Greenspan Floortime is Dr. Stanley Greenspan’s play-based, relationship-centered approach to child development that targets the Functional Emotional Developmental Milestones through warm, two-way interactions.
The first three Functional Emotional Developmental Milestones — shared attention, engagement, and two-way purposeful communication — must be worked on together because they are interdependent. A child cannot truly communicate without first attending and engaging. Dr. Greenspan emphasized building all three simultaneously, not sequentially.
The six Functional Emotional Developmental Milestones are: 1) Shared attention and regulation, 2) Engagement and relating, 3) Two-way purposeful communication, 4) Shared social problem-solving, 5) Creating symbols and using words/ideas, and 6) Emotional and logical thinking. Each milestone builds on and supports the others.
Dr. Greenspan argued that working on milestones sequentially is ineffective because they reinforce each other. Work on attention improves engagement; work on communication deepens attention. The most effective Floortime approach works across multiple milestones simultaneously within each interaction.