Floortime: Another intervention that's worth considering

Ok, I must admit that I am a bit selfish. I am willing to give anybody who works with children with special needs all my time and my attention. You never know what you might learn, right? Yes, I knew you would agree with me :) So recently when I came across this highly rated book - The Child With Special Needs: Encouraging Intellectual and Emotional Growth - on Amazon (available on Crossword in India) I decided that I had to read all about Dr Stanley Greenspan's work.

And I did find a whole lot of fascinating stuff. The most important thing - or take home message - from all the reading is 'Floortime' - another interesting intervention that seems to be worth considering for families with young children who have special needs. Floortime, is at the heart of a comprehensive program for infants, young children, and families with a variety of developmental challenges including autistic spectrum disorders. This comprehensive program includes working on the functional emotional developmental levels, the individual processing differences and creating those learning relationships that will help the child move ahead in their development.

In a typical Floortime session, you will...
1. Follow the child’s lead - This means that you let the child decide what he or she wants to do and you play along.
2. Challenge your child -  Dr Greenspan said "Once you’ve followed your child’s natural interests, challenge your child to create one step further from the natural direction of play"
3. Expand on the action or interaction to include all aspects of the sensory system, more interactions, and more emotional involvement.

So that's just the gist of what Floortime is all about. Apparently, it works for all children who have developmental challenges. 

For an overview on Floortime, please read Dr Stanley Greenspan's article here. Also check Dr Greenspan's site here.

If you are interested in a counter-view (just to be unbiased) please read this article. 

I can't wait to start reading the book and working on the ideas that Dr Greenspan has suggested in it. More on this in a future post.

Thanks for reading

I am

An amazing video by the International Down Syndrome Coalition on World Down Syndrome Day. I absolutely love the attitude.

Responsive Teaching for children with special needs

I first stumbled on 'Responsive Teaching' on the Down Syndrome Education site. What got me hooked was the line which said that it is the parents who have the most significant impact on their child's early development. It was like a breath of fresh air.

I will refrain from providing too many details in this blog post but would definitely like to get you started on knowing more about Responsive Teaching. Very briefly, Responsive Teaching is a parent-led early intervention program that addresses three areas of development: cognition, communication, and social emotional functioning. The curriculum, developed by child development specialists Gerald Mahoney and James MacDonald, is based on a series of research studies conducted over 11 years that indicated that parents who use Responsive Teaching significantly promote gains in cognition, communication and social emotional functioning in their children.

Gerald Mahoney and James MacDonald have written a book on Responsive Teaching (picture below) which is available on Pro-ed. Though I have not had the opportunity to read this book (I hope to shortly), my gut feel is that this book will prove to be invaluable to a parent who has a young child with special needs.

For parents who don't have access to the book, here are some very good links on Responsive Teaching:
Responsive Teaching: Early intervention for children with Down syndrome and other disabilities  and
Responsive Teaching

I found this whole idea of Responsive Teaching quite interesting and worth a try. All of the recommendations are completely doable and the best part for me was knowing that the program has been validated. Parents can indeed help to improve the developmental outcomes in their special needs child. This gave me a sense of confidence - in my child and also in myself.

Thanks for reading