Floortime Strategies to Promote Development in Children and Teens: A User's Guide to the DIR® Model

Help children and teens with social-emotional and cognitive challenges develop critical new skills with this quick-guide to the popular DIRFloortime® model. Certified DIRFloortime® experts show parents and professionals how to promote skill development through warm and playful interactions that make the most of children’s natural interests.

Floortime™ is a highly effective intervention approach for children and adolescents with autism and other developmental disorders. Now there’s a step-by-step guide for parents to LEARN and professionals to TEACH the DIRFloortime® model of helping young people with social, emotional, and cognitive challenges.

This guide takes the research-supported developmental approach to treatment and breaks it down into a curriculum of simple, sequenced strategies you can use right away to support the social and cognitive development of children and teens. Quick instructions and examples for each method are laid out for easy viewing in the midst of a play session. Certified DIRFloortime® experts explain the theoretical background and the basics of how to play and interact with children in ways that motivate them, make the most of their natural interests, and help them develop critical new social, emotional, and intellectual capacities. Whether you’re a professional or parent, this practical, ready-to-use Floortime™ guide is an essential addition to your intervention toolkit.

WHY USE DIRFloortime®?

• Proven effective - research-supported, field tested, and rooted in developmental psychology
• Targets the key cognitive and social-emotional capacities children need to thrive in the real world (see sidebar)
• Promotes learning and growth through play and interaction
• Fosters warm, attuned parent-child relationships
• Meets your specific needs - apply DIRFloortime® strategies in developmental order or use them as standalone teaching tools
• Gives you quick catchphrases that make strategies “stick,” so you can use them anytime, anywhere
• Encourages caregiver self-reflection and self-awareness - a key part of helping children and teens develop their own self-reflection skills
• Leads to children and teens becoming joyful, spontaneous, flexible, creative, and empathic human beings

PRACTICAL MATERIALS: Each DIRFloortime® strategy comes with a clear description and enlightening examples of how to apply it in a variety of real-life scenarios. The appendix walks you through 11 effective strategies for helping children and adolescents reduce challenging behaviors.

Help children develop crucial skills:

• Regulation and Attention
• Social Engagement and Attachment
• Reciprocity
• Social Problem Solving
• Self-Awareness
• Empathy
• Imagination
• Emotional Thinking
• Logical Thinking
• Complex Thinking
• Self-Reflection

Andrea Davis received her B.A. in psychology from Swarthmore College, M.A. in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Fuller Graduate School of Psychology. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in infant mental health and early childhood disorders at Brown University Medical School. She returned to the west coast to join the UCLA Department of Pediatrics as Director of Research for the FOCUS project intervention study and to open a private practice in Pasadena, California. This practice grew into Greenhouse Therapy Center, a psychological center providing psychotherapy to individual adults, couples, parents, adolescents, and children from an attachment theory perspective. Greenhouse also offers intensive in-home Floortime or relationship-based developmental intervention for children and adolescents with developmental disorders and their families.

Lahela Isaacson, M.S., LMFT, has devoted her professional career to working with children with special needs using the DIRFloortime(R) model. Ms. Isaacson received her B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University. She earned her M.S. in marriage and family therapy from Seattle Pacific University. Soon after graduating she was introduced to the DIRFloortime model and was captivated. Ms. Isaacson currently works at Greenhouse Therapy Center as a DIRFloortime supervisor and program manager.

Michelle Harwell, M.S., LMFT, is an expert training leader and supervisor in DIRFloortime(R) and an infant mental health and early intervention specialist. She maintains a thriving private practice in Los Angeles, California, where she sees clients across the age spectrum: infants, children, adolescents, and adults. She also works as an infant mental health consultant at Elizabeth House, where she helped to secure grant funding through the Pasadena Child Health Foundation to provide mother-infant psychotherapy to at-risk homeless mothers. Ms. Harwell received her B.A. in English literature from the University of Oklahoma, M.A. in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, and M.S. in marriage and family therapy from the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology. She dedicated her postgraduate training to the areas of development, attachment, trauma, and neuroscience and is currently completing her Ph.D in psychoanalysis from The Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Ms. Harwell is a well-respected speaker, trainer, and supervisor who provides professional development and consultation to therapists and families.