Parent Perspectives: Floortime Intensives at the DIR® Institute

Photo credit: ICDL, Inc.

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Parent Perspectives: Floortime Intensives at the DIR® Institute

by Affect Autism

This Week’s Episode

This episode we are covering intensives at ICDL’s DIR Institute in Livingston NJ where families come for a week to just do Floortime and get Floortime parent coaching. My guests are two mothers of two children each. Daniela Bishop is in the Toronto area like me and Samantha Moran is from Colorado. Daniela is a registered nurse who has an 9-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old autistic son. Samantha is a stay-at-home mother of a 6-year-old neurodivergent daughter and a 3-year-old daughter.

What brought you to Floortime?

Daniela first heard about DIRFloortime in 2010 in a second-year psychology course from Dr. Stuart Shanker when he was still teaching at York University in Toronto. He presented the research that is on ICDL’s website. It was interesting, but she didn’t have children yet. Then in 2021 after her son received an autism diagnosis she asked a question on a Facebook group where a mother mentioned that she was following Floortime, saying that there are very accessible courses online for parents. She found and took DIR 101: An Introduction to DIR and DIRFloortime.

Samantha’s daughter had been doing Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Speech Therapy. She found that her daughter was internalizing the message that something was wrong with her at 3 or 4 years old and she just couldn’t keep going to these appointments that were so deficit based. She was looking for resources and their Occupational Therapist mentioned Floortime parent resources. She did a virtual consultation online with Becky Gottlieb, the Floortime Intensives Program Coordinator at ICDL’s DIR Institute in Livingston NJ.

Although Samantha was trying to step back from all of the therapy appointments, her conversation with Becky was so strength-based that she was brought to tears multiple times and felt that somebody finally understood the beautiful child her daughter was. Becky mentioned the intensive, which sounded so out of reach, so she just started with parent coaching. With that process, she felt more and more drawn to going to an intensive with her family.

What made you decide to do the intensive?

Daniela had been receiving a temporary program of services in Ontario and was very cognizant of what services they were receiving that could try and change who her son was, which she did not want. Her son is always the light in the room with a big smile on his face, filled with warmth. By December 2022, she felt that things were not feeling right. She was tired, and her daughter was suffering, so she went to ICDL’s DIR conference in New York City in March of 2023 looking for something. She needed a big reset.

The intensive felt very unachievable, just based on sheer cost. Daniela says her husband is a number person and needs to see a perceived value. It felt like a big commitment, but looking back, she wishes she did the intensives a year earlier. At the conference, she looked into doing parent consultations and tried to work out the logistics of going there. They decided they would go in August of 2024. Daniela already had so much trust invested in it and it felt safe. She felt the respect for her children and for parents from the training leaders. They never told Daniela what to do. It was a slow process, as she finds it hard to trust others, but it really felt safe.

What were your thoughts going in to the intensive?

Samantha says that when she scheduled the intensive, it was overwhelming, but she so wanted more harmony in her household. She felt like there was so much dysregulation with her two daughters setting each other off, which then sent her into dysregulation as well. Daniela adds that it feels like a constant state of chaos, having no predictability, which feeds a loop of more dysregulation. It’s like you’re going nowhere. Samantha felt there were so many good things about their life, yet felt nervous system dysregulation all of the time. She just wanted the state of her house to change. 

Although Samantha knew it wouldn’t be instant change, she was ready and willing to make a big bet on the intensive because she felt confident that if she made that investment, something would shift. She told her friends that she was going to the Mom Olympics, playing for 2.5 hours, eating lunch, then playing for 2.5 more hours. She was gearing up for it. Her husband couldn’t make it to the intensive, but her mother came for some of the time. 

Samantha was prepared to learn as much as she could. She felt like Rocky, wholeheartedly diving in. She had her write goals ahead of time. She just remembers wanting something to shift. She had done a lot of exploring on the ICDL website and did parent coaching in advance with a Floortime coach where she submitted videos of her and her child, then reviewed them alone with the coach. She had some idea of what Floortime was, but she hadn’t experienced it in the way she would at the intensive. It was still just information floating around in her head.

I shared that what I was thinking going into the intensive was that I was looking for input on how to challenge my son to push that development forward in a playful, respectful way. Daniela had parent coaching first as well to see if it was a good fit. She had also done all the book learning and because she was the one spending time with her son, she felt her husband was left behind. Thus, her goal for the intensive was to support her husband’s relationship with their son and also to support their daughter.

Daniela’s daughter gets overwhelmed with her love for her little brother and had expressed deep sadness about why her brother had challenges. Daniela wanted her to feel valued, included, and capable of engaging with her brother. There is no one who can stretch her son’s capacities like her daughter can. Daniela registered her husband in DIR 101: An Introduction to DIR and DIRFloortime in May in order to have an understanding of the developmental capacities and the things they would be working on in August. She wanted to fade out and let her husband and daughter walk into the picture.

How did Samantha’s intensive go? 

Samantha says she was correct to call the intensive the Mom Olympics, and it definitely exceeded her expectations. She had anticipated being overwhelmed and leaving with more things jumbled in her head, but she didn’t anticipate the shift in development in her daughter that happened. It was huge. Also, for Samantha, it was about experiential learning. She felt what it feels like to connect with her daughter when she had the twinkle in her eye, and feel that closeness.

Floortime became a part of me.

Floortime parent, Samantha Moran

Samantha has done two full intensives and a partial one now. For the first one, her mother and both daughters were there. It was challenging and they were trying to find a balance. They would go back to the hotel after the challenging days, and the moments outside of Floortime were still feeling very overwhelming. Then her daughter and mother both got sick. She had a bit of panic when it was time to go as her brain was still catching up from all she had learned.

She went back for a second intensive six months later with just her neurodivergent daughter and her. She wanted to be able to really focus on maintaining the connection even outside the hours of the intensive. It was very powerful, even though she wasn’t dealing with the sticky moments between her two daughters. She felt like this was when she got to see the very best version of her daughter. It’s the intensive she walked away from with the feeling that her daughter would be ok, which she hadn’t really felt in her bones