PHOTO CREDIT: YAN KRUKAU
Episode 311
Çiğdem Ergül and Elif Akat are the pioneers of DIRFloortime® in Turkey. Both dedicated DIR® clinicians and Expert Training Leaders, they started at different times at ICDL’s DIR® Institute “back in the day” with Drs. Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder. They are deeply committed to preserving the integrity of the DIR® model and upholding the high quality of training and practice that shaped their professional journeys and enables them to serve families in their care. This episode, they share their stories.
This Episode’s Guests
Elif Akat is a DIR®-informed and Reggio Emilia-inspired educator with a Master’s degree from York University in Toronto. She continued her DIR® training at Profectum, where she became a trainer and then an assistant faculty member. Her area of expertise is parent support and training as well as social peer group programs to support the functional emotional developmental capacities (FEDCs) in group settings at Günışığı Child Center and Mutlu Insanlar in Istanbul, Turkey.
Çiğdem Ergül was the first DIRFloortime® Expert and Training Leader in Turkey and first practicing DIR® professional in Turkey. She is a Registered Physical Therapist in both the United States and in Turkey and an Audiologist and Speech Therapist with a Master’s degree. Çiğdem found DIRFloortime® when searching for how to provide better support for the children and families she was seeing in her clinic in Istanbul.
You can also subscribe on your preferred podcast app by searching, “We chose play from Affect Autism”
Discovering and Bringing DIR® to Turkey
- Çiğdem began with a background in physical therapy and later pursued audiology and speech-language pathology due to limited programs in Turkey at the time.
- After working in a university hospital, she sought further training in the United States, where exposure to multidisciplinary approaches (including occupational therapy) broadened her perspective.
- She was the coordinator of an autism clinic and then opened her own clinic with a psychologist friend. In 2005, she started to realize something was missing and sought more information, ending up in an education program at John Hopkins University and hearing about “Floortime.”
- Çiğdem came across a speech-language pathologist Diane Lewis who allowed her to observe and who told Çiğdem about the Floortime conference in Washington, D.C. where Çiğdem met Drs. Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder.
- Çiğdem fell in love with this approach, advanced through the training program and was encouraged to bring the model to Turkey. It took her more than a year translating materials, adapting training, and building local capacity.The first official training took place in 2013 at Bilgi University in Istanbul.
- Elif first worked with children with special needs while volunteering in Dubai, later continuing this work in Turkey where she met Çiğdem and began attending trainings as well in the U.S.
- Çiğdem and Elif began having coffee mornings for the parents to inform them about the DIR® model while their children were at the clinic as many materials were not available to parents in Turkish.
- I asked if they had any stories of how neurodiversity-affirming Dr. Greenspan was, despite being before the neurodiversity movement. A Turkish family was visiting with Dr. Greenspan and asked who their son would become when he is older and Dr. Greenspan replied something like, “Why are you asking me? Ask him! He can be anything!“
- Elif says that DIR® is about supporting individuals to become thinkers in order to lead to a life of agency.
- As Çiğdem began to practice DIRFloortime®, families were noticing their children blossoming, but other families left her practice. They were upset that she was no longer practicing talking like before and didn’t grasp the importance of the foundational social emotional capacities.
- She began to develop a way to discuss this with families and other practitioners began to notice, medical doctors began to notice, and the model was taking off.
Cultural Differences
- Elif explained that in North America there is more tolerance of children, including being on the floor and eating from wherever they want.
- She says the school system is more relaxed than in Turkey and services are paid for in Canada to some extent which doesn’t happen in Turkey and makes parents more anxious and stressed financially.
- There is a pressure on families to deal with this “issue” and move on. In addition, private school is very common in Turkey, but is not welcoming for our students.
-
In Turkey, how they feed their children is a criteria for being a good parent. Good behaviour and how children are dressed is very important. This brings an extra stress for the parents in Turkey and it’s a bigger taboo to talk about autism in Turkey.
-
Çiğdem adds that Turkey has a medical model. You have to spend a lot of money for services and you want to believe that this person has authority in many things and will help you remove the unwanted, unpleasant behaviors from your child and will assist your child to accomplish the goals, either educational or therapeutic.
-
Parents expect that you teach their children or fix them, and sitting on the floor, using affect, and playing with a child is not considered education nor therapy.
DIR® Taking Off in Turkey
-
As more professionals went to the United States to be trained in the model, they became a very powerful team. Because the clinicians were very supportive and strong, people started to notice that there’s a difference and the kids were growing in a way that people were noticing. Then the physicians started to wonder about what’s happening, and then more families adopted the approach.
-
There are many seminars and national conferences in Turkey they would attend to present cases and specific topics. Their training programs started to fill very quickly and more training leaders emerged.
-
Setting up the clinic as a model and a home for DIR® and having quality clinicians supported the model to be where it is today.
Caring to Care
- Elif explains that to keep the integrity of the model, you have to keep learning. Every time there is a training or a seminar, they are both there learning, and the next day in the clinic with the children and families, they have a new perspective because each child and each parent is different–even in the same family.
- To be flexible enough to adapt to each family requires a lot of practice and care. There are many other clinicians who are passionate about the model because they see the results. This is how having a home for DIR® worked, Elif explained, because they had this home for the model and they cared for each other and about each case and each session that they had.
- Having the coffee sessions with the parents to inform them outside the sessions empowered them. It worked. The families started to give ideas to each other about how to handle their struggles. They were growing in their thinking and in the way they were seeing their children and caring for them, thus their goals for their children changed along with their priorities.
- All of this happens through care, Elif stresses.
- Çiğdem talks about the importance of doing self-reflection tdo your own work, but also understanding that you have to reflect on how you interact with the parents as well. Sometimes it’s not the right time to discuss things and knowing when the parents are ready takes a lot of practice.
- She stresses having good practitioners around you makes a difference.
If you care and take care, you can sustain the quality of the work that you do.
This episode’s PRACTICE TIP:
Let’s make a plan to take time to care.
For example: In the busy bustle of everyday life, let’s intentionally take a few moments every time we meet with a client or interact with our child to empathize and care about their well-being, wondering about their experience and the impact we are having on that.
A huge “thanks” to these fabulous, dedicated clinicians for sharing their journey of bringing DIRFloortime® to Turkey and “caring to care” as they work with families. If you found this episode helpful and informative, please consider sharing it on social media!
Until next time, here’s to choosing play and experiencing joy every day!
