Floortime Supports Parental Self-Efficacy

Affect Autism: We chose play, joy every day

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What is Floortime?

DIR Glossary

Floortime Supports Parent Self-Efficacy

by Affect Autism

https://affectautism.com/wp-content/uploads/2029/12/2024-11-08.mp3

This Week’s Episode

My returning guest is Dr. Colette Ryan, an Infant Mental Health Specialist who is an Expert Developmental, Individual differences, Relationship-based (DIR) Training Leader and who is part of a group starting up a new Floortime school in Toyko Japan as the Floortime Supervisor. Today we are covering a topic near and dear to Colette’s heart, parent self-efficacy, the topic of her recent PhD dissertation. She recently presented on this topic at the 2024 ICDL DIRFloortime conference.

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Working with Parents

Colette is putting her Floortime into practice by interacting with parents daily as parents drop and pick up their children from the new school, but she also does 1:1 sessions with families on the weekends and an online class for parents every two weeks about DIR topics, supporting parents in learning the DIR model and supporting their ability to feel successful with their own child.

DIR is new to most of the families, but Colette has been on this journey in Toyko for 2.5 years now, so has met and worked with many of the families. The school has now been opened for over 7 weeks and parents are already reporting positive experiences whereas they did not have success with school in the past.

Parent Self-Efficacy

Colette’s dissertation from Fielding Graduate University title is “The Use of DIRFloortime to Support Parental Self-Efficacy in Japanese Mothers“. She chose this topic because she loves working with parents. When ICDL started the DIR Home Program during Covid and developed modules for learning for caregivers, Colette took parent’s ideas about what they needed to learn about their own child. Part of the success of the home program was that Colette and the other coaches were providing knowledge that the parents needed to be successful with their own child.

Parent self-efficacy is the ability for a caregiver to feel they are successful and capable in supporting their child to grow and develop. With predictably developing individuals, Colette says, most parents feel pretty successful. They understand their child’s cries and cues. With a neurodivergent child, that might be a little bit harder, she explains. When caregivers are not successful with their child, it’s hard to want to play that game again if it hasn’t worked.

If your child can’t play peek-a-boo, you’re going to stop playing peek-a-boo, Colette says. What we get to do as Floortimers to support caregivers is to help them see that maybe the child can’t reach their arms up to get picked up because motor planning is a challenge for them. Maybe peek-a-boo is hard because they’re uncertain as to where you go when you’re behind that blanket, so maybe we just hide behind our fingers instead. Maybe if they want to be picked up but can’t lift their arms up without falling over, you can get down on their level and maybe they can reach their arms straight out instead.

When a parent is successful, Colette stresses, they want to do it again and again. I shared that Brooke Barracks talked about this a few podcasts ago where her son was unable to lift his arms up to get picked up. She was able to pick up on her son’s cues to see that he wanted to be picked up, even if he couldn’t signal it the way that his twin sister did. When a parent can read a child’s cues, it makes all the difference in the world. It is very powerful when you recognize how to communicate with your child in non speaking ways and notice their communication cues.

Supporting Parents

Some parents need more support than others attuning to their child and reading their cues. One of the gifts that Dr. Greenspan gave us, Colette shares, was understanding attunement, which is about getting a good fit with your child and understanding that just-right fit. As Floortimers, we can support caregivers in finding that just-right way to be with their child, Colette says. Dr. Greenspan did say that he never found a baby who he couldn’t engage, even if they ‘seemed’ to be in their own world, by adjusting the tone of his voice, by moving slower or more quickly, etc.

Colette suggests that we imagine that parent who is so stressed because they have not yet been successful with their child and how hard it would be to try to interact in all of those different ways and still not be successful. After awhile, self-preservation tells you to stop, she says, and parents get dysregulated. The results of her dissertation study found that if you want to support parental self-efficacy, you have to Floortime parents by supporting safety and regulation in parents.

Colette continues that we have to be able to engage with parents and support their ability to use intentional communication. We have to be able to support them in problem-solving and having ideas, because if they don’t have those, they’re not going to be able to do that with their child. Colette asks us to imagine trying to support a child through symbolic play when you’re not even regulated yourself. It is not fun because it’s too hard. I shared that in Episode 6 of Season 1 of We chose play is Colette coaching me through a video, retroactively, supporting me in self-reflecting.

I was so overwhelmed with how much my child protested and cried, but at least he could always be soothed by picking him up and providing him with movement, which is why it was so hard for him to go to sleep and be still. Colette says to think about the effort it took from me to find that just-right thing that my child needed, and now think of the thousands and thousands of Floortime families out there and providing them with that ability to figure out that just-right way of being with their child, which can be totally exhausting. As a Floortime community, she continues, we need to hold our parents and go on this journey with our parents.

Family and Community

Colette shares that John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, said that if a community really values their children, they need to cherish their parents. Dr. Stanley Greenspan talked about Floortime as a family approach and how you really are ‘treating’ the entire family. Parent self-regulation is huge. If you can’t be regulated, you can’t co-regulate with your child. The person who gave us parent self-efficacy was Albert Bandura, Colette continues. In her dissertation she talked about the child, the family, and the community.

She got her information about the child from Dr. Greenspan, talking about development, reminding us about individual differences, and reminding us about relationships. She got her information about the family and supporting the family from Bandura. Urie Bronfenbrenner gave her the idea about the community that supports the family. Colette says that Floortimers support caregivers by talking about following the child’s lead, about attunement, and other practices. What I hear a lot of parents saying is that the community piece is missing.

They don’t have any Floortime providers in their area, and this is the value of parent support meetings where parents can connect. I found that parents really listen to each other. They want to interact with the people who support them–the DIR coach, but they also respond so well to that community aspect. All three layers that Colette talked about are so important. Colette continues that when we think about community in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, we talk about the extended family, the school, religion, culture, politics, etc.

We have Floortime families from all over the world in so many different cultures. Colette works in the Japanese culture where they have a term, ‘meiwaku‘, which is the desire not to cause anybody else discomfort. As a community, most individuals within the Japanese culture try to make sure they don’t cause anyone else any bother. If their neurodivergent children are yelling, screaming, or having meltdowns, that would cause other people bother, so the Japanese caregivers might have difficulty understanding their part in that community.

That’s the piece that Colette gets to do in Japan, but this is happening in all cultures. Each culture has things that help you to fit in, she says. We, as Floortimers, need to support individuals in different cultures to support how their community would be able to support their family.

Cultural Considerations

Colette has learned so much working with different families about different cultural practices. Before the war in Ukraine, she spent a week in Kiev working with families and practitioners and understood more about that culture, but since the war happened, she was suddenly supporting families going through this huge traumatic event where they were fleeing their country in the middle of the night. She had to do something different to support those families.

There are some cultures, she continues, that don’t have a word for ‘affect‘ and Floortime coaches need to support caregivers in those cultures in understanding what affect is. Culture really comes in to the whole idea of parental self-efficacy. Colette says the question is about what it feels like for a parent to feel self-efficacy in this culture?

Floortiming the Parent

You really have to Floortime the parent, meeting the parents where they are at, taking account into the parent and family individual differences, how sensory systems clash, perhaps, and building that relationship with the family. It’s hard, Colette says. And there’s such a difference working with a family in person versus virtually. Colette explains that when you’re in person with a family and you can see the anxiety building up in the caregiver because their child is doing something that they don’t want someone else to see.

In those moments, Colette might let the child do what they’re doing as long as they’re safe and sit with Mom or Dad or caregiver and talk about something other than what’s happening to help them to organize. They use this method when they do intensives at the DIR Institute in New Jersey, she says. In those moments where parents might become dysregulated, one of the training leaders at the intensive will keep the child safe while the other one talks to Mom and Dad. They might talk about the great toy in front of them, or about the sleep the night before in order to regulate again.

Once the parent is regulated, it’s easier to regulate the child. The adult brings the calm to the child’s wavy seas, Colette says. We want to make sure the parent is on the calm seas before they attend to the child on the rough seas.

Floortime Coaching

I asked Colette about working virtually with parents where you get to interact with just the parent while the child is at school or with the other parent, and you get to see that more reflective side of the parent. They might have insights that they can’t have in the moment when they’re overwhelmed with their child. Colette responds that families allow themselves to be vulnerable with Floortime coaches, given all of the experience the coaches have with parents and families.

Colette says here is where they can be supported in reflecting and talking about different practices like pacing, for instance, if they’ve never heard of it. The coach can describe about how the sensory system processes information, and how if we just slow down, it might help. Maybe following the child’s lead has been misunderstood by the parent, so you get to have that conversation. When Colette presented at the 2024 ICDL DIRFloortime conference she talked about supporting parents in parent self-efficacy with different Floortime practices.

Colette likes the four Ls: Less Language, Longer Latency. Using less words, slowing down, and waiting longer. Maybe we need to use gestures more and less language to conserve that brain energy for play rather than on processing the words coming at us. We slow down so a child can keep up with us. If we move really fast, they might not see everything because it happened too fast and they couldn’t process it all. I gave the example from We chose play of Dr. Tippy talking about Dad being ‘very athletic’ and seeing if he could slow down so our son could follow and participate in the play with Dad, otherwise he’s so anxious because he wants so badly to play with Dad but he’s moving too fast.

We can slow down our body, our actions, and our affect, Colette explains. The coaching really helped Dad use anticipation to get those longer interactions happening. Colette said that she bets that in that moment, Dad felt successful, versus when he was moving really fast, which felt less successful. We’re always focused on the child, but Colette brought it right back to the parent. We can look at how successful the parent felt as well as looking at the child’s capacities as a result of that.

A parent who is successful will do it again, Colette repeats. A parent who is not successful may not have the brain energy to do it again and again. That’s what we get to do as Floortimers, she stresses, is to provide success. There are so many recent studies on parent-mediated models in early intervention and with that, came a lot of research on parental self-efficacy, she says.

Think about what it meant to be able to provide support for their child and play ball with their child, to get their child to eat their lunch, or to be able to get their child in the car seat successfully because they were able to slow it down. That’s real success for families, she insists.

Success with Transitions

Colette made me think of transitions talking about the car seat. Autistic Self-Advocate Kieran Rose talks about monotropism and having to be sucked out of a black hole during transitions. Colette says to imagine if someone came to your door, and they grabbed you and put you in their car and started driving away. You can verbally tell your child where you’re going, but they may have no idea where they’re going. If we slow it down, Colette says, and show pictures of where we’re going, and have a transition device–whether it’s a picture or a stuffed animal, the child might then know that ‘this thing means we’re going in the car‘ then the parent can be successful.

I use a technique to transition my son to the car by getting him to think about the things he likes about driving in the car–our playlist of songs that he likes to listen to. I figured out how to change songs on the playlist through the Bluetooth feature in the car. Colette points out that I found success, so I was willing to do it again and again. I added that he’ll still protest and want to stay home and play all day, but setting firm expectations helps while shifting the focus to the fun things in the car, and of course this is very different with an adolescent versus a preschooler.

An Impromptu Coaching Example

I had Colette walk me through an exercise that she does with parents. The latest challenge I’ve been having with my regulation is that my son talks non stop and bombards me with questions over and over again, and often they are the same questions repeated. They are typically questions he knows the answer to. He just wants to keep the interaction going. He will also go through a list of birthdays for each month of the year and continue to ask whose birthday is in each month.

Colette said that it’s not about the birthdays. I am his favourite person in the world and he wants to keep it going. She asked if the birthdays are written down. We did write them on the calendar. Colette said that these birthdays mean something different to him than they do to us. He wants this interaction with me, too. Colette wondered if I can shift talking about birthdays to talking about the person. When he brings up Grandpa’s birthday, we could wonder what Grandpa’s real name is, and what Grandpa liked as a child, etc. Let’s make Grandpa more than his birthday, she suggests.

We can expand on each person by adding something new, Colette suggests. Maybe we’ll be talking about Grandpa’s real name over and over for awhile, but it’s a shift. I could also make a birthday book where we have a page for each month. Colette pointed out that he keeps the conversation going and going because I am his most favourite person and he never wants to let that go.

I shared that I ‘should’ know all of this, but like other parents, even knowing about Floortime, we still get stuck on what to do with our own child, and this is the value of Floortime coaching. It supports us to have ideas. Dr. Tippy said I can answer that I don’t feel like talking about birthdays. Maude also told me to respond in different ways each time. Vary up the responses. I thanked Colette for the additional idea of how to respond when I am bombarded with birthdays. Also, I pointed out that I like biographical facts about people I know, too, so I can understand how these facts are important to my son.

I thanked Colette for helping me feel energized with these new ideas. She mentioned that I’m probably feeling regulated, too, and will be ready to engage and interact. I shared that this is a benefit of parental self-efficacy. I shared that things might not work, too. I might feel deflated if my son isn’t excited about the new ideas, but a coach can help you brainstorm that, too. In conclusion, Colette just pointed out that Floortime supports parents and parent self-efficacy!

This week’s PRACTICE TIP:

This week let’s identify where we feel success and where we struggle with our child.

For example: Figure out where you are successful in feeling connected with your child and note the environment and what you may have done to promote that. Next, take stock of when things are tough with your child, and again think about the tips Colette gave: Are you moving too quickly, using too much language, focused on your agenda versus following their interest, or does the child have sensory or other demands they are dealing with? Try to investigate the ‘why’ behind the challenge and using some of the Floortime techniques discussed, see if you can alter that interaction for the better.

Thank you to Dr. Ryan for taking the time to dive in to parent self-efficacy with us. I hope that you learned something valuable and will share it on social media.

Until next time, here’s to choosing play and experiencing joy everyday!