About Autism

Are you worried about autistic-like behaviours because your child

  • doesn’t talk, play, interact, eat, respond or behave as you would expect at this age?
  • shows repetitive or controlling behaviours like lining things up, flapping hands, tantrums or insisting on sameness?  
  • sometimes seems lost, shut off, passive or withdrawn, prefers to play alone and has no friends, or is overly active and unable to settle to anything?

Did you know that autistic-like behaviours

  • do not necessarily mean your child has autism?
  • are all human behaviours and responses, that can be seen in most people?
  • can often change, when we understand what is really going on to create these difficulties?

Autistic-like Behaviours – Developmental Delay – Regulatory Issues

Autism diagnoses continue to rise, – and there is much confusion as to why this might be. Before considering a formal diagnostic process many parents are therefore looking for someone with a therapeutic developmental outlook to help them explore, what is really going on to create their child’s difficulties, and to help them find the most effective solutions.

My whole understanding of autism has changed!

‚My whole understanding of what autism is and the possibility of helping has changed. Such a powerful course! It made me realise that autism doesn’t have to be a label, – that children can be helped and lifted out of their isolation by working with them at their developmental level through interaction and child-led play, rather than trying to get her to do what ‘she’s supposed to do. It’s helped me to slow down and follow her lead, rather than trying to teach her words or train her to behave in a certain way. Now we have fun playing together at her own level, not mine!’Laura, Mother of Molly (age 6) with developmental challenges about the Floortime Introduction course

‚All children have the drive to interact socially, which is the essence of being human‘ (Prof. Shanker) 

The Power of Play provides scientific evidence, how Floortime play actually works to bring the child into our social world. In this study Prof. Stuart Shanker and his team from York University/Canada show the extraordinary effect that play has on children’s lives and how Floortime play helps to build the social brain network. By coaching parents in therapeutic Floortime play and to create the social situations that are necessary for those brain and mental connections to form, the child begins to interact and communicate, because s/he wants to, because it makes sense and is fun, – not because s/he is trained to do so.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAtiRnOxNBg  and  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TRL1TMwsuA 

The Need for Rewarding Interactions

But ‚if the child is not helped to find manageable, rewarding interactions, he or she will begin to ’shut down‘ the baffling environmental input and a form of self-imposed sensory deprivation will begin to set in.‘ says Dr. Stanley Greenspan, ‚father‘ of the DIRFloortime approach  www.floortime.org

 

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