PHOTO CREDIT: August de Richelieu
DIR® Dialogues
This marks the fourth edition of DIR® Dialogues from Affect Autism! This episode features Practitioner Panels–this one featuring five DIRFloortime® Expert Training Leaders exploring considerations around setting limits and boundaries with our children in Floortime. DIR® Dialogues is an addition to the usual podcast episodes.
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This Episode’s Guests
This episode’s guests are five DIRFloortime® Expert Training Leaders. Returning guest, speech therapist Bridget Palmer, works full-time for the International Council on Development and Learning (ICDL) and is joining us from Buffalo. First-time guest Catherine Murray is a clinical social worker and infant and early childhood mental health specialist. She is the coordinator of the training program for ICDL.
Returning guest Sanette Louwrens is an occupational therapist in northern California in her private practice called Sensorium Therapy. She has a passionate interest in attachment and trauma. Returning guest, music therapist Dr. John Carpente is a professor of music therapy and the founder and executive director of the Rebecca Center for Music Therapy at Molloy University on Long Island. Returning guest, occupational therapist Stephanie Peters is the clinical director for Kinder Growth Therapy that provides DIR® services in NJ that are covered by Medicaid.
A Developmental Approach to Setting Limits
Two earlier blog posts A Developmental Approach to Setting Limits and Setting Appropriate Limits and Expectations by Respecting Where Your Child is At, Developmentally described an alternative to more behavioural methods of limit-setting. We want to respect the child’s emotional experience, attune to them, co-regulate with them and provide more Floortime. We talked about how knowing where your child is developmentally also determines how you set limits.
Psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld talks about starting by setting limits around things that are out of your control if you are finding it difficult to set limits with your child. I asked our panel what their initial thoughts were. Bridget expressed her compassion and empathy for the parents who will ride that emotional wave because we want our children to be able to feel the range of emotions. She tries to give parents the confidence to feel these big feelings together with their child.
Parents Can Struggle With Limit-Setting
Catherine encouraged us to reflect on why we set limits. Sometimes we set arbitrary limits and then have to stick to them. In ICDL’s parent support meeting, I shared how a parent was discussing setting limits at home around things they didn’t want their child to do outside the house, whereas another parent brought up that children often experiment at home with limits, and we want to give them that opportunity.
I referred to the two blog posts I did about behaviour challenges at home and behaviour challenges at school and suggested that you can involve the child in setting limits when they are developmentally ready. Sanette pointed out that we are typically setting limits in the moment when we are managing behaviour, shaping the moments to come in the future.
What’s Happening While We’re Setting Limits?
Sanette reminds us that parents are the anchor for their children. When with our children, let’s consider our own regulation when with the child in these moments. What is the meaning you make of this behaviour in this moment? It’s hard to carry the tension of setting a limit, reading the child’s emotional signals, and sensing their discomfort–all while knowing it’s the right thing to do. It is so hard!
Sanette continued that you are initiating and holding the limit in continued compassion and empathy, along with fearing the reaction, holding memories of past meltdowns as a predictor. She stresses that you need to be able to problem-solve and thus must do your own reflective work on how to stay regulated in those moments. She stresses considering how were limits handled in your own upbringing.
Were you expected to shut down and show up? It has a meaning in your nervous system and influences how you show up. It provides meaning for you on how to sit in that discomfort. Unpacking the meaning making is the beginning of starting to be more regulated and anchored, so you can access the problem-solving part of your brain and come up with creative solutions that you need, Sanette says.
Shifting to An Interaction
Sanette shared the story of a client of hers who was a mother with an autistic child with the challenge of getting the child out the door to go to preschool, so she planned ahead and put multiple shoes in the car and at the preschool. But she also had multiple kids to get into the car! Through DIR® coaching that worked on meaning making and on the mother’s own regulation, the mother turned the situation into an interaction where she took the time to be silly and gave the child a “reward system,” so to speak, of joyful interaction, which was the turning point for her.
What Is Your Body Conveying?
I shared how my son has been completely enamoured with the movie Dog Man where the dog licks the chief. My son thinks this is hilarious so he keeps licking me then laughing, but he would never attempt to do this with Dad! When I shared this with Floortimer, Dr. Gil Tippy, he challenged me by asking what is in my mind when it’s happening. I replied that he got me. I am thinking, “Oh, he’s so cute and funny!” so it’s not coming across as a very firm limit!
I also shared what another parent brought up in ICDL’s parent support meeting: that if you aren’t calm, then you’ll struggle setting limits. If you sound calm but have a stiff, firm presence, that is transmitted to the child. Also, in my podcast episode with Chele Abraham-Montgomery, Chele shared how her role changed setting limits with her grandchild versus with own children.
Working With Parents in Floortime Coaching
John says that in his experience coaching, parents are still trying to figure out what Floortime is, and when you’re having a hard time engaging and trying to be the child’s therapist, you look for reasons to make it challenging, too. John will meet with the parents and sometimes it’s a microcosm of what happens at home, and how it might be like for the child, so the limit-setting sometimes happens between him and the parent.
The limit-setting is where the work is so the child can test the bounds of their reality on to something, otherwise nothing becomes real.
If limits aren’t really set at home, it’s not really the child’s fault when something happens outside the home because they haven’t had the chance to really test those boundaries, John asserts.
Where Is the Child Developmentally?
John also tries to point out where the child is developmentally and also where the parent is developmentally. The parent might not have the capacity to provide the opportunity to set a limit at where the child is developmentally in a way that the child can understand and then incorporate.
If we set a limit that’s beyond their developmental capacity, we have to teach that skill set in every context. If we provide the opportunity within the developmental framework in a relational context, using our affect, we’re building on those relational capacities that then get transferred.
There is No Checklist
John added that if you teach something in a punitive way, your child might not understand it. If you say that you can’t play with something anymore, they wonder why because they were playing with it yesterday. They also don’t know what time means yet. It’s like a stimulus-response behavioural therapy. But if we’re looking from the bottom up, John continues, we have to figure out how to provide the opportunity for limit-setting in a way that the child understands, while also catering to the child’s individual differences.
As a Floortime coach, John is trying to do this with the parent, too, and sometimes they just want answers. However, since DIR® is a dynamic model, it has to come within this relationship framework. There is no checklist.
Stuck in Patterns
Even though the parent might be dying inside, John adds, there’s a transference happening because they are dealing with the child from when they were 3 years old, not in the moment when they’re 12 or 13. It’s hard to see your child at 16 or 17 because it’s our need to keep them little. We want that connection, but sometimes we’re stuck in time, for whatever reason.
John stresses that we have to be able to be present in the moment, as opposed to be distorting reality within the relationship. It’s not about who the child was or who you wish them to be. John also has to gauge whether or not the parent is ready to hear this as well because he’s assessing their challenges too.
John might notice that the parent is always late or always pays late, and this would make him wonder if they relive this dynamic at home and with their partner, and how that unfolds for the child. It’s all so complex. He’s looking for the vibe of the parent and then showing them how to provide an opportunity that’s coregulated and that the child actually understands.
Persistence
John echoed a similar theme that I covered in a past podcast with Dr. Joshua Feder. It’s not going to work doing it once or twice, John said. The consistency and the commitment to maintain the limit makes it really hard! The child is trying to understand with each repetition.
If the child is at a higher developmental capacity, you can reflect later, in a calmer moment, on how you really liked the way the child was able to hold off on that cookie, or share with their sister, etc.
I shared how I have been trying to set limits with my son around licking me, imitating Dog Man licking the Chief from the movie Dog Man. He is seeing that when I am busy and he tries to lick me, I might snap at him, but when I’m not busy, I might laugh despite being annoyed. He must be wondering what’s going on!
The Purpose of DIR®
Floortime is about limit-setting and transferring that idea of limits because it’s so important. I shared how my child has never done anything alone nor unsupervised! He has never had a play date with kids without adult supervision or walked down the street by himself! Many of our autistic children never have the opportunities to learn about limits because we’re always setting the limits for them! Stephanie adds that we can keep in mind the functional idea of what DIR® is, which is this challenge of “I’ve got a brain that’s not connected to your brain with a wire.” Sometimes with limit-setting, someone else’s idea is very different than what ours is.
All that being social is is, “I have an idea and you might have a different idea and how do we work together to have some sort of shared meaning of ideas and make a plan of what to do next?”
Rather than setting the limit of making your child go with your idea, Stephanie continues, we can think deeply together with our child about their idea and what it means to them, to the extent that they are developmentally capable: “I hear you say… This is your idea. It’s really important to you. I really get that. On the other hand, …” How do we socially figure that out together? That is DIR®. There’s still a lot of room to have back-and-forth interactions even when we’re setting limits versus, “I say this is how it’s going to be and we’re done” unless it’s an urgent safety issue, Stephanie qualifies.
Fearing the Meltdown
Stephanie mentioned the other aspect of limit-setting: Why do we want to avoid a meltdown? Why are they so bad? The reason why it’s so scary is quite different for everybody, she suggests. There was a family where the son would grab a knife and bolt out of the house if there was a meltdown. That is a really big deal, but you still have to respond in a way that is not fear-based in order to support and attune to that interaction, she insists.
Stephanie says that you can figure out exactly what you afraid of and how does that impact your initial response? Is it about control and making everything feel super safe? Is it fear-based? Is it that you will feel icky because you are uncomfortable with emotional expression? Is it shame around the neighbours hearing my child scream while getting in the car? Is it that you’re going to be late for school then work?
The goal is to sit in the emotion, Stephanie suggests. The work is to be in it even when it’s not pleasant. The work is, “How do we still connect even when things are really confusing socially?” I added that autism is genetic so the parents might be neurodivergent themselves and might like having control like me. Dr. Stanley Greenspan suggested doing more Floortime to practice playing with limits.
Building Trust with Your Child
I talked about Dr. Kathy Platzman’s idea of putting pennies in the bank to build trust with your child so they feel safe with you. Because I have so many pennies in the bank with my son, I can often set those limits and he will listen. However, if your child is in the middle of doing something with monotropic focus, it’s not necessarily limit-setting, it’s about the transition. As DIR® occupational therapist Kerri Ciskowski shared in our podcast episode, how would you feel being pulled away from your favourite TV show at the most interesting part?
Catherine adds that what she loves about DIRFloortime® is that it gives us a way to understand the tension and the conflict even when there’s pushback and the separation that’s inherent with a boundary. “I’m mad at you for setting a limit on me. I feel thwarted. I feel angry. I feel frustrated.” The child is feeling desperate or hopeless because they can’t do something that they were intending to do. Their intention is being inhibited externally and they’re really mad at you.
Functional Emotional Developmental Capacity (FEDC) 4
Catherine continued that we know about FEDC 4: Complex Communication and Shared Problem Solving is that conflict can exist within a relationship at the same time as love and intimacy and concern for the other because we have these separate minds, and we can stay connected. We know that relationships can contain all of these different feelings, not just the ones I’m experiencing, but that I’m now experiencing in relation to you.
You can be mad at the person you love more than anyone in the world, Catherine says. I added that Dr. Gordon Neufeld calls this the “mixing bowl” when the prefrontal cortex allows us to have more than one feeling at the same time. This is what Catherine loves about DIR: that it helps us to understand this dynamic between parents and children and that it applies to all relationships.
I shared that Dr. Gil Tippy instilled in me last August at our DIR® intensive that I can be myself instead of being in my Floortime voice with my son, which he told me 10 years ago, for the record! It’s ok to have rupture and repair–it’s ok to be mad at my son. Dr. Tippy shared that you can sternly set a limit and say in the next minute, “Here’s your lovely waffles, dear!” Dr. Neufeld says that this is being the agent of futility while being an angel of comfort at the same time. Dr. Greenspan emphasized that successful limit-setting “melds warmth and empathy with rock-solid resolve” (Building Healthy Minds, page 353).
Sanette shared that she recently had a conversation with DIR-Expert Kristy Gose about this rich subject of that tension between futility and comfort and what a person’s capacity is for that, based on their history. When the child has an idea such as, “I want to climb this,” the idea is imbued with an emotional function (that dual coding piece). There’s an urge, Sanette says. There’s an emotional investment in the idea when we think of this from a developmental view.
Sanette says we can think about how to be in a shared world and share the power. Oftentimes in limit-setting we think we have the power and need to say no, but the child is sitting with the urge. What does it look like to share the power and say, “Yes I can see you want this, but it’s unsafe for you.” This is about being with them more than relaying the cognition. She continues that FEDC 4 is about sensing and being open to the ideas of the other. In limit-setting, we reframe it in setting the scene of what it looks like to share the power around that urge.
As Dr. Gil Tippy says, we want to instill the spirit of inquiry in the child where they wonder what it is that the other person has in their head that’s different than what is in their own head to begin to develop the capacity for perspective-taking.
Functional Emotional Developmental Capacities (FEDCs) 1 to 3
Bridget likes that word “urge.” If a child has an idea, they’re holding something in their mind. They have that intent. Most of Bridget’s clients have been in the earlier functional emotional developmental capacities (FEDCs) where the focus is on co-regulation, interest in people and things, engagement and relatedness, and that string of connection between us–maybe getting to opening and closing circles where we respond to each other. When the big feelings come in those capacities, Bridget shares, the child doesn’t yet understand why they can’t do something or why it’s not safe. It’s being able to comfort and soothe, and be nearby.
What does that involve? Sometimes too much touch is too much, Bridget explains, or there’s too many words. It might be about letting them know that you’re going to be there, not looking at them, or putting your hand out. Bridget worked with a 3 or 4 year old who wanted to go to the aquarium but it was closed. The child was really overwhelmed and climbed into a cubby in the living room. Mom was nearby, not gazing, and calmly saying that she knew the child wanted to go to the aquarium and that she wished they could go. They spent that time feeling overwhelmed that it was closed and that they couldn’t go. They were able to ride that wave together.
Another boy wanted to go out to the swing outside in the rain, but Bridget did not want to go and he was really upset. He didn’t have spoken words yet, but was letting her know he wanted to go outside using complex gestural communication and eye gaze and leading Bridget to the door. He pushed up her sweatshirt and pretended to pinch her to show how angry he was. She said, “You’re right. I wish we could go out. You seem really mad.“
It was about staying connected. The big feelings were there. We communicate in the way we can communicate. We want to hold in mind what the other understands in our facial expressions, our sounds, our words, our actions, and our gestures, Bridget explains. Do they have a shared understanding that the aquarium is closed? Do they understand? Do we have an ability to express ourselves together? Can we be communication partners both in what we understand and what we express? It’s all of the systems: sensory, affective, motor, communication, emotional, and the family system.
A little girl had just started using photographs to communicate and the girl indicated she wanted to go for a walk in the wagon in the freezing cold winter in Buffalo. The mother explained to Bridget that she had to take her. Bridget responded that she was happy they were able to go in the wagon, but asked what the mother wanted to do? She didn’t want to go outside. Bridget explained that she gets to set a limit and then feel sad with your daughter when you can’t go in the wagon outside. Maybe you can go in the wagon in the living room.
Fostering Agency and Modelling
I brought up my podcast episode about emotion seeking and saying “no,” explaining how important it is for our kids to be able to say “no” and set their own limits. We can foster that by asking permission. Dave Nelson suggested asking permission to hug or kiss or touch my son at home so it models that we need to respect personal boundaries, because I love kissing my son’s cheeks. John added that asking permission is so important or else how will our children know you can’t just kiss anyone at any time?
Listening to Self-Advocates
When we are trying to stay connected through those big feelings, we have to be aware of our own regulation as we discussed in my episode with autistic mother, Cass Griffin Bennett. We also have to be aware of the Double Empathy Problem where autistics and allistics misunderstand each other. Dr. Angela Kingdon of the Autistic Culture Podcast was told she had to memorize her Ted talk, but then found out they didn’t mean word-for-word. As long as she got the gist of it across, it was fine, but she had taken it as the literal meaning of “memorization.” Our kids may not understand when we say something unclear to them.
Understanding the “I”
Some of our kids are not really in control of their behaviour because they act impulsively. When we have to leave a place they want to stay at, we can co-regulate with them by saying things like, “I can’t wait to go back. Remember we went before and we came back?” John explains that understanding the person’s individual differences is so important to provide that opportunity of not judging, but joining them, and sometimes linguistics get in the way. We can say, “No hitting,” but if you start crying to let them know that they hurt you that will have a different impact. They have empathy, but you have to deliver it in a way that they understand it, John explains.
John stressed that it’s important for our kids to learn about respecting personal space because their environment has been so set for them their entire lives by adults. I certainly have always attempted to cover every basis to prevent any ruptures in my son’s world, but the real world won’t be like that for him. In Floortime coaching with parents, John says that he thinks about who is going to break the cycle. That’s the parent who is ready to experience pain. The DIR® model lends itself to all of these things because it’s so dynamic and it’s psychotherapeutic, he adds.
Understanding how the “I” impacts this dynamic is essential, John shares. A Floortime coach can give the answers like a checklist of instructions but this is so different from meeting the affect, intrapersonally, in the moment. John tells parents to join in the play, even in hard moments. It’s still “play.” He asked the parent what was that like after they joined in and showed the affective cues of anguish when the child hit her and why she though that the boy rubbed his mother’s arm with a tear in his eye.
The parent was collecting that equity that’s now being checked into. It’s hard to let go and be emotionally available in play.
It’s hard to play at our age because we’ve already created all of these shelters, John admits. There’s no “answers” in Floortime coaching since everyone is so different, even across situations and environments and time. It’s always dynamic.
Don't Miss the Online ICDL DIRFloortime Conference in October
At the upcoming International DIRFloortime® conference, Dr. Gil Tippy will give a great presentation about at least five ways to improve your Floortime because it is so frequently misunderstood. He will focus on the real purpose of it, which is about supporting and promoting developmental growth, regardless of who the person is. Don’t miss it and so many other great presentations. Learn more about it here.
The Mental Health Piece
Parents feel the pressure to parent perfectly. It’s ok that you snapped once or twice, but we feel that if my child is going to develop, I have to do this or that. We need to think about meaning making, Stephanie says. Understand that what one person is thinking might be different than what you are thinking. DIR-Experts get it wrong all the time, and that’s ok, she says. There’s a difference between seeing someone in a clinic versus in real life at their home. The clinic is like the pennies in the bank situation and transferring that to home is super hard!
To have the space to be regulated and so connected with someone else is hard for the grown up with everything that you’re juggling, Stephanie empathizes. If you’re in the middle of a meltdown and it feels like a crisis, she says, take a breath and in your head, stop whatever is going on and say, “I love you and we’re going to figure this out together.” Just sit there and take 5 deep breaths. Stephanie reassures us that you’re not reinforcing any behaviour; you’re freeing your brain up to think and be connected with somebody else, and supporting your regulation so you don’t respond in a fear-based way. If you can’t do that, you get more opportunities. You have to keep showing up. You get to keep trying.
Giving yourself permission to let it be an opportunity is a gift.
Final Thoughts
Sanette says to always remain curious. Whatever is driving the child in that moment is about their individual differences and the “why” of what they are doing is an entire conversation. In reflecting with parents, she is always “chasing the why,” as OT Maude Le Roux says. How is that urge they have meeting a need? When you understand that you can then understand the problem and be creative with curiosity.
John encourages us to trust the relationship–previous to what you think you had and previous to things going wrong. It’s about the intent. Sometimes we make mistakes. Know that your intent was there and is in a good place so you won’t be so hard on yourself!
Catherine says to remember to presume competence, including applying that to parents who are doing the best they can in the circumstances they’re in, with the options they perceive in the moment. Have compassion. You can reflect that it surprised you that you had that interesting reaction with your child and that you don’t think you want to handle boundary-setting in that way next time. Rules and limits make more sense as development unfolds and it starts with conveying the feeling that “I want to be with you.” This is about figuring out how to navigate what the circumstances are around “us.”
This episode’s PRACTICE TIP:
This episode let’s consider what we do when we sense our child is about to melt down when we set a limit.
For example: Are we feeling fear? Are we tense and anxious? Can we find a way to accept the negative emotion, sit in it while reassuring our child, and take deep breaths together?
A big “thank you” to this episode’s guests for agreeing to participate on the DIR® Dialogues panel and I hope that you found it a worthwhile listen. If so, please consider sharing it on social media!
Until next time, here’s to choosing play and experiencing joy every day!
Thank you to Ukrainian recording artist ШТАДТ (STADT) for the intro/outro song permission.
