Today we would like to highlight the DIR®/Floortime™ Model by Stanley Greenspan, M.D., Serena Wieder, Ph.D.
The Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders (ICDL) is a non-profit organization founded by Stanley Greenspan, MD, and Serena Wieder PhD. ICDL provides training to a cadre of world class professionals across multiple areas of expertise, which are extending the reach of the DIR® /Floortime™ Model. For additional information please visit our website at www.icdl.com
What is the DIR®/Floortime™ Model?
The Developmental, Individual Difference, Relationship-based (DIR®/Floortime™) Model is a framework that helps clinicians, parents and educators conduct a comprehensive assessment and develop an intervention program tailored to the unique challenges and strengths of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and other developmental challenges.
The objectives of the DIR®/Floortime™ Model are to build healthy foundations for social, emotional, and intellectual capacities.
- The D (Developmental) part of the Model describes the building blocks of this foundation. This includes helping children to develop capacities to attend and remain calm and regulated, engage and relate to others, initiate and respond to all types of communication beginning with emotional and social affect based gestures, engage in shared social problem-solving and intentional behaviour involving a continuous flow of interactions in a row, use ideas to communicate needs and think and play creatively, and build bridges between ideas in logical ways which lead to higher level capacities to think in multicausal, grey area and reflective ways. These developmental capacities are essential for spontaneous and empathic relationships as well as the mastery of academic skills.
- The I (Individual differences) part of the Model describes the unique biologically-based ways each child takes in, regulates and responds to, and comprehends sensations such as sound and touch, and plans and sequences actions and ideas. Some children, for example, are very hyper responsive to touch and sound, while others are under-reactive, and still others seek out these sensations.
- The R (Relationship-based) part of the Model describes the learning relationships with caregivers, educators, therapists, peers, and others who tailor their affect based interactions to the child’s individual differences and developmental capacities to enable progress in mastering the essential foundations.