DIR Capacity 3: Intentionality and Two-Way Communication

July 10, 2017 Deborah Dykstra

This post is part of a series, taking a quick look at each developmental capacity, according to the work of Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder in their DIR/Floortime framework. As a child grows, they add new skills to what they learned in the previous capacities. You can find the list of related posts here.

Communication is so much more than speech! We often do not realize how much of everyday communication involves non-verbal communication. We use gestures, posture, and facial expressions to understand and share wants and desires, recognize emotions, and get a sense of how others feel about us. So much can be said without ever speaking a word.

Children and adults with autism may not speak verbally at all, may use verbal language with a lot of repetition (echolalia), or they might speak fluently but with difficulty understanding nuances of language (sarcasm, metaphors, inferences, etc). They may have difficulty communicating their needs, wants, or preferences, but their nonverbal communication might be very expressive and offer all kinds of clues about what they want and need.

If a child seems withdrawn or unresponsive, it isn’t because they don’t want to connect with others. They are communicating – we just haven’t been able to make a connection yet, and interaction in ways we expect doesn’t feel natural to them. Children might do things like:

Start an interaction and then seem to lose interest.
Seem to ignore questions.
Use echolalia (repeating memorized words or sentences) as a way to interact. They might want you to repeat words back to them.
Suddenly stop communicating or wander away.
Communicate to get needs met, but not yet to share experiences.

If this is what you see, know that this child is reaching out in ways that are comfortable to them. Don’t give up! Give them some support, and they will continue to develop in their ability to communicate in different ways. This is a stage in their journey towards communicating their own thoughts.

After you have made sure the child is comfortable and established some strategies for emotional connection and engagement, the next step in addressing communication is simply to take turns with each other. A useful concept from Dr. Stanley Greenspan is “circles of communication.” A circle is when one person shares an idea or invitation verbally or nonverbally – and the other person responds to it. You can think of it like a game of ping-pong – if you send an idea to your child with a gesture or a word, does she respond? For example, I wave to you, you wave to me – that’s one circle. When a child is comfortable in this capacity, they will be comfortable with 5-10 back-and-forth connected responses (circles) – either verbal or nonverbal.

Strategies

Continue to support the child in his self-regulation and shared interests (Capacity 1 and 2). While those are in place, you can:

Engage her in pleasurable activities.
Activate senses to get his whole body involved,
Be silly! Accentuate emotions with gestures/facial expressions.
Respond to all communication as though she means it.
Play simple people games like peek-a-boo or chase.
Play “verbal ping-pong” – mimic the child, introducing small variations.
Try giving directions or hints using gestures or glances only, and no words.

Be clear and concise – if you’re using words, make your sentences just slightly more complex than your child’s. If they speak in two word sentences, you can use three-word sentences. But remember, you don’t need words to work on this skill, and even for verbal children, there is great value in focusing on nonverbal communication.

For now, you’ll usually have to work pretty hard to keep things going, and each interaction will last a short time. But the important thing is to “persist in your pursuit” – don’t give up, and be attentive to your child’s moods and rhythms to choose the best times for successful interactions. Choose activities you know your child likes as starting points. Challenge your child to do things with you, help him achieve his goals, and even add in obstacles and challenges to add steps in an interaction.

Also remember that this isn’t just about playtime – you can have great opportunities for interaction in routine activities like dressing or walking down the street.

You will know your child is building this capacity when:

he begins to express his own ideas, and you begin to have more of a sense of your child’s personality
the child shows desires by pointing, reaching, making sounds – she moves to communicate
you see some back and forth interaction
older children are able to initiate and respond even when they are feeling strong emotions.