Knowing and starting from your child’s developmental level helps them feel successful, valued and understood
In our last post I gave an overview of DIRFloortime and why we use it at Play for Real. Over the coming posts I’d like to talk about each of the different aspects of the framework and how understanding them can help you and your child.
Let’s start at the beginning with the “D” of DIR.
The “D” in DIRFloortime is for “Developmental” and is a key component for understanding your child and how to best support them as they grow and develop. At Play for Real we use the “Functional Emotional Developmental Capacities”, or FEDCs, to assess and then support the growth of cognitive, social, emotional, language and motor skills. Understanding these developmental capacities can help you in your interactions with your child. We’ll come back to talk more about the FEDCs in future blogs.
Every child is unique!
Every child is different and develops at their own pace. Knowing where your child is developmentally can help you to bring out the best in them. When you know what your child’s current level of development is you can have realistic expectations for their communication and social interaction, for their motor, play and cognitive skills, and for their behavior. This leads to your child feeling successful, valued and understood, and what great feelings they are – for you and for your child!
Knowing the next step in your child’s development helps you to not expect too much or too little, and to give them just enough of a challenge to keep developing, but not too big of a jump so that they feel frustrated or like they are failing.
A child’s developmental level isn’t necessarily always the same. It’s important to remember that, just like us, children can have good days and bad days. On a good day they may be ready to tackle all kinds of things and can handle challenges and frustrations, but some days the slightest thing may be too much!
Next Up:
In future blog posts we’ll talk about each of the FEDC’s and give some suggestions for how you can support your child to develop or to become stronger at each of these levels. But, first let’s go ahead and look at the “I” and “R” of DIR.
If you would like to know more about DIR, click here
