I remember the first time
this young man walked into our apartment, his shoulder-length ponytail, his
glasses, his easy smile. He
instantly removed his practical shoes and calmly introduced himself to his new,
inattentive student. Two-year-old Declan was
playing on the living room rug with his favorite toys, a collection of small,
plastic, birthday cakes labeled with numbers on the side. He was, as usual, stacking the cakes in
number order and knocking them down, over and over. Loren sat next to Declan, and in the most non-threatening
way, as if to offer a new dog his hand, watched the game. Then subtly, in tiny baby steps, he
entered the play. First with his
voice, “Oh! They fell,” then with his hands, passing back stray cakes that
rolled away after the fall. When
Declan’s trust grew and Loren was able to enter the play more fully, I was
astonished, even a bit appalled, to see him break the pattern. As if I had been indoctrinated into
Declan’s rigid rules to the cake game, I uttered, “He doesn’t…” and then stopped
myself as I watched Loren boldly do something different. Declan eyed this new stranger with pure
disgust as he rolled a cake on its side down a book he had propped up like a
ramp against a nearby ottoman.
“No!” Declan instructed.
“That’s just wrong,” he seemed to want to say, but a piece of him, I
could tell, was curious. More
importantly, and Loren was a master of this, it appealed to Declan’s sense of
humor, and eventually, he was able to allow a smile to break the barriers of
the rules despite this criminal act.
Loren was our first SEIT (Special Education Itinerant Teacher). He started working with Declan in our home through Early Intervention, and continued to shadow him as he went to nursery school. He became an expert on Declan and taught us more about our son and ourselves than we ever imagined he could. Using a clever combination of humor and Stanley Greenspan's Floor Time, Loren was able to get Declan to break out of his rigid routines and try new kinds of play, talk, and engagement with others. The general idea around Floor Time is for the parent or therapist to follow the child's lead, and then slowly build something new into their play. To learn more about Floor Time, visit Stanley Greenspan's site at http://www.icdl.com/
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