Floortime Therapy

Much has been noted about the use and positive effects of floortime therapy as defined by the late Dr. Greenspan when working with children with autism. The therapy was seen to work in significantly improving both emotional and intellectual skills of children on the spectrum. Greenspan once explained this in an interview "...it builds intellectual skills too because remember, the building blocks of intelligence are communication and thinking. That is the essence of the Floortime approach. As we have shown in a different book, called The First Idea: How Symbols, Language and Intelligence have Evolved from our Primate Ancestors to the Modern Humans, which is available at all the bookstores, emotions, and these emotional interactions and this back-and-forth emotional signaling that goes on in Floortime, is actually the fundamental building block of human intelligence, not drilling on flashcards or learning specific letters or numbers. It really starts with your basic communication and thinking skills. As surprising as it may sound, cognition or intelligence comes from our emotional interactions."
Floortime therapy works, according to him, because the child learns to master a skill such as brushing teeth first on an object (therefore more fun and unthreatening)and eventually learns to apply it on herself or himself. This takes away the potential for conflict between the parent and child if the parent enforces the activity of brushing teeth daily on the child.
Dr. Greenspan noted: "If you get the child to want to do it by doing it with the dollies first, 90% of the ballgame is won."