Yet Antother Intervention Method

August 18, 2005

Good Morning,

I am new to the group, did a quick search, and did not see that

anyone has mentioned one of the intervention models that we use with

my 3 1/2 year old, HFA son, Merced.

Dr. Stanley Greenspan (www.stanleygreenspan.com) is based out of

Washington University in the Washington, DC area. Over the

last 20+ years he has developed, and continues to improve upon, what

he calls the DIR/Floortime (www.icdl.com) (www.floortime.org) method

for children with all sorts of developmental delays, language

delays, and especially autism.

The shortest way to describe it, and keep in mind this is not doing

it the justice it deserves, the Floortime approach is a method that

empowers families to learn a new way to play with their children,

and by doing so, encourage functional language development.

He has recently published a long term study of some boys in their

mid-late teens who are now: creative, thoughtful, sensitive and able

to live and react to the real world.

I am in the process of trying to bring more DIR/Floortime

facilitators to San as a way of broadening the choices

available to families who are dealing with their child's

challenges.

In Michigan, there is a man named Dr. , who has taken

Dr. Greenspan's method and tweaked it a bit. He has called it the

PLAY project (www.playproject.org); it is currently in use

throughout school districts in Michigan and scattered throughout the

US. The most exciting part of the PLAY project is that it is so

cost effective: around $5000 per year, vs. around $50,000 for other

methods that may not be as effective.

I would encourage everyone to please check out the links, and

encourage your Texas community to at least try to bring these

methods to you.

Thanks for your time.

PS -I was online yesterday, and I would encourage you all to check

out Autism from the Autistic person's point of view at:

and

It is really interesting to see what they have to say about 'curing'

autism; it gave me a lot to think about as a parent.

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