The core symptoms of autistic spectrum disorder are all addressed by Dr. Stanley Greenspan’s Floortime Approach. The three components of Dr. Greenspan’s Floortime Approach–a capacity for intimacy, an ability to communicate expressively, and the capacity for meaningful speech–address these missing or underdeveloped abilities of children with autism. Each of these three missing or underdeveloped functional...
Often, sensory sensitivities in children with autism cause very young children to protect themselves from what they, because of their heightened sensory sensitivity, perceive as excessive stimulation. This is especially true when that perceived excessive stimulation comes from other people, even if those other people are the autistic child’s parents or caregivers. Maybe the child...
How can a parent learn from autism therapy research to help their child? It can be daunting. This is especially true for psychological research on autism therapy. We have already written a parent-friendly guide for helping make sense of research on applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapies for kids with autism. Here we have translated this...
For both parents and practitioners, it can be hard to make sense of psychological research. This is especially true for research on applied behavior analysis, which is often known simply as ABA, and its effectiveness for helping children diagnosed with autism, which is often abbreviated as ASD for autistic spectrum disorder. The reason for this...
Can autistic children play pretend? Does autism make kids unable to pretend play? Some people think so. Some believe that ASD diagnosed children are incapable of pretend play. Dr. Stanley Greenspan certainly didn’t think so. In fact, the Greenspan Floortime model includes informed and effective play psychotherapy as a key aspect of its therapeutic process....
When a parent or caregiver hears the words “Your child has autistic spectrum disorder” from a psychologist or physician, it can often sound to that parent or caregiver like a life sentence. They believe that their child will always be autistic. That autism diagnosis, however, is dynamic not static. What does it mean that your...
Throughout the month of April, we here at StanleyGreenspan.com will be honoring Dr. Stanley Greenspan’s groundbreaking research and work on autistic spectrum disorder with parent-friendly reviews of his most important scientific writings on using Floortime and the DIR model for children, teens and adults with autism. Stay tuned!
We also need to pay attention to our emotional world in ourselves as caregivers, as families, as family members, as therapists. What are our natural strengths and weaknesses? What do we do easily? What is hard? Are we a high energy person and great for kids who are under-reactive and need lots of energizing and...
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...
Discussion: It can often seem difficult to quantify Floortime progress, but it doesn’t have to be.The question we seem to be asking ourselves is: “how do we use the DIR model in terms of getting funding when the funding agency wants you to earmark ‘short term goals’?” notes Dr. Greenspan.One way of thinking about this...
