Intensives at the DIR Institute

Affect Autism: We chose play, joy every day

Photo credit: ICDL, Inc.

What is DIR?

What is Floortime?

DIR Glossary

Intensives at the DIR Institute

by Affect Autism

https://affectautism.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/2024-11-22.mp3

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 families there at the same time with one training leader each, and sometimes there’s only one family. Sometimes training leaders will switch after lunch, and sometimes the family will stay with the same training leader for the day. It really depends. Gretchen continues that although she knows a lot about individual differences, the focus is on educating families about Floortime and how they can bring it back into their homes. It’s really incredible to see what can happen and how empowered families can be in that short amount of time, she summarizes.

Logistics of the intensive

Families who are interested can look at ICDL’s website at the institute page, determine the dates with ICDL and choose if you want 3, 4, or 5 day intensives. If you’re coming for the first time, consider 4 or 5-day intensives, Becky suggests. They’re 5 hours each day: 2 1/2 hours in the morning with an hour break for lunch and another 2 1/2 in the afternoon. You can bring your lunch and eat in the kitchen or go out for lunch. You have the evenings free. It’s in a very nice area in a commutable distance to New York City.

Some families stay at a hotel and others get an Air B&B. Becky says they will meet with the families to support making them find what will be comfortable for them during their stay. While at the intensive, the family also may get visits throughout the week from Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Gil Tippy, Chief Clinical Advisor of the intensives or Dr. Jeff Guenzel, Professional Counselor and Executive Director of ICDL. They meet with the families, they coach the training leaders during the intensive, and they do Floortime. The training leaders and directors reflect together.

Gretchen says that it’s about learning and growing together. That’s part of practicing Floortime. It’s a continuous learning experience and process of putting it into practice and reflecting on how it went, and that’s what they’re encouraging families to do, too. We’re all learning together, she emphasizes. Nobody has it all. Becky says that Gretchen and her are also learning from each other. It’s great for parents to see that they are the expert on their child and that we’re all there to figure it out together, Becky shares. They may try something that doesn’t work and that’s ok. It’s great to be able to have that experience of rupture and repair.

Gretchen states: “Becky is an incredible Floortimer. Becky is awesome at Floortime!” Think about the fourth Functional Emotional Developmental Capacity (FEDC 4), Gretchen says. It’s this continuous flow of interactions. It’s collaboration. It’s problem solving. Once you really embrace Floortime, it impacts your life in so many different ways. It’s not something you’re just turning on at work. We’re really flexing that capacity four together. We’re in it together. It’s a cool part of the intensive also.

The Facility

The space that the intensive happens in is a really cool space, Gretchen says. It’s the perfect size. It has multiple rooms with different functions. We start the moment the family walks in the door, she continues. They want to start in a more subtle way to not come on too big and strong then have to dig out of that overwhelm. They want to watch, wait, and wonder a bit first. They do Floortime right in the waiting room. Getting from the waiting room into the larger gym sometimes is a really neat problem where we figure out how to get the door open, Gretchen continues. There’s a cozy couch and a bunch of toys to get the interaction going, keeping in mind that we want to be the best toy in the room.

The sensory gym is, for Gretchen, the perfect size. It has some lycra hammocks, a rock wall, and a tent with a tactile bin. It’s just a really neat space that they can manipulate in different ways with different items, Gretchen continues. There’s a smaller room with more symbolic toys like a kitchen and a pirate ship to join kids in flexing their symbolic thinking. There’s another smaller room with some cozy couches and not a ton of toys, often used for Dr. Tippy and Dr. Guenzel to chat with the parents. They also have a kitchen where they have a snack every morning. The space affords the opportunity to do awesome Floortime. I added that there’s windows all around so it’s nice and open and bright.

Our Experience at the Intensive

My son was excited to attend the intensive. He had been to the center in 2019 just for a visit so he knew where we were going. He was excited arriving in the waiting room because there were Magnatiles where Becky and my son built a huge tower. We were able to bring ICDL staff member Morgan some Canadian Laura Secord mint chocolate bars that he loves by knocking on the window where he sits behind, and we could ask him to open the door. My son was having fun from the first moment because Becky and Gretchen were so warm and he opened up to both of them right away. We knew his interests were Super Mario and Monopoly so it was a good way to start following his lead.

I remember thinking that I’d have five days of sitting and playing and wondering how I would get through it. One of my challenges I’ve recognized is that when I’m doing Floortime I can find it hard to stay in the moment unless we’re really moving around and doing stuff such as driving somewhere or looking at model trains. The idea of sitting and playing all day was not ideal to me, but the time flew by and it was super engaging. I never felt it wasn’t enjoyable the entire week! Becky and Gretchen really helped me understand the idea of prolonging those interactions with my son. He has so many ideas in his head but not the motor planning to carry them all out.

My son had seen a Super Mario video of Mario chopping wood and having an accident with the axe so this was where he took some of the play. He also wanted to break his arm or leg from other similar videos he saw. At one point, he wanted Becky to break her arm. He would rush ahead with ideas saying she broke her leg. She said, “Wait a second! I broke my arm! Ouch!” Then, for the next 45 minutes, she had to go to the doctor, we got him to figure out that she needed an x-ray, wondered who would be the x-ray technician (me!), got the x-ray, and then Becky stopped him, “Oh no! How do you think I feel right now waiting for my results?” He replied, “Scared“.

I then asked my son, “How do you think I feel? I have to tell her the results! How am I going to tell her if she has a broken arm?” Once she got her results that it was broken, we had to say, “Now what?” We wondered how she felt, what to do about it, and he came up with the concept of doing exercises. We had to wonder how often to do them. This whole pretend scenario was stretched out to 45 minutes of shared problem solving! Becky said that I am describing the process.

Becky continued that at the intensive, we have this beautiful gift of time. It might not be how it is in real life, but it gives parents permission to focus on Floortime right now and incredible things can happen. She shared how my son has incredible ideas and things he absolutely loves and wants to share with others, so their job was to push it a step further, expand on them, and get them to be more reciprocal. On Monday and Tuesday his ideas weren’t always about the interaction. They also wanted to approach the emotional aspect of his ideas and think about how to expand on it, including those emotions.

Gretchen continued that they didn’t have to tell him they didn’t care about his ideas. They were over and over acknowledging his ideas. That’s what following his lead is about: where is his affective drive and intent and where are the ideas coming from? They were trying to expand them, stretch his ideas and slow them down so he wouldn’t have to be overwhelmed with his ideas. They were also stretching his visualization capacities and using humour to play with some of his ideas. He empowered Gretchen with the characters he loved and she combined two of the characters’ characteristics. They were in the play together.

Gretchen explains that the relationship, pacing, and humour allowed him to think about his ideas. They also were aiming to bring in the emotional pieces to expand that emotional and symbolic thinking, and then help him sequence his ideas together and think logically through them all. In relationship, Gretchen continues, we were able to bring safety to some of those emotions for him. We can expand our resilience to experience these emotions through relationship. It brought it to life, Becky adds.

He had all these ideas in his mind, but to then be able to act out Princess Peach and think about what he had to do to become her and think about what mom wants to do, and what does she have to do to be that character. They were able to combine Mario, Monopoly and friends from school together, all while in this beautiful relationship. I added that at the intensive it was the first time I ever saw him role play. I liked how Gretchen supported his visualization by bringing his idea to play Monopoly into real life. She said, “Let’s make a game!“

They had to figure out what the spaces would be. Gretchen got out painter’s tape in many colours. He suggested an orange triangle, then a red square, then a blue circle, etc. Then they had to figure out what each space means. What would they use for dice? Who goes first? How do you win the game? Then, in the afternoon, Becky played the game with us but said, “Wait! This is too complicated. I need to write it down.” She got a white board and wrote out the rules. One space was an emotion space, because my son had recently seen Inside Out 2 and loved it. When Becky landed on that space, she was anxiety and acted it out. He loved that!

Becky continued to challenge him as to what happens here, having the rules in front of him which supported him to sequence the game. I shared that a highlight of the week for him was Gretchen saying “Koopa Choopa” (wrong) instead of “Koopa Troopa”. He still talks about that everyday! He also loved when he pretend broke his arm and was sitting in the boundex, getting proprioceptive input to his body, and made Gretchen the doctor and she asked if she would be a good doctor or a terrible doctor. He said, “Terrible!” with a giggle. He’s very aware of pretend and not pretend, so when he had an ear ache, he told Gretchen to chop off his ear, which she pretend did. It was about playing out all these ideas, each time stretching them out and bringing them to life, and he absolutely loved it.

When you join people where they are and are intentional about what you’re doing and how you’re tailoring your interactions, it’s amazing what can happen.

DIR-Expert Occupational Therapist, Gretchen Kamke

The Aftermath

I felt empowered because I knew how to go home and now we have painter’s tape all over our floor. We bought two body socks, which my son was wearing pretending to be characters from Super Mario, and he talks about going back all the time. Becky says that by the end of the week we were working on these later capacities and my son was able to share with me how much fun it was but that’s not always the case. Sometimes they’re just working on capacities 1 and 2 at intensives and it still feels as empowering as if we were working on capacities 4, 5, and 6. My son is a teenager but they’ve had 2-year-olds and it’s just as empowering.

They are just meeting each family where they are developmentally and supporting them all to work through their FEDCs and you never know where you’ll be by the end of the week. All the intensives feel so much fun to Becky and Gretchen and they do play until they all have fun. I shared that in the next podcast there will be two parents describing their experiences at their intensives, and both have children much younger than mine, so stay tuned! Gretchen said they can’t be attached to what an intensive will look like. The intensives are intense and are powerful. It is really one of the most powerful experiences that Gretchen has had in her career.

CURRENT DIR INSTITUTE PROMOTION

There’s a promotion right now 20% off for any intensives booked Dec, Jan, Feb. Summers are incredibly busy and book up very quickly. Feel free to contact them to schedule a week to work with your family!

See the ICDL Newsflash about Intensives by CLICKING HERE

This week’s PRACTICE TIP:

This week let’s think about which points made in this week’s podcast resonated with you.

For example: Let’s identify areas where we think we could use support. Whether or not we can attend an intensive or afford a Floortime coach, we can reflect on the connection we have or lack with our child and how we can carve out space for Floortime in our weekly schedule. It’s important to spend quality time together as a family and hopefully Becky and Gretchen provided some information that sparked some insights for you!

Thank you to Becky and Gretchen for sharing their passion for DIRFloortime and the DIR Institute intensives! We all hope that you enjoyed learning about the experience and found something valuable to share on social media!

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