This treatment approach is designed to build effective relationships between caregivers and the autistic child. Floortime, which is also referred to as the DIR (Developmental, Individual-Difference, Relationship-Based) approach, focuses on helping children master the building blocks of relating, communicating and thinking, rather than on symptoms alone.
First Developed:
Floortime was developed by Dr. Stanley Greenspan, who is a child psychiatrist. An interview with Dr. Greenspan can viewed here.
Overall Philosophy:
Floortime is both a philosophy and an approach. The goals of Floortime are encouraging attention and intimacy, two-way communication, expression, and the use of feelings and ideas, and logical thoughts. This treatment is much like play therapy in that it builds an increasingly larger circle of interaction between a child and an adult in a developmentally based sequence. Greenspan has described six stages of emotional development that children meet to develop a foundation for more advanced learning - a developmental ladder that must be climbed one rung at a time. Children with autism may have trouble with this developmental ladder for a number of reasons, such as over-and underreacting to senses and difficulty processing.
Time required for treatment:
Therapy consists of 6 to 8 30-minute sessions of child-guided "play" each day. Parents are taught to do the therapy at home. Many Occupational Therapists use this model in their daily treatment plans for autism.
Treatment cost:
Minimal, as treatment is mainly done by the parents.
Who directs the treatment?
This approach to therapy consists of three parts: (1) Parents do Floortime with their child, creating the kinds of experiences that promote mastery of the milestones; (2) Speech, occupational, and physical therapists, educators, and/or psychotherapists work with the child using specialized techniques informed by Floortime principles to deal with the child’s specific challenges and facilitate development; (3) Parents work on their own responses and styles of relating with regard to the different milestones in order to maximize their interactions with their child and create a family pattern that supports emotional and intellectual growth in all family members.
Where does the treatment take place?
In the home.
Training material needed:
Materials given by the therapist.
How success is defined:
Program has four goals: to encourage attention and intimacy, to establish two-way communications, to encourage the use of feeling and expression of ideas, and to help the autistic child to become a logical thinker. Floortime, parents and educators can help the child move up the developmental ladder by following the child's lead and building on what the child does to encourage more interactions. Floortime does not treat the child with autism in separate pieces for speech development or motor development but rather addresses the emotional development, in contrast to other approaches that tend to focus on cognitive development. It is frequently used for a child's daily playtime in conjunction with other methods such as ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis).
Biggest Success Story:
Parental involvement is critical with this approach, so parents working with the child to improve disability is perhaps one of the biggest (rewarding) successes of this program.
Website:
www.Floortime.org
Main concern:
Although preliminary results indicate that DIR/Floortime model can be extremely effective in improving social, communicative, and academic outcomes for students with ASD, there is no scientific evidence to support the use of this therapy.