or place to another. It could mean going to school, leaving school, coming to the dinner table, or going to bed. It could mean being in a new place that is unfamiliar or meeting someone new.
For our son, he will tend to tense up and grab my hand tightly. He will slow down or even stop and pause. He will focus his eyes and start to mumble quiet scripts to himself. All of these signs I’ve noticed because I tune in to what he is experiencing in moments that are stressful to him.
If I rush him through his experience while he is experiencing this stress, I am ignoring what he is communicating to me through these signs. If I am in a hurry for him to enter into a new, unfamiliar restaurant or home to meet up with friends or family members, without respecting his experience of anxiety, he will have no choice but to react in a way I likely find unpleasant to deal with–perhaps a tantrum.
Rather, I want to respect him and be attuned to what he is experiencing. I can slow down and talk about what will happen in advance. I can hold out my hand for him to grab when he is ready. I can encourage him to come patiently without making him feel forced or rushed, and I can offer him an escape if he is feeling overwhelmed, all in advance of starting this transition. That is tuning in to his emotional experience.
Some examples of attunement
Occupational therapist and DIR Expert and Training Leader, Maude LeRoux, gives some great examples (‘first’ and ‘second’ ideas) of attunement in her recent blog, “5 Important Ideas to Ease Going Back to School“.
Another DIR Expert and Training Leader, Dr. Gil Tippy posted a nice video recently about the extremely inconvenient child that is worth a view. He concludes that this child is a great reflection for us to become aware of own weaknesses. This child can really help us learn how important attunement is when everything else you thought you know doesn’t work. Please check it out!
Attuned Families in Toronto has a 3-video series on Attunement you can view here.
Do you feel like you have a better grasp on what it means to be attuned, or emotionally connected to your child? Please give us your examples of your moments of joys or struggles being emotionally connected with your child in the comments section below.
Until next time… here’s to affecting autism through playful interactions!
D. Brown once again provides just what we need to deeply understand the concepts our kids need us to understand !! Attunement IS the most fundamental thing we can strive to develop in our growth-promoting relationships !! I’ll post this to my Facebook page and I hope others do, too !
Thank you, Dr. Davis! We appreciate your support!
I know attunement can be challenging and dysregulating when working with a child who has a totally different profile than you…. i.e. a child who is sensitive to loud sounds and you’re naturally a loud person… Or a child who is constantly on the go and you find it difficult to keep up…. Definitely hard to be in sync with them!
Thank you M.M. for this great point! It is so important to be able to attune ourselves with the children we work with, which is indeed especially challenging when our profiles differ. Do you or does anyone else reading this have any tips and/or specific examples about what has worked for you when you’ve encountered a child who has a different profile than you do? I know for me, I am a naturally loud and energetic person like my son so this requires me to take extra effort to quiet and slow down with him to help co-regulate his interactions with me. This sparked the blog https://affectautism.com/2016/02/16/slowing-down-and-stretching-out-interactions/. His Dad also can get wrapped up in rough and tumble play and the two of them can get very hyper together, so Dad also has the challenge of slowing down and being more calm. It’s been a challenge for us for sure.
Hmmm..Tips… I think for me, I just had to try to be very self-aware and constantly self-reflect on how my actions effected my sessions (I.e. if I was really loud, did the child disengage and get dysregulated? Or did my volume help them to stay in the interaction?) It’s helpful to keep a brief log of your sessions, and you can jot down what worked and didn’t work. You can also look at the size of the room, the lighting, amount of movement within the session, voice volume, what sensory input was involved etc. I think another important thing to consider is self-care. If you yourself are having a difficult time and getting dysregulated during a session, it’s okay to take a step back and take a break – if you’re not regulated and “in” the interaction, it will not be a successful and positive session.