D - Developmental (functional emotional levels)
I – Individual (biological differences)
R – Relationship (critical piece needed to advance)

1. The assessment is comprehensive and includes videotaping child/caregiver interactions.

2. The Comprehensive Functional Developmental Intervention Program consists of specific therapies, home program, school program, biomedical interventions and family support.

3. Floortime™ is the heart of the DIR® Model’s developmental approach to intervention. It is a systematic way of working with a child to help him/her climb the developmental ladder.

1. Respects children and views them as capable, purposeful, and have the capacity to form warmly, related relationships with the important people in their lives. They are children first, not a label!

2. Empower parents by encouraging professionals to join with parents and journey with them as they seek to put the pieces of the puzzle together and help their child progress.

3. Understands that all children have a developmental path and it is through understanding each individual child that we can help them strengthen their areas of challenge and discover the areas of strength a child already possesses. Thus, the DIR® Model and Floortime™ can be utilized by all children…those who are “typical” and those with challenges.

4. Floortime™ encourages all of us to “start where the child is.” Be an observer, discover what that child loves and join them.

5. DIR® and Floortime™ challenges each of us to find our hidden child and find delight in a relationship with a child, whether it is joining with a child to blow bubbles, peek-a-boo, hide and seek or a game of chase. When you see the gleam in a child’s eye, you know you are on the right pathway!

6. DIR® encourages us to think about how a child experiences their world and how the behavior we see may be shaped by those experiences (sensory modulation, auditory processing and language, visual spatial processing, motor planning and sequencing).

7. It encourages us to help children become problem-solvers, not just children who can follow a simple prompt or direction.

8. It recognizes that affect is the key to all learning….helping a child learn to read affect cues is central to helping them to find meaning in everyday concepts and experiences.

9. The DIR® Model and Floortime™ provide hope and light for might seem an impossible journey. It does not set a limit on when a child will stop learning, how much they will learn, how they have to learn it, or where they will learn it. A journey starts with one step. DIR® and Floortime™ are about joining in a relationship together – a child, parents, therapist, teachers, family and friends…one developmental level at a time.

1. It teaches the child the pleasure of engaging with others, the satisfaction of taking initiative, making his wishes and needs known and getting responses.

2. It provides the opportunity for a child to learn how to sustain a longer, more continuous flow of back and forth communication, first without words and later on with them and eventually to imagine and think.

3. It provides the opportunity for spontaneous learning and recognizes the vital importance of warm, nurturing relationships.

4. The Floortime™ component needs to really focus on WAA (word, affect and action) so that the child develops that gleam in his/her eye (a demonstration of awareness and connection with the world around him) and is fully engaged all of the time).

5. Floortime™ is like ordinary interaction and play in that it is spontaneous and fun except that the adult’s role is to be the child’s very active play partner.

6. The adult’s job is to follow the child’s lead and play at whatever captures his interest. It must be done in a way that encourages the child to interact with you.

7. Although you follow the child’s lead, it does not mean going along passively with what a child wants to do. Following a child’s lead means building on the child’s natural inclination and interests in a way that literally compels the child to want to open and close more circles of communication.