DIR/Floortime, one of the many effective therapies for children with autism, focuses on giving your child emotionally meaningful learning experiences to help him progress up his developmental ladder. The first principle of the Floortime method is to follow your child's lead, or join, in whatever activity peaks his interest. It's a way for your child to develop a sense of relatedness with you, to feel so comfortable with you that when it comes time for your child to take that small step into our shared world, it will be done with genuine interest and love. To help your child take that small step, become the playful object that comes between your child and what he wants to do, to take your child's attention away from his own enclosed world. Dr. Stanley Greenspan, the creator of DIR/Floortime, calls this process playful obstruction.
Examples of Playful Obstruction for Children with Autism
If your child favors repeatedly opening and closing doors, your foot can become a silly-sounding car or train that cleverly wedges itself behind the door. Will your child respond by giving you eye contact? Will he try to push your foot away with his hands? Will he express discontent with an "Ahh!" or a "No!"?
If your child likes to play with play dough, you can have a glob of play dough mysteriously show up on your forehead. Hopefully, your child will respond to your silliness with eye contact. Additional responses that would be icing on the cake include an attempt from your child to use his hands to try to remove the play dough from your forehead along with smiles and laughter.
Sometimes your voice alone can be a great tool for playful obstruction. For example, if your child loves to quickly flip pages of books, join him in the page flipping with your own book while at the same time make a wacky sound every time he flips a page, such as "BOING!" or "VROOM!". The hope is to have your child look up from his book to look at your book or- even better- at you. Using just your voice is a wonderful alternative if using your body to playfully obstruct is too overwhelming for your child right now.
Do Not Be Afraid to Experiment
Sometimes it is hard to become your child's play object because there is a fear of crossing that line that can lead to a very frustrated child and, ultimately, to a tantrum. The key is to take baby steps while at the same time be respectful towards your child's reactions to your attempts to be playfully obstructive before it develops into a tantrum. His reactions are, in fact, purposeful gestures, which is something to feel positive about.
Please do not hesitate to experiment, no matter how out-of-the-box the idea might seem. If the idea results in a tantrum, do not get discouraged. Treat that moment as a learning experience. You are learning about your child (in this case, what stresses out, or overloads, your child). Next time, you can just scale down your idea a bit. With the door scenario mentioned above, if the child in the scenario becomes extremely upset after you playfully place your foot behind the door, just sit near him during your next opportunity and use your voice as the obstruction, making an overexaggerated funny sound every time the door opens and closes. When your child's reactions become consistent and positive, such as repeated eye contact, that would be an ideal time to go back to using your body to be playfully obstructive.
The idea behind playful obstruction is to try to capture your child's attention while joining him in the activity that is motivating for him. His responses to your playful obstruction, whether it is with your body or just with your voice, is his way of showing that he is ready to take the small steps away from his own world and into our shared world. If some of your creative ideas do not result in positive reactions, that is ok because the more your child is given such playful and meaningful learning experiences, the more he will be willing to turn those small steps into bigger ones.
The amount of ideas you can use to become your child's play object is as big as your imagination.
Source:
Greenspan, M.D., S.I. & Wieder, Ph.D., S. (2006). Engaging autism: using the floortime approach to help children relate, communicate, and think. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Jessica Mitchell-Stoddard - For the past four years, I have worked with young people on the autism spectrum, first as an instructional specialist in a classroom ...
