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 wooing, but we have a hard time soothing? Or are we great soothers and very good with hyper-sensitive children who need a lot of calmness, but we have a hard time energizing up for the child who is under-reactive?
Then we know how we have to stretch to work with a particular child as we enter their world and tailor our interactions to their nervous system.
Dr. Stanley and Jake Greenspan
Do we take the child’s avoidance as a personal rejection and shut down and not try as hard? Or does the child’s avoidance make us intrusive, not paying attention to his pleasure but grabbing him and forcing him to pay attention to us rather than wooing him into a relationship?
So we have to think about our own personalities and family patterns. As therapists, we need to examine our therapeutic skills and strategies. Which kind of child is easier or harder for us? When we ask these difficult questions, we can fine tune our strategies to meet the child’s individual differences and create the most beneficial learning interactions.
Once we really know our emotional world, then we will know how we have to stretch to work with a particular child as we enter their world and tailor our interactions to their nervous system.
Greenspan Floortime is a comprehensive, evidence-based approach developed by Dr. Stanley I. Greenspan that uses emotionally meaningful play interactions to support children’s social-emotional, cognitive, and communication development. It is the foundation of the DIR™ model.
Dr. Greenspan believed that our emotional world — our capacity to feel, connect, and experience meaning — is the central organizing force in human development. Emotions are not just reactions; they are the engine of thinking, learning, communication, and social connection.
Greenspan Floortime is built on the understanding that emotional experience drives development. By creating warm, joyful interactions that engage a child’s emotional world, Floortime activates the deepest motivations for growth — turning every play interaction into an opportunity for profound developmental progress.
Our emotional world shapes how we perceive relationships, how we learn, how we communicate, and how we understand ourselves and others. A rich, secure emotional world is the foundation for intellectual growth, healthy relationships, and lifelong wellbeing — which is why Dr. Greenspan made it the heart of his work.