A language-learning tip from Dr. Greenspan: Create language learning situations for your child even if doing so gets them a little frustrated. Don’t simply give them a list of words to memorize or expect them to learn language by having someone model word usage for them. Children need to emotionally connect to words for those words to really have meaning to them.

Challenging a child to think produces a thinking child.

Dr. Stanley Greenspan

You don’t develop language and thinking by someone modeling it for you. Thumbs down on modeling. You’ve got to be an active participant. You don’t copycat these advanced skills. You learn it through interacting and using it because somebody is challenging you. So the modeler becomes the challenger. Don’t model language. Challenge the child to use the language.

If the child is not using pronouns properly, I don’t want you to say okay to that. If the child says “You want juice” when he means that he wants juice. Challenge that. Tell him that you don’t want juice or that you already have juice. The child will initially get frustrated, but will eventually say something like “Me! Me! Me!” He gets emotional. He now gets it. The pronoun is now connected for him.

Create learning situations for the child even if they get a little frustrated and not just lists of words for them to memorize. as long as they don’t get too frustrated. Don’t give them the answer. You can give them multiple choice answers if they need that, but they’ve got to be thinking all the time. Challenging the child to think produces a thinking child.

The post Language Learning: Learning versus Modeling appeared first on Stanley Greenspan | The Greenspan Floortime Approach.

How often do parents feel that they have to choose between a happy child and a smart child? When should we stop the hugs and pull out the book? Why do we seem to feel like there’s never enough time?

Dr. Greenspan’s research and experience showed him that the key is in valuing and treasuring our relationships. Taking the time to emotionally engage within our relationships actually increases both happiness and intelligence. Having a child be both happy and smart is possible because these flow from emotionally invested relationships with caregivers.

Learn more about helping children be both smart and happy at Floortime U!

Dr. Greenspan knew that the emotional experiences of children drive their developmental processes, encouraging or discouraging their further interaction with the world. Emotional experiences and emotional perceptions help all of us organize and integrate the various parts of our brain in a way that provides us with a true understanding of the environment around us.

The most important thing is we should value and treasure our relationships. That’s critical. That’s first and foremost.

Protect those relationships. Protect your time with your children. Make that your top priority. Make sure that the adults have time with one another.

So this hurried on the run society that we have needs to regroup and change its basic philosophy of commitment. That’s probably the single most important thing we can do. Treasure those sweet subtle relaxed emotional moments with all the relationships we have.

Once we do that, then we’ll naturally begin doing some of these other things. We’ll have longer and longer interactive sequences with our children, which will be building their intelligence as well as their self-esteem. So if we realize that it’s not that we hug our children to make them feel good, and then we read them a book to make them smart.

Those same experiences that make children feel good can also make them smart. If we go from the hugs and cuddles to the interactive little dialogues and then to the pretend play and then to the debates, we have both a happy child a child who feels I could do things and a child who’s very very bright and intelligent.

Dr. Stanley Greenspan

The post Help your child be both happy and smart appeared first on Stanley Greenspan | The Greenspan Floortime Approach.

This Greenspan Floortime advice is about helping children develop new ideas. One of the challenges many children with communication difficulties experience is coming up with new ideas or expanding on ideas they may already have.

One of the best ways that we find to assist children in developing new ideas without giving them a new idea or teaching them your idea is to help them understand that silly and creative ideas can be part of fun or even routine activities. Things like getting dressed in the morning can be done a little differently. Instead of putting the socks on your child’s feet, you can put them on their hands. So, even a routine activity can, if you have the time, become a way for them to develop new ideas.

Another area you can do this in is within more creative and pretend play. So if you’re doing a play schema where there’s pretend food, instead of just eating the pizza the pizza might end up in your pocket or on the shelf or even on your head. These activities can be fun and silly, which is what alleviates some of the stress of coming up with new ideas and being creative.

Not only what to do with the pizza, but instead that pizza in itself is a symbolic form in many different ways Once they see you use it in many different ways, they themselves will come with their own new ways of doing this.

Jake Greenspan did this with a little boy at one point. He and the boy started putting silly toppings on the pizza. Instead of just having pepperoni and mushrooms, he started putting chicken and broccoli. Then, all of a sudden, he sat on the pizza tray and he said “Look! It’s a Tom pizza!”. You started seeing the creativity emerge. Out came new ideas. Whereas when he first started working with him, the little boy was very concrete and rigid. Unfortunately that then played out in his behavior as well. But through these silly experiences, new ideas developed. The Greenspan Floortime approach is helping children develop new ideas.

Want to learn more about Floortime and the Greenspan approach to children with special needs? Check out our courses at Floortime U!

The post Encouraging New Ideas appeared first on Stanley Greenspan | The Greenspan Floortime Approach.

Discussion: As a clinician or therapist doing the family assessment, you will be able to sense if there will be a deeper resistance from the parents, states Dr. Greenspan. “They will speak about what they do and don’t do, and the ways they are comfortable or uncomfortable interacting.”

After that happens, suggest that they try something different at home, and encourage them to explore interactions beyond their comfort level. In the next session, ask them how it feels. “Be supportive and gentle, and do it in the context of the family, remembering that each family is different,” urges Dr. Greenspan.

You can ask parents or family members to try different activities during the assessment, and gauge the levels of discomfort. If there is resistance, take a break from the activity and talk about it. Above all, reminds Dr. Greenspan, “Be very empathetic about what feelings the parents or family members express.”

The post How can I help family members feel comfortable around children who are on the spectrum? appeared first on Stanley Greenspan | The Greenspan Floortime Approach.

Discussion: “You always want to be following the child’s lead during Floortime and throughout the day,” says Dr. Greenspan. It’s important to remember to “never say no to a child with autism unless they are in danger; otherwise, we block the interaction, and that is where the affect is.”

You don’t want to prevent the child with autism from telling you what he or she wants to do, because that is where the motivation is. If the child wants to do something silly and outlandish, you should encourage it.

“We want to play around what the child is interested in, and that will be the best motivator.”

The post How do I motivate my child? appeared first on Stanley Greenspan | The Greenspan Floortime Approach.

Discussion: “The key,” says Dr. Greenspan, “is to extend the circles of interaction.” Once a child is somewhat engaged, you always want to extend the circles of interaction and get more and more purposeful. Play dumb with the child so they have to extend the circles of communication. The ultimate goal is the continuous flow of back and forth communication.

“Always look for the gleam in the child’s eye. Look for the affect. The biggest mistake to make is not looking for the light in the eye,” emphasizes Dr. Greenspan.

Be playful and flirtatious; don’t take it too seriously. Be emotionally expressive. If you are too serious when interacting, you won’t be emotionally vibrant enough. It takes a while, but your own affect system needs to be playful, subtle and expressive.

“You should treat whatever the child is doing as intentional. Once we get the child into multiple circles, then we are trying to get the circles more complicated,” notes Dr. Greenspan.

The post How do I help my child to interact more? appeared first on Stanley Greenspan | The Greenspan Floortime Approach.

Discussion: “Help your child use their ideas functionally and introduce make-believe play; try to keep increasing the interaction,” emphasizes Dr. Greenspan.

The world of make-believe is very important: the richer the pretending, the greater the creativity. Don’t bypass the pretending, or else you’ll lose out later on when you’re wondering why the child isn’t being as creative or abstract as they can be.

“As a parent or therapist, get involved in the pretending – become a character and jump into the role,” encourages Dr. Greenspan. “Sometimes you want to be a voice on the sidelines, but it’s more affectively vibrant to actually be a character.”

Remember to use ideas interactively – we would rather see a child using words interactively as opposed to full sentences and proper grammar. Have fun and “use high affect,” reminds Dr. Greenspan.

The post What are the best ways to be creative with my child and foster pretend play? appeared first on Stanley Greenspan | The Greenspan Floortime Approach.

If your child has autism, should you push them to play with you? Or, should you leave them alone? What should you do about self-stimulatory play? How can you create down time for yourself and your child with autism?

There are different types of ways to create “downtime” if your child has autism, notes Dr. Greenspan. “If you have a child with autism that is capable of reading a book, that’s terrific; give them regular down time. If the child is capable of doing a crossword, that’s great; give them regular downtime and then balance it through the day.

If your child with autism is only capable of self-stimulatory play (self-stimming) where they’re rubbing a spot on the floor, or lining up their toys, or self-injurious activities where they’re banging their head, we want to minimize that kind of downtime because it’s destructive,” urges Dr. Greenspan.

If the child can’t interact yet, or can’t think for themselves because they don’t have the ability, we have to use play in a pleasurable, relaxing way so they don’t lapse into stressful or catastrophic systems. “Gradually, there is time for independent work when the child has the capability,” says Dr. Greenspan, because “there are varying levels of interaction with Floortime. Some of it is very soothing, but self-stimulation is not.”

The post If my child has autism should I push them to play with me? Should I leave them alone? What about self-stimming? appeared first on Stanley Greenspan | The Greenspan Floortime Approach.