Bending Without Breaking: The Power of Social and Emotional Flexibility In a world that seems to shift on its axis daily, the ability to adapt and navigate change is more crucial than ever. While Flexibility is an important capacity for all people, the common misconception that a child’s compliance equates to emotional flexibility often leads...
Our brains are not just passive recorders of the present; they’re dynamic, predictive machines constantly anticipating the future. This “predictive and anticipatory nature” is fundamental to how we navigate the world, learn, and even experience consciousness. It’s less like a camera capturing a scene and more like a sophisticated AI constantly running simulations. The Predictive...
How Emotions and Memories Focus Our Attention Attention is a complex cognitive process that allows us to focus on specific stimuli while filtering out others. It is essential for learning, decision-making, and social interaction. The nervous system plays a crucial role in attention by integrating information from different sensory modalities, such as vision, hearing, and...
Beyond Calm: Nurturing Regulation and Connection in Young Children As parents and caregivers, we often strive for a calm and well-behaved child. However, it’s important to remember that true regulation goes beyond simply being quiet or obedient. Dr. Stanley Greenspan, a renowned child psychiatrist and developer of The Greenspan Floortime Approach®, emphasizes that calm is...
Responsive Caregiving: How Self-Reflection Enhances Emotional Attunement in Responsive Caregiving What is Responsive Caregiving? Responsive caregiving, at its core, is about deeply understanding and attuning to the individual needs of the person being cared for. It involves a dynamic and reciprocal process where the caregiver is sensitive to verbal and nonverbal cues, co-regulated interactions, responding...
Dynamic Structure™ A misconception about Floortime is that it is highly “unstructured”. People mistakenly think that Floortime lets kids do whatever they want; there are no boundaries, expectations, or challenges. If you have learned and practiced The Greenspan Floortime Approach®, you know this is false. The Greenspan Floortime Approach® is a flexible, child-centered intervention that is highly adaptive...
Creating “Just Right” Play Spaces for Social-Emotional Growth: The ‘Goldilocks’ Greenspan Play Space (Stanley I Greenspan MD Inc. and its intervention, The Greenspan Floortime Approach®, DO NOT endorse or support ICDL or its DIRFloortime curriculum) Remember the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears? She was constantly searching for things that were “just right” –...
Neuroscience in Education: Why the brain Isn’t going to school, or therapy (Stanley I Greenspan MD Inc. and its intervention, The Greenspan Floortime Approach®, DO NOT endorse or support ICDL or its DIRFloortime curriculum) Child development, education, and therapy often cling to familiar methods, even when research offers conclusive advancements. According to Gerry Leisman at...
How to Create a ‘Greenspan Program’ (Stanley I Greenspan MD Inc. and its intervention, The Greenspan Floortime Approach®, DO NOT endorse or support ICDL or its DIRFloortime curriculum) More than Just an Intervention Dr. Stanley Greenspan’s approach to child development was revolutionary in its comprehensiveness. He understood that a child’s progress wasn’t just about isolated...
Floortime vs. ABA: Understanding the Differences in Approaches to Autism (Stanley I Greenspan MD Inc. and its intervention, The Greenspan Floortime Approach®, DO NOT endorse or support ICDL or its DIRFloortime curriculum) When it comes to supporting children with autism, there are various therapeutic approaches available. Two prominent methods are Floortime (officially The Greenspan Floortime...
