Developmental-Delay.com Pediatric Occupational, Physical, ABA/Behavioral,
Feeding, Speech, and Language Therapies

Main Clinic: 931-372-2567
1445 East 10th Street Cookeville, TN 38501
Email: [email protected]
HIPAA Secure Email: [email protected]
Fax: (931) 372-2572

ABA Clinic: 931-201-9534
400 Dubois Road Cookeville, TN 38501
Email: [email protected]

Please call today to get started!        Most insurances accepted!

YouTube     Facebook.com     Pinterest.com     blog
Home > ABA/Behavior Therapy > Floortime Interventions > Home-Based Opportunities for Floortime

Home-Based Opportunities for Floortime

Home Based Opportunities for Floor Time

  • dressing and undressing: giving child choices about what to wear or not or what to take off first, is following the child's lead.

  • mealtime: chose one meal a time with enough time - talk may focus around food preparation, different foods being served, which foods are particularly enjoyable or any topic relating to the child's life.

  • car time: engage child in a relaxed conversation in which child takes the lead, or sing-along for which child chooses songs

  • coming and going time: plan to have at least a little time to get child settled on arrival to a classroom or in switching and transitioning from one activity to another by reading a short story, visit pet in classroom or at home, or look at special toy in classroom or at home. Show child support through your interest and warm clear good-bye if leaving in classroom. On picking child up from classroom give the child a chance to tell you something important about the day while you are still in the school setting.

  • bath time: Bath toys are wonderful props as they float, get dunked, and come into contact with each other. The water is a great opportunity for play. The child will naturally relax in the water.

  • book time: Read the book with the child on your lap or next to you on a chair or bed. As you read, be aware of responses and questions that you can extend. (If the child is totally absorbed, however, it is best to continue reading and simply enjoy the sense of shared interest)

  • bedtime: Bedtime is often accompanied by a ritual, but is also a moment to feel close and loving. Children sometimes share important thoughts and feelings during the last moments before falling asleep. Although you will not want to rev-up the child up prior to sleeping, you can respond with empathy and stay close until the child is calm and feels safe enough to sleep.

15. Turning Every Day Activity into Problem Solving for Child

  • chair not close to table, in the child's spot, when meal time arrives

  • bottle not open when you are trying to pour juice

  • bathtub empty of water when you tell child it is time to take a bath

  • shoes hidden from usual resting place

  • changing the shelf locations of favorite books, tapes etc.

  • putting two socks on same foot

  • putting shirt on feet

  • give child adult shoes instead of their own

  • use rubber band to hold together a spoon and fork when giving child tool for eating

  • being sure cup is upside down when offering child a drink

  • put markers in a new container which child has not yet learned to open

  • mix puzzle pieces of two or three puzzles together

16. Strategies for Engagement and Two-way Communication

  • Give child seemingly random actions new meanings by responding to them as if they were purposeful.

  • Use sensory-motor play -- bouncing, tickling, swinging, and so on -- to elicit pleasure.

  • Use sensory toys in cause-and-effect ways: hide a toy, then make it magically reappear; drop a belled toy so that child will hear the jingle; bring a tickle feather closer, closer, closer until finally you tickle child with it.

  • Play infant games, such as peekaboo, I'm going to get you, and patty cake.

  • Play verbal Ping Pong with child, responding to every sound or word the child makes and continue the ping pong match to expand the number of circles closed.

  • Pursue pleasure over other behaviors and do not interrupt any pleasurable experience.

  • Use gestures, tone of voice, and body language to accentuate the emotion in what you say and do.

  • Try to be as accepting of child's anger and protests as you are of child's more positive emotions.

  • Help child deal with anxiety (separation, getting hurt, aggression, loss, fear, and so on) by using gestures and problem solving.



17. Strategies for Helping Child Build Symbolic World

  • Identify real-life experiences child knows and enjoys and have toys and props available to play out those experiences

  • Respond to child's real desires through pretend actions

  • Allow child to discover what is real and what is a toy (e.g., if child tries to go down a toy slide, encourage child to go on; if child tries to put on doll's clothes, do not tell it doesn't fit; if child puts foot in pretend pool, ask if is cold)

  • If child is thirsty, offer an empty cup or invite to tea party

  • If child is hungry, open cardboard-box refrigerator and offer some food, pretend to cook, or ask if the child will go to the pretend market with you to get things.

  • If child wants to leave, give pretend keys or a toy car

  • If child lies down on floor or couch, get a blanket or pillow, turn off the lights, and sing a lullaby

Give symbolic meaning to objects as you play:







18. Strategies to Develop Abstract Thinking






Change environment frequently to encourage flexibility, create problems and expand discussion




  • Model/mediate sequence of actions needed to solve problem













 

20. Strategies to Address Processing Difficulties

Child's Actions

Adult's Solutions

Avoids, moves away

Persist in your pursuit

Treat as intentional

Provide visual cues

Playfully obstruct

Attract with "magic"

Insist on a response

Stays stuck, does not know what to do next

Provide destination

Return object of interest

Use object in some way

Expand, expand

Give new meanings

Use ritualized cues to start ("ready, set, go")

Uses scripts

Join in

Offer alternative scripts

Change direction of script

Perseverates

Ask for turn, join, imitate, help

Make interactive

Ask "how many" more times

Set up "special" time

Protests

Act sorry, play dumb, restore, blame figure

Rejects, refuses

Provide more things to say "no" to

Expand, give other choices or time

Says something unrelated

Insist on a response

Notice change or bring closure

Becomes anxious or fearful

Reassure

Problem solve

Use symbolic solutions

Acts out, pushes, hits

Provide affective cue ("Uh, uh, uh"; "No, no, no") to encourage self-regulation

Set limits.

Reward for absence of negative behaviors

 

21. Developmental Stages of Greenspan's Functional Emotional Assessment Scale (FEAS)



 

22. Structural and Thematic Characteristics of Greenspan's FEAS Developmental Stages

Stages of Development

Organizing Fantasies and Themes

Regulation and Interest in the World

Omnipotent control; being overwhelmed; falling apart

Engagement and Relating

Isolation; emptiness; inanimate objects; unconditional love

Intentional Communication

Part object pleasures or fears; chaotic, fragmented interactions

Complex sense of self

Narcissistic self-absorption; grandiosity; suspiciousness; somatization; global self deprecation

Emotional Ideas

Neediness, being taken care of and/or fear of separation and/or danger

Emotional Thinking

Power; being admired; respected; shame; humiliation; loss of love; injury or harm to self or others

 

23. Greenspan's FEAS Levels of Functioning and Corresponding Floor Time Strategy

Developmental Level

Child's Skills Needed

Floor Time Strategy

Regulation and Interest in the World

(by 3 months)

Sense of protection, care and encouraged engagement in world

Provide one on one ping ponging and cuddling to set a pattern that is predictable and comforting

Forming Relationships and attachment

(by 5 months)

Rich investment in human world; woos and is wooed

Provide secure relationship which evolves into an attachment that survives negative feelings

Intentional Two-Way Communication

(by 9 months)

Reads and responds contingently to range of affective and behavioral cues

Provide experiences which help develop capacity to facilitate empathic reading of the "other"

Complex Sense of Self:

Behavioral Organization & Behavioral Elaboration

(9-18 months)

Secure availability to others while admiring and supporting greater behavioral organization, initiative and originality

Provide experiences which encourage self-observing capacity and permits integration of affective opposites around dependency, aggression, passivity and assertiveness.

Emotional Ideas:

Representational capacity and elaboration

(18-30 months)

Using evolving, representational (symbolic) capacities across a wide thematic and affective range

Provide experiences which work at the use and elaboration of fantasy and pretend play

Emotional Thinking:

Representation, Differentiation and Consolidation

(24-48 months)

Using of representational capacity and reality orientation

Provide experiences to shift between fantasy and reality and integrate wide range of affective and thematic issues

 

24. READING LIST and ONLINE RESOURCES on Floor Time

ONLINE RESOURCES:

For more information about Floor Time and other Greenspan Early Intervention concepts contact:

Greenspan's Floor Time Related Books:

THE CHILD WITH SPECIAL NEEDS: ENCOURAGING INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL GROWTH. Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D. and Serena Wieder, Ph.D., Addison Wesley: (1998, Reading, MA). The most recent, comprehensive, and parent oriented discussion of the use of floor time with children with special needs.

INFANCY AND EARLY CHILDHOOD - THE PRACTICE OF CLINICAL ASSESSMENT AND INTERVENTION WITH EMOTIONAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL CHALLENGES, Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D., International Universities Press, Inc.(1997, 3rd Printing Madison, WI). The comprehensive coverage of the whole range of Behavioral, Sensory Spectrum Disorders which is addressed to clinicians. The FEAS scales used in this program were developed from material contained in this book.

Other books by Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D.:

THE CHALLENGING CHILD - UNDERSTANDING, RAISING, AND ENJOYING THE FIVE "DIFFICULT" TYPES OF CHILDREN. Addison Wesley (1995, Reading, MA).

THE CLINICAL INTERVIEW OF THE CHILD. Co-authored with: Nancy Thorndike Greenspan, American Psychiatric Press, Inc. (1991, Washington).

DEVELOPMENTALLY BASED PSYCHOTHERAPY. International Universities Press, Inc. (1997, Madison, WI)

FIRST FEELINGS - MILESTONES IN THE EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF YOUR BABY AND CHILD. Co-authored with Nancy Thorndike Greenspan, Penguin Books, (1985, NY).

Floor time film with Greenspan:

FLOOR TIME - TUNING IN TO EACH CHILD. Scholastic Inc, NY, 1990. Contact at Toll Free Number: 1.800.325.6149

Related Topics:

Site empowered by
WebOnTheFly