Actually since Floortime is a developmental approach, it doesn’t matter where your child is on the spectrum, because you meet them wherever they are. My son has extreme anxiety and is afraid of almost everything that is unfamiliar or unexpected/unpredictable. He is afraid of other people and kids other than me, my husband, and my mom. When we first started with Floortime my son did not make eye contact with us, he enjoyed toys more than us, and he had a lot of meltdowns and head banging. Floortime has been the best thing for my son and our family. Now my son loves to engage with us and looks right at us (of course not all the time) but when he’s engaged with us, he is really engaged and enjoys it so much with tons of eye contact, laughing, smiling, and wanting more. We are more interesting to him than toys now, which I thought would never happen. Through Floortime I’ve learned so much and it has helped us understand my son better, which has helped with the meltdowns and head banging. Of course, he still has anxiety that is really hard for him, but Floortime helps us though that too. Luke also has OCD tendencies, things have to be a certain way or he wants us to do certain things a certain way, otherwise he loses it and through Floortime we’ve learned to respect his needs and his communication when he tells us through sounds, gestures, signs, or even emotions when he gets really upset. I’m really thankful for Floortime and I hope it can help others too.

No worries! A lot of people don’t know about this awesome approach. DIR is the Developmental, Individual-differences, and Relationship-based model with objectives to build healthy foundations for social, emotional, and intellectual capacities rather than focusing exclusively on skills and isolated behaviors. It was founded by Dr. Stanley Greenspan. Here’s two websites with more detailed info:

https://stanleygreenspan.com/what-is-floortime/

https://www.icdl.com/dir

@A MyAutismTeam Member every child is different, that’s true. In any of these therapies, it will depend on the parents to carefully manage it, make sure the child is not getting pushed too hard, and that they are being appropriately challenged according to their abilities.

It’s all about social emotional health and relationship and connection. 😊

I'm going to sound stupid for saying this, but what is that? I've honestly never heard of it lol