Learn to identify families who could benefit from support to address children’s limited social interaction and play skills. Galford-Koeppel teaches us how to support caregivers in learning to understand their child’s focus of interest, the ability to jointly attend in play, and the creation of symbolic play. Various evidence-based approaches will be covered including: DIRFloortime®, Filial Therapy, Child-Parent Relationship Therapy, JASPER,  and Help is in Your Hands (ESDM). When clinicians and practitioners focus support on caregivers, the child can experience optimal outcomes of independence, connectedness, flexibility, and positive mental health. 

Learning Objectives

• Participants will differentiate caregiver-child pairs who can benefit from application of concepts of family play therapy combined with DIR®/Floortime
• Participants will be able to design activities to scaffold shared attention and joint attention during caregiver-child relationship therapy.
• Participants will construct activities to support development of symbolic play skills during caregiver-child relationship therapy for children with short social attention. 

Who should attend?

DIR® practitioners of all levels, child therapists, early childhood educators, parents, speech and language pathologists, early intervention specialists, occupational therapists with a basic understanding of DIRFloortime®, basic understanding of child development.