Comments on: Engaging Floortime (4): Where I’m coming from

By: Bonnie Sayers

Bonnie Sayers — Sun, 11 May 2008 23:53:47 +0000

This is another book I have yet to find time to read through. I plan on doing that after finishing his online course that I am taking. Matthew had floortime therapy for a year and did very well. We changed clinics since the first one made a big deal on a scratch Matt did to her and filed some incident report and took a photo of it. That went too far. I also did a course on floortime there, which was a requirement. Then we went with the agency where Matt gets his feeding therapy and had it done in the home, first was a male that we could not relate to and then the supervisor who was very good, but last Sept one of the feral cats broke its leg and came in the house and she stopped due to her asthma. Now we are waiting on another male by summer time to pick it up again.

By: Neil Samuels

Neil Samuels — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 13:06:07 +0000

Yes, primarily with children who have early indications or have been been formally diagnosed (or in some cases misdiagnosed) with ASD/PDD-NOS.

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 04:27:05 +0000

Mr. Samuels, thank you very much for sharing your experiences here; do you work principally with autistic children?

By: Neil Samuels

Neil Samuels — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 04:05:45 +0000

What you fail to more appreciate or dare I say more subtly understand is that not that “parents cause their child’s autism spectrum challenges” but in fact, the proper and slow attunement and harnessing of the child’s natural intent (individual processing differences) in emotionally attuned and meaningful back and forth co-regulated child directed relationships can begin to reverse some of the core deficits associated with autism/PDD or, as often is the case, as a developmental therapist/educator I have repeatedly experienced first hand, prevent it from escalating to more severe ranges. The proper attunment of parent/child nurturance based practices (e.g., co-affect or co-emotional cuing) is, however, you want to otherwise distort and label “refrigerator mom theory”, needs to be learned by equipped and ill-equipped parents alike. Guilt has no place here, but rather, education and intuitive and empathic understanding does.

By: Autism Vox » Here I Am

Autism Vox » Here I Am — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 05:21:46 +0000

[...] And there is, I think, no good or true or right answer for one parent to give to another parent. It is a truism but it is, nonetheless, true that “all autistic children are different” and that “if you’ve met one autistic child, you’ve met one autistic child.” Different children have different skills and different levels of skills that vary as much as (to invoke the metaphor of the autism spectrum) the colors reflected off a prism in the sunlight. The ABA that has helped Charlie learn so much and like learning so much may seem like the last thing another child needs, as may the gluten-free casein-free diet he has been on since he was two years old, and the medications, and the Culturelle capsules. [...]

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 04:02:39 +0000

Jannalou, I have met those consultants too—we’ve been through many, some private and some from public school districts—-some with “attitude.”

(Our current consultant is really good.)

Greenspan writes as if he “knows” the children he has “worked with,” but all of them are composites (for reasons of privacy, as he says).

Yes, Daisy, I see much of Charlie is every autistic person I have met or read, and yet there is only one Charlie, for sure!

By: Daisy

Daisy — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 20:28:55 +0000

I totally agree with your statement that when you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person. These people may share traits in common, but every one is an individual. Autism is but one piece.

By: Jannalou

Jannalou — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:07:34 +0000

My main argument with ABA is not the methods and principles, it’s the attitude of the consultants that I’ve worked under.

There is a way to use ABA to the advantage of everyone involved, but I haven’t yet come across anyone who did so all that well. It sounds like you have.

I respond to Greenspan the way you do, though; I really dislike these veiled criticisms. It feels dishonest to me.