Peter Cottontail will be hoping down the bunny trail very soon since Easter is on its way. If you’re the parent of a child on the Autism spectrum finding activities they may want to engage in is often difficult. Each child is different where some may enjoy the tactile stimulation of arts and crafts; others will wind up having a huge meltdown from the sensations, lower tolerance to sitting and can be overwhelmed.
However, this is a wonderful time to introduce the popular therapy of Floortime which is used in the treatment of Autism. It can take the simplicity of an Easter Egg hunt and make it both fun and therapeutic.
Floor Time
Floor time / DIR (Developmental Individual Difference) model by Stanly Greenspan is a therapy being used to help engage children that are often off in their own world and unable to play with their care givers. Floortime’s method of therapy works as building blocks or circles that work with making connections in the brain through play and relationship.
The idea is to follow the child’s natural interests and build on them by challenging them on higher levels. Floor time emphasizes the importance of the relationships in the child’s life with their parents and caregivers. Basically modeling and following the child’s interest, if the child likes to stack toys, the parent will also stack them. It is a high paced very interactive method of modeling the child and “normal play”.
The DIR or Developmental Individual Difference Model
DIR is the frame work for parents, clinicians, and educators to conduct a full assessment of the child to create a program tailored to the child’s needs. There are two main areas of the assessment. Where the child is developmentally is evaluated by the six milestones and looking at the child’s sensory needs which dictates how they respond to learning. After considering these factors the relationship aspect focuses on the caregivers adjusting their affect to the child’s sensory needs and development. The use of Floortime is often conducted on the floor.
The Theraputic Easter Egg Hunt
One Floortime technique is hiding toys and encouraging the child to find them. Get some plastic Easter eggs with surprises in them and hide them in the child’s area then follow and cheer them on to find the eggs. A lot of children with autism have difficulty finding items, so make it obvious.
The most important part of Floortime is doing it at a high pace and with much enthusiasm, speaking in a higher pitch tone to keep the attention of the child. If done successfully where the child is having fun finding the eggs, they should want to repeat the process. Floor time works with multiple mini sessions throughout the day. And is a workout for the parent, but is often satisfying because the child will want to play again (maybe ten times even). Before the therapy, the child may have rarely if ever played with their parents. This is a miracle in some ways to the parents of these children.
This past Easter Noah had his own Easter Miracle. Finding objects as I stated in competing backgrounds is very difficult. So the easter egg hunt he participated in , did not yeild many eggs. However, because there was a special egg that gave the BIG BASKET. He only had to find that one. When no one did, they let the kids know it was a purple egg. Noah who only had found 3 eggs, where many other kids had dozens found the purple egg and won the big basket.
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