anyone used dir/floortime? experience?

[Anonymous]

after reading several of stanley greenspan's books, we are considering using dir, which i believe is run by jake greenspan, to help us implement floortime at home. our dc is not on the spectrum, but she has language impairments that are similar to those found in children with autism (poor social communication skills).

what are your experiences with dir? worth the cost/time? has anyone used them for children not diagnosed on the spectrum?

thanks!

[Anonymous]

I have done reading on DIR method for my son who has Autism. We use ABA but even ABA therapists use the DIR techniques to encourage play and language.

I would also recommend reading Communicating Partners by James Mac Donald. My daughter sounds like your child and it helped me tremendously with her speech development.

[Anonymous]

What is DIR? Can you elaborate a little? My DC is an Aspie, and I'd be interested in more information.

[Anonymous]

op here -- i'm obviously no expert, since i'm the one asking for advice from others, but floortime is a method of therapy conceived by stanley greenspan. essentially, it's an alternative to ABA, which is a strictly behavioral approach to trying to teach skills to children with autism. floortime is based on teh theory that children develop not in terms of skills, but in terms of their relationship to others -- how sophisticated those relationships are, and how much control they have over themselves and their bodies. the therapeutic method is essentially playbased, following the lead of the child, but challenging the child with respect to the things/activities that are most motivating to them in order to help them progress up the developmental ladder. pretend play is a very important piece in this, in particular, pretend play with parents.

the number of floortime sessions (they are 20-30 mins each) will increase with the level of developmental delay.

do a search for floortime/dir. the website probably explains it much better than i did. (and i'm not sure i got it right, here -- feel free to correct me!!)

[Anonymous]

We have found working with Jake Greenspan very helpful for our child who has regulatory and processing problems, including auditory processing and word retreival (not on the spectrum). We have seen tremendous progress and we all look forward to playing with "Mr. Jake". I had also read several of Dr. Greenspan's books, Jake is able to bring it down in a way that effectively applies the information to your child. We also work with one of his OTs, Ellie Ham. In our child's case, working on things like the vestibular system has been very helpful with regard to language. I would recommend either without reservation.

[Anonymous]

good floortime resources:

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Floortime

Overview of Floortime:

http://www.meandmyfriends.net/floortime.htm

good description of a floor-time based language interaction at the bottomof this page:

http://www.mindspring.com/~dgn/playther.htm

[Anonymous]

Our 19 month old DD sees both Dr. Stanley Greenspan and Jake Greenspan at DIR. She has not been diagnosed with autism, but suffers from sensory issues and developmental delays, including speech. We are seeing amazing and incredible results with floor time. It is a huge time commitment and a huge financial commitment, but absolutely worth it, in my opinion. Our daughter has been in early intervention therapy since birth, and we are seeing rapid improvement with floortime. Good luck to you.

[Anonymous]

We had our son see Greenspan (S) and were referred to DIR - Tim - Jake's partner - was great and our son benefitted from their work.

I would also HIGHLY recommend Diane Lewis - she is a colleague of Greenspan and does speech therapy based on floortime theory - she co-wrote the speech manual with Greenspan. She's in Bethesda.

We have seen our son's language increase exponentially after working with her.

[Anonymous]

Is Jake Greenspan related to Stanley Greenspan?

[Anonymous]

jake is his son

[Anonymous]

ABA seems to get more dramatic results/improvements at least from what I have seen, but floortime seems more gentle by nature. I have heard some negative reports about people's experiences with Dr. Weider who works with Greenspan. Perhaps it depends on who you see.

[Anonymous]

Check out our parent's group ... DC Floortimers at yahoo groups! We meet once a month in Bethesda! This group has a wealth of resources, ideas, encouragement and friendship.

[Anonymous]

Does your parent group run for all age groups. Do the kids go as well. I would be interested in learning more about it. Thanks

[Anonymous]

My kiddo is not on the spectrum - she has regulatory and processing issues. We also work with Jake occasionally and Ellie weekly. I'd highly recommend having the evaluation and home program recommendations done by Jake or Tim, even if you are not able to do frequent followups. They are able to distill the principals and not only apply them to your child but to how you and your spouse interact with your child. I'd read all of the books, but this is all they do and they are REALLY good at it.

[Anonymous]

I do not think that ABA is recommended for children who are not on the spectrum, is it?