DIR/Floortime based Autism Social Group Meetup cover photo

What we’re about

This group will be a warm, friendly and open support group for parents whose toddler or older child has received a diagnosis of mild to moderate autism spectrum disorder or other related developmental and pragmatic based communication challenges. Discussions will be centered around Neurodiversity, 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 consistent and tremendously voiced outrage by many families in over 22 years of my practice as a Developmental special educator in NJ early intervention and private practice and a primary member contributor to the DIR/Floortime coalition of NJ for over a decade with regards to families not being presented with a biopsychosocial developmental evidence-based treatment intervention option other than a behavioral based methodology (ABA), which targets surface behaviors only, selective memorized task/acquisition and positive compliance vs. non-compliance to adult directed behaviors.

One of the most critical factors is understanding your child's development is first understanding your child's physiological state or autonomic nervous system. 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 forgoing determines the nature of your child's "behaviors" and his/her availability to engage with others and the environment. 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.

DIR/Floortime is a biological-social-psychological framework for understanding how children in their processing of relationship interactions with primary caregivers develop in the first three years of life and how this begins to set the necessary foundations for all functional emotional and developmental growth throughout the lifespan. It is a Developmental neuroscientific evidenced based treatment approach for infants, toddlers and older children diagnosed with ASD and related social-pragmatic communication challenges. It is based upon the six primary core functional-emotional developmental capacities or milestones that directly involve child/primary caregiver social emotional relating/engaging, thinking and communicating and that are typically mastered by each child during the first three years of life. This includes: