Floortime Blog | Free Advice & Resources
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What is Social-Emotional Health, and How is it Different from Social-Emotional Skills?
Most people think of social-emotional health and social-emotional skills as synonyms. While these are related, they are also different. Traditionally, social-emotional skills are often described as a child’s ability to be calm, listen, express themselves, follow instructions, share, take turns, etc. While these are all part of social-emotional health, the skills, like sharing and taking…
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What is the Continuous Flow? “Proto-Conversations”
The Continuous Flow is part of Dr. Greenspan’s 4th social-emotional milestone and is the most important capacity within all of the milestones in his Greenspan/DIR™ Model. It identifies that by 18 months a child should be able to maintain an unstructured interaction for 20 or more circles of a dynamic reciprocal interaction. This capacity of…
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What Is the DIR Model? Understanding Greenspan’s Developmental Framework
If your child has received a diagnosis of autism, developmental delay, or sensory processing differences, you’ve likely heard the term DIR or DIR/Floortime. But what does DIR actually mean — and why does Dr. Greenspan’s version, The Greenspan Floortime Approach®, stand apart from other developmental therapies? Here’s a plain-language breakdown. What Does DIR Stand For?…
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What Your Child’s Behavior Is Trying to Tell You
Changing the Way We See Behavior When a child falls apart, screams, refuses to follow directions, or hits, our first instinct as adults is often to stop the behavior as quickly as possible. We build reward charts, offer allowances, or set up timeouts. For a long time, the dominant professional approach has reinforced this: treat…
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When following the child’s lead doesn’t lead to engagement
The first step in Greenspan Floortime is to follow the child’s lead. Once the child interacts with us, which is them allowing us into their world, we can move on to Step Two. What should we do when doing that doesn’t result in the child engaging and accepting us as partners? Unfortunately, the child engaging…