Greenspan Floortime

Even if you find yourself in a heated exchange with your toddler, it's better for the child to feel the heat than to watch you withdraw emotionally. Emotional involvement between caregivers and children are critical & help the child process the limits you set for them. #floortime

We need to take a less narrow view of our children's problems and, instead, see them as windows of opportunity. If we can understand the underlying developmental process, we can see a child's struggles as signs of striving toward growth instead of chronic problems. #floortime

In order to feel good about himself, a child must be successful in his own eyes, not just your eyes. Self-esteem is an inner feeling; sometimes it corresponds with outer reality, and sometimes it doesn't. #floortime

#floortimeallthetime #thegreenspanfloortimeapproach #autism #autismawareness #specialneeds #floortime #stanleygreenspan #theoriginalfloortime instagram.com/p/BxRDhIVAyUv/…

Relationship approaches like #floortime help to develop higher-level thinking skills; you can't teach judgment or reasoned thinking by memorization, scripts, or changing surface behaviors. #stanleygreenspan

The qualities caregivers most want in their children - a desire to seek the parents out, love, warmth, engagement, and initiative - CAN be taught, but they have to be taught through spontaneous interactions that follow the child's lead, rather than a memorized script. #floortime

The demands of raising a child w/ ASD take extra work to keep the balance tipped in a constructive direction. Staying constructive requires understanding the strengths & weaknesses of each of the major caregivers: parents, grandparents, teachers, therapists, siblings. #floortime

The ability to evaluate oneself & one's ideas against an internal standard is a rare commodity. To help children acquire it, especially children with ASD, requires lots of opinion-oriented discussions and RESPECT for the child's developing sense of self. #floortime

Often we look for a way to reach a child - a magic key - when all the while the child is showing what he needs by his actions and the way he's processing what comes into his orbit. It's up to us to observe the child and recognize that they are showing us the solution. #floortime

If an early intervention program focuses on a particular behavior or symptoms but does not encourage - or impairs - healthy caregiver-child interactions that promote overall adaptive functioning, the program could create additional developmental challenges. #floortime

The goals, ALWAYS, are to: 1. support the child's ability to achieve/successfully negotiate all the emotional milestones; 2. to use the child's working senses, together with their emotions, to construct a full sense of self. #floortime

Challenge the child to "do" to you instead of "doing" to the child. Entice the child to take the initiative in the interaction. If the child becomes frustrated, practice empathy. Your words aren't as important as showing you care & understand. #floortime

It's natural that siblings of children with ASD might feel embarrassed. Caregivers may be critical of this reaction, yet they can get embarrassed if their child is self-stimming or acting out in a public place. While it's not admirable, it's a very UNDERSTANDABLE feeling to have.

The point of #floortime is to get the child to relate to you. Anywhere you are, you can use personal cues that draw on the child's experience to add an emotional quality to the game. The important thing is that the child enjoy the experience, even when being challenged.

Our motto is "Floortime all the time, everywhere." Meaning #Floortime can be incorporated into all sorts of settings: running errands, with other children, in the car, outside, inside, and all over!

It's what a child does every day that counts. It's not a good trade-off to have the child in a less-than-ideal school setting in return for a few hours of therapy. As caregivers, never stop advocating for a developmentally rigorous school curriculum! #floortime

During peer play dates, harness every opportunity to teach a child to use ideas & words based on their emotions. Children can read each other's emotional and social gestures and respond in kind, if something they want (a toy, a snack) is at the heart of the play. #floortime

A child in panic mode is unlikely to cooperate or engage with ANYTHING you want them to do (#floortime included). The time to negotiate choices is when you have plenty of time to do it. Avoid the power struggle & establish a calm, cooperative, problem-solving environment.

One of the hardest things to strengthen in a child is continuous back-and-forth emotional signaling. How do we do it? First of all, PRACTICE. Be playfully obstructive and harness a child's desire/emotion. Memorization is not emotion, and never will be! #floortime

When children repeat rather than respond, they are showing us a couple things: that they have a good memory for sounds/words. It also tells us they are not yet able to take these memorized words and think creatively. They are not REASONING with words, simply REPEATING them.