DIR/Floortime Autism Family Meetup Group

This group will be a warm, friendly and open support group for parents whose toddler or older child is concerned or has received a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder or other related developmental and pragmatic based communication challenges. Our conversations will be centered around Neurodiversity and the DIR/Floortime framework, a comprehensive evidenced based social-emotional Developmental approach.

Discussions will consistently include, how to slow down, understand, enter and engage your child's world (i.e., his/her natural intent or affect) in order to meaningfully encourage and deepen back and forth spontaneous gestural and verbal reciprocity; simple to complex ideation (i.e., functional to symbolic play) and simple word utterances, phrases to full social-pragmatic communication/language as your child begins to move up the Emotional Developmental ladder.

One of the primary motivating factors in forming this support group is based upon a tremendously voiced outrage by many families in 25 years of my practice as a Developmental special educator in NJ early intervention and private families for not being presented with a biopsychosocial developmental evidence-based treatment intervention option other than a behavioral based methodology (ABA), which views all behaviors as willful and surface behaviors, selective memorized task/acquisition or positive compliance vs. non-compliance to the misguided will of adult directed behaviors.

One of the most critical factors in supporting your child's emerging development is first understanding what your child's is communicating not from the perspective of the of his/her early intervention, preschool, school common "labeled behaviors" but from the perspective of your child's underlying autonomic nervous system with respect to what s/he is actually feeling. For example, "Does your child internally feel safe to engage with others and his/her surroundings or is your child's sympathetic-adrenal nervous system adaptively mobilized for defensive fight/flight or freeze/withdrawal or shut-down behaviors?"

The availability to engage with others and the environment is directly linked to your child's physiological or autonomic state in taking in the world (i.e., registering and assessing whether it is safe or not-safe to engage with others and the world). The autonomic nervous system exacerbates each child's highly unique set of sensory-affect-modulation processing challenges. For example, over-responsive, under-responsive or mixed responsivities across one or more emotional-sensory domains, e.g., visual-facial, auditory-prosodic, tactile gestural co-regulated communication with others..

First and foremost the primary function of this group will be not just to present and inform about Developmental Affective Neuroscience and how it dramatically differs from applied behavioral analysis (ABA) but much more importantly to give center stage with open, attentive and empathic listening and encourage comfortably and safely many voiced and unvoiced fears, anxieties and concerns by families irrespective of treatment methodology used.