Intensives at the DIR Institute

Photo credit: ICDL, Inc.

What is DIR? What is Floortime? DIR Glossary

Intensives at the DIR Institute

by Affect Autism

This Week’s Episode

This episode my guests are Educator Becky Gottlieb who is the Floortime Intensives Program Coordinator at ICDL’s DIR Institute in Livingston NJ, and Occupational Therapist, Gretchen Kamke, who is ICDL’s Accreditation Coordinator. Both are Expert Developmental, Individual differences, Relationship-based (DIR) Training Leaders who teach certificate courses and mentor professionals as part of ICDL’s Institute team and who were both my Floortime coaches at my intensive with my son this past August. We will be talking about intensives at the DIR Institute, and next episode I’ll be interviewing two parents who had their own family intensives.

What are ICDL Intensives?

Becky starts that a Floortime intensive is an immersive hands-on experience for the whole family to be coached by an expert training leader as part of ICDL’s institute. It’s basically a crash course in DIRFloortime. It’s a chance for them to support families in really understanding their child’s overall profile, to learn how to follow their child’s lead, how to engage with their child in a really meaningful and reciprocal way, and how to support their child’s developmental capacities.

Becky continues that they want to support families in feeling connected, in understanding their child through a Floortime lens, in celebrating their child’s strengths, and also working on situations that might feel tricky at home or in different environments. Gretchen says that the more they can support parents having the lens of the D, the I and the R, the more they can support families doing Floortime at home in a way that they still get to be parents. They’re not training parents to be therapists, Gretchen says, but it’s great to have this developmental lens.

Parent Self-Efficacy and Self-Regulation

In the last podcast was with Dr. Colette Ryan we talked about supporting parents to feel successful and how important it is to learn how to implement Floortime if you feel you know the theory but struggle to apply it with your child. These Floortime intensives really support parents to feel successful. Becky says that yes, it really brings things to life. What makes them unique is that they’re focused on Floortime from the moment you walk in the waiting room, focused on the individual profiles of all the family members, and working on building a relationship with the whole family. They’re looking to show that Floortime can be done anytime.

Gretchen continues that putting it into practice can be tricky when you know about the theory. A big picture tenet of DIRFloortime is that Relationships can support you getting through challenges, she says. At the intensives, it’s about empowering the parents with being able to build on strengths and feel good about themselves, as parents, so they can take more risks, and not feel alone. I said that it leads to parent self-regulation, too, especially when you have a child who gets so dysregulated, melts down, or is aggressive.

Becky says they’re supporting parents to get through all of these situations, whether it’s supporting transitions, mealtimes, or setting limits. At the intensives, the training leaders are always going for those moments of getting that gleam in the eye and that great feeling of being in a beautiful interaction, but they also support the tricky times. The focus of the week is educational parent coaching, which is a very important objective. They’re very clear that this is not therapy.

The focus at the intensives is on the whole family, thinking about the individual differences of each family member and how that fits into the big picture, really supporting parent’s regulation so they can support their child’s regulation. Rather than only thinking about the child, they’re thinking about the whole dynamic so it can be integrated back into home.

Who comes to the intensives?

Families come from all over the world for the Floortime Intensives including from Japan, Ireland, Ecuador, Canada, Mexico, to name a few, and from the United States whether it be California or more locally from New Jersey as well, and some come back for repeat intensives, Becky shares. Siblings, nannies, and grandparents are welcome. Therapists can even come to observe for a portion of the week. Anyone who wants to support the child can attend.

How do families get started?

Becky explains that once a week is chosen for the intensive and scheduled, families receive three virtual sessions to give them an introduction to DIR. They want families coming in with at least a basic understanding of some of the language they use, some of the reason for doing what they might be doing, and they also want to work on building that trust and relationship with the family, getting to know them. After the intensive, the family gets three more virtual sessions, too. Families also get one prep session to discuss logistics and any goals they want to focus on. 

At that prep session, families often meet the other training leader whom they’ll be with at the intensive. They are asked what would make the week feel successful. Sometimes that comes out as goals, and sometimes it just comes out as general areas they want to focus on, Becky explains, and sometimes they don’t know and they figure it out as they go. Becky always shares with parents that their goal for the week is connection and coaching. They’re not looking to see any massive developmental leaps throughout the week, but that almost always happens!

Every intensive is so unique, wonderful, and special, Becky continues, and it’s really hard to say where they’ll focus because as the week progresses, things change.

Parent Involvement

Another thing that makes the intensives unique is that they ask parents to be involved the entire time. If two parents attend, one might be leading an interaction while the other sits back with the other training leader who explains the ‘why’ behind what is happening. Although it can be exhausting, parents tend to feel invigorated and excited because this connection really fuels them. I concurred that it really gives them that parental self-efficacy to know how to interact with their child in a way that works for everybody.

It’s about Floortime

Their intensives are not discipline specific. The training leaders might include an educator, an occupational therapist, a speech-language therapist, or a mental health practitioner but it all comes back to the DIR model. The focus is Floortime. Sometimes the parents may not even know the discipline of the training leader who’s coming in. Although they think about things in their own professional lanes, they’re always bringing it back to the DIR model, Becky asserts. Depending on scheduling, a different training leader comes.

Sometimes there are two f