Play and Connection

DIR Floortime Play at Home: 5 Gentle Shifts to Connect With Your Neurodivergent Child

For months I tried to get my daughter to play “properly” with a toy farm. She turned her back and tapped a bottle lid on the wall. Everything changed the day I stopped offering the sheep and picked up a lid of my own.

The Lid, the Wall and the Sheep

My eldest daughter, Bella, was three. On our living room floor, a wooden farm set was laid out neatly: a red barn, little white fences, cows lined up in pairs. I knelt beside it, holding a wooden sheep, making cheerful “baa” sounds and trying to coax her into a tea party for the animals.

She wasn’t having it. She sat a little way off with her back to me, tapping a plastic bottle lid against the wall. Tap, tap, tap. When I slid the sheep closer to her hands, trying to steer her towards “proper” play, she didn’t look at me. She swept the sheep away with her arm.

At the time, I was an academic in Indonesia, lecturing in early childhood teacher education. I taught student teachers about play, development and social and emotional growth. In 2010, when Bella was seven, we moved to Melbourne so I could start my PhD, and later I worked as an early childhood educator. But on my own living room floor, none of my lecture notes helped. I had no idea I had ADHD, or that Bella did. I thought play was supposed to look like a textbook: eye contact, back and forth talk, shared pretend games.

Every time she turned away to tap that lid, I felt she was pulling away from me. Looking back, the wall between us wasn’t hers. It was my agenda. I wanted her to come into my world before I had taken the time to sit in hers.

What DIR Floortime Play at Home Really Is

DIR Floortime can sound clinical and complicated. At its heart, it’s very simple. It was developed by child psychiatrist Dr Stanley Greenspan and psychologist Dr Serena Wieder, and it focuses on relationships, emotions and each child’s individual way of experiencing the world.^[1]

Floortime is the hands on part. Instead of sitting across a table saying “point to the red circle”, you get down on the floor, notice what your child is already doing, however unusual or repetitive, and join them. Then you gently build moments of back and forth from there.

This fits what Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child calls “serve and return”: a child reaches out with a look, sound or action, and an adult responds warmly. Those back and forth moments help build the foundations of communication and self regulation.^[2]

Circles of Communication, Explained

In Floortime, a circle of communication is one back and forth exchange. Your child does something, you respond, and your child responds to you. That’s one circle closed. It doesn’t need words. A look, a sound, a gesture or a push all count.

The goal is gently stretching from one or two circles to longer chains over time. You don’t count them out loud or force them. You just notice when the conversation, with or without words, keeps going.

The Six Developmental Capacities, Simplified

Greenspan and Wieder described a set of functional emotional developmental capacities that children build step by step, from staying calm and interested in the world to logical, emotional thinking.^[1] The DIR model has since been expanded, but these first six are a helpful guide for families.

For months, I’d been trying to get Bella to play at capacity five, imaginative farm play, when what she needed was support with capacity one: feeling calm and safe. I was trying to build the second storey before the foundation had set. Her pushing the sheep away wasn’t defiance. It was her way of telling me it was too much. General child development milestones give us an overview, but emotional capacities grow on their own timeline, through safe relationships.

What Didn’t Work Before Floortime

Because I taught child development, my habit was to teach, direct and scaffold all the time. Unlearning that was humbling.

Turning Play Into a Quiz

Whenever Bella played, I asked question after question: what colour is that, how many wheels, where’s the cow going? I thought I was building language. Really, I was turning play into a test. For a child who found it hard to listen and move at the same time, the questions broke her focus. She’d drop the toy and walk away.

Insisting on “Proper” Toy Use

I had an unspoken rule that toys should be used the right way. Cars go on tracks. Blocks get stacked. If she wanted to line up dominoes along the rug or spin the wheel of an upside down fire truck, I’d gently “correct” it. That created friction and sent a quiet message: the way you explore the world is wrong.

Treating Floortime Like a Timetable

When I first read about Floortime, I tried to schedule it at set times every day. For a parent with undiagnosed ADHD, rigid timetables were a quick path to feeling like a failure. If we started late, or she was upset at that time, I felt I’d let her down. Connection doesn’t fit neatly into a calendar. It happens in short, messy moments across the day.

5 Gentle Shifts for DIR Floortime Play at Home

Things changed when I stopped trying to be Bella’s teacher or therapist and learned to be her play partner.

Floortime Through Your Child’s Interests

The best place to start Floortime is wherever your child already is. Here’s how to join some common interests, and one small way to stretch the interaction.

A Ten Minute Floortime Starter Plan

If you’re new to Floortime, try this simple plan once or twice a day. Ten minutes is plenty.

You can jot down what you noticed on the printable Floortime notes sheet below. Over a few weeks, the patterns can be really encouraging.

What My Autism Training Added

Years after those afternoons on the floor, I completed a series of online professional development courses in autism, including one on DIRFloortime in autism intervention and one on affirming play approaches for neurodivergent children. I’m not a certified DIRFloortime practitioner, and these courses don’t make me one. But they deepened what I’d learned the hard way at home. A few things stood out.

• Movement belongs in Floortime: the course on relationship, movement and play reminded me that many children connect best while moving, swinging, bouncing or crashing, not sitting still.
• Play that looks different is still play: affirming play approaches respect lining up, repeating and sorting as meaningful, not as something to fix.
• Attachment is there, even when it looks different: autistic children form deep bonds, even with less eye contact or fewer hugs. I explain more in autism and attachment myths.
• Safety comes before engagement: a child who feels calm and safe has more room to connect. Polyvagal theory is one popular way of explaining this, though parts of it are debated.
• Consent matters in play: ethical, neuro inclusive practice means respecting a child’s “no”, stopping rough play when they want, and never using play to make a child look less autistic.
• The whole family matters: fathers and other carers, and parents who are neurodivergent themselves, need support too.

I share more of what changed in my thinking in our child development guide, including ten things my training helped me unlearn.

Floortime for Children With ADHD

Floortime is best known in autism support, but its ideas suit many children with ADHD too. Bella’s ADHD wasn’t identified until her twenties, and looking back, Floortime suited her busy brain beautifully.

• Keep it moving: many ADHD children connect best in active, fast changing play.
• Follow the spark: if they jump from one thing to another, follow them. Connection matters more than finishing.
• Use novelty: a surprise, a silly voice or an unexpected twist can hold attention far better than repetition.
• Keep it short: several short bursts of connection often work better than one long session.

See also ADHD behaviour strategies and toddler sleep resistance and ADHD.

Floortime for Dads and Other Carers

Floortime isn’t only for mums. Dads, grandparents, older siblings and other carers can all be wonderful play partners. Many dads naturally bring energetic, physical play, which can suit children who connect through movement.

• Rough and tumble with care: play fighting, tickles and “aeroplane” rides can be full of circles of communication. Stop the moment a child says or shows “stop”, and check in often.
• Each person’s own style: children benefit from different adults bringing different play. There’s no one right way.
• Support for carers: parents of neurodivergent children, including fathers, can feel isolated. Talking with other families helps, and so does looking after yourself.

Floortime When You Have ADHD Too

There’s something textbooks rarely mention: Floortime can be hard for a neurodivergent parent. When you have ADHD yourself, sitting on the floor following slow, repetitive play can feel very under stimulating. Your mind wanders to your phone, the dishes and twenty other things.

For a long time, I felt guilty about this. I thought a “good mother” would find pure joy in stacking cups for twenty minutes. Things got easier when I stopped pretending.

• Keep it short: five or ten focused minutes are worth more than an hour of distracted hovering.
• Support your own body: sit on a cushion with your back against the couch. Put on gentle music if it helps you stay present.
• Choose play you enjoy too: if you love music, bring instruments. If you love being outside, take Floortime to the backyard.
• Set up the space: open, inviting play corners mean less adult setting up. See the Reggio Emilia approach at home.

When both parent and child are neurodivergent, Floortime becomes a dance of accommodation on both sides. It isn’t one perfect person fixing an imperfect child. It’s two differently wired people learning to share space with joy. I write more about this in being a parent with ADHD.

Floortime Ideas for Early Learning Rooms

Educators can bring the heart of Floortime into busy rooms, even without one to one time all day.

• Sit on the floor: join children where they play, at their level, for a few minutes at a time.
• Narrate less, notice more: describe what you see occasionally, but don’t fill every moment with questions.
• Respect different play: a child lining up blocks may be deeply engaged. Join before redirecting.
• Plan sensory starts: movement before quieter play helps many children settle. See sensory micro transitions.
• Share with families: tell families what their child loved and how they connected with you. The Home and Kinder Snapshot makes this easy.

For more on play based learning, see Vygotsky’s play theory in real life and how to encourage independent play.

What the Research Says

It’s important to be honest here. Research on DIRFloortime itself is still limited. A few small randomised trials have reported promising results, including a pilot study in Thailand where parents were trained to use DIR/Floortime at home with their autistic preschoolers,^[4] and a larger trial of the PLAY Project, a home consultation program based on DIR principles.^[5] These studies were small or had limits, so more research is needed.

More broadly, play is widely recognised as central to young children’s development,^[6] and relationship based, play based approaches that involve parents are an important part of support for many young autistic children. Floortime is best seen as one helpful approach among several, not a cure or a replacement for other support your child may need.

More Free Printables for Floortime and Connection

These free PDFs from this site support the calm, connection and sensory needs that make Floortime easier.

More free tools are on our printables page.

Looking Back

Looking back across the years, those afternoons on our living room floor laid the foundation for so much that came later. When Bella faced the social ups and downs of school, or our long bedtime battles, the trust we had built on the floor held us steady.

She learned that her ideas mattered, and that she didn’t have to perform to earn my attention. I learned to slow down, quiet my own busy mind, and meet my child where she was.

If you’re sitting beside a child today who seems hard to reach, who’d rather spin wheels than look at you, or who pushes your toys away, take a breath. Put your agenda down. Slide onto the floor, pick up a lid, and meet them in their world. Connection is built one small, shared moment at a time.

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