Christopher Ulmer is a special education teacher. In his third year of working with the same class of students, he wanted to highlight what he saw in his students – their brilliance, humor, and beauty. His first idea was a book in which his students would explain life from their perspectives, but when that didn’t work out, he started videotaping and […]
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This post is part of a series, taking a quick look at each developmental level, according to the work of Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder in their DIR/Floortime framework. As a child grows, they add new skills to what they learned in the previous levels. You can find the list of related posts here. When we meet children on the autism […]
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This year my daughter started grade one. Through her Kindergarten year and now this fall, we’ve been working with our school to create a program that meets her needs. We are very fortunate to have a school that is happy to learn about autism, about DIR/Floortime, and how to put it all together, but it has certainly been a learning […]
Read moreIn the beginning, finding activities to do for Floortime is easy since it is the child who chooses the activity. You are then looking to keep engagement and open and close as many circles of communication. Following the child’s lead is really important especially while the child is becoming more self-regulated. When that time comes, as it has for my […]
Read moreWhen our children were diagnosed with autism, we found out why they responded to the world in the ways they did. After the diagnosis, it seemed my husband and I asked ourselves two questions: What do we do now? And which program do we choose? Many sites on the internet did not paint a picture of hope that our children […]
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