An Early Intervention therapist showed us how to use Floor time. We had a weekly session with an intern for a while after that. Our son played with doors. Floor time helped us turn it into a meaningful game. It gave us a way to engage him when he was not joining in the group. It helped us play with him and build new ideas into his play. When we started ABA, We saw results so quickly that we were sold. A lot of language and imitation skills that seemed lost, returned. We also learned how to respond to him. Some of his behaviors improved right away. We were able to easily move him on from doors. That seemed to drop as he picked up skills. At 5, we still use ABA, but use some Floor Time strategies.Our therapist told us to spend 15-20 minutes a day following his lead for confidence and calling it Special Time.

I would get therapists to do ABA (verbal behaviour) and do DIR floor time yourself. We did both. Our therapists used mostly floortime in ABA as well.

IMO (I am just another mom, but I have studied a lot of methods), establishing yourself/other teachers as the leader initially is useful if your child does not have the basic ability to regulate himself. If I had to do it all again, I would first take my kid to an integrative doc (an MD that is also trained in integrative medicine), get a full metabolic work up,get a good OT program going (you might want to investigate MNRI, which helps the child's ability to interact with the world) and then perhaps use verbal behavior based aba to help my son learn to speak. During that aba time, I would NOT be one of my son's aba therapists, but would work on a developmental program like DIR or RDI during my family time with him.

I hope that helps, but feel free to disagree with me!!

We did both. You may want to think about trying to do some sort of blended program. I think that ABA helps the most with basic skills, while DIR-type programs can help with the child's enthusiasm for interaction. The problem with blended programs is that ABA is therapist or parent-led (working on specific answers that are desired), while DIR encourages the parents/caregivers to follow the child's lead. I tried to use ABA for speech/sound formation, while we did Floortime more in natural, family interactions.

Oh... All of his therapies (speech & OT) are child led, but he has some behavior issues (self harm) ans severe speech delay.