Socialization with Children with
Special Needs in Schools and
Therapeutic Groups
Socialization Emerging through the
Functional Emotional Developmental
Milestones
Children with Developmental Delays Can
Develop:
 Empathy
 The ability to read emotional signals
 The ability to negotiate with peers
Typical Social Development
• The emotion selects the behavior
 Build foundations from the bottom up.
 Create heightened states of emotionality to
help the child use and connect emotions to his
behavior.
 Example: A big smile gives a word like “hi” real
warmth and meaning.
Principals of The Greenspan
Floortime Approach
The same 3 principals apply when helping children
socialize with peers that apply when encouraging
children to relate and communicate adults. However,
they will look different in application.
 Follow the child’s lead
 Challenge up the developmental ladder
 Expand the challenge
Traditional Social Skills and Goals
 Sharing
 Taking Turns
 Compromising
 Theory of Mind (putting yourself in the
other persons shoes)
Developmental Social Goals are the
Stages of Development used in a social
setting
 Regulation and Shared attention
 Engagement
 Basic communication
 Continuous flow and Shared problem-solving
 Using ideas creatively and spontaneously
 Using ideas logically
 Higher levels of thinking
Organization and
Techniques to Encourage
Socialization
Social Interaction Fundamentals
 Start with smaller groups (dyads) and move slowly
to larger ones.
 Create multiple environments, sensory and
symbolic, to encourage different types of
interactions.
 Remember that child/adult play is different from
child/child play.
 Other children don’t always entice, initiate, or
counter-regulate
Group Organization
 Make sure all children in the group are solid at the
4th milestone with adults: Shared social problem
solving and Continuous flow.
 Have children with complimentary sensory system.
 An underreactive child and sensory seeking child.
 You can include children with similar and/or
different developmental profiles.
 Optimally the children should balance each other
out with their profiles.
Techniques to Encourage
Socialization
 Allow children to create their own interactions or
games, and follow their lead.
 Facilitate maintained regulation, attention, and
engagement.
 Encourage sensory based games and semistructured activities.
 Often we need to semi-structure or introduce a
sensory based activity to facilitate interest and
attention
 Remember the goal is to encourage the interaction
between the children, don’t do all the work for
them. Encourage them to seek each others help or
participation.
Techniques to Encourage
Socialization
 Use your affect to entice the children toward a
common activity or each other.
 Use your body to help a child carry out their social
goal
 i.e. playful obstruction
 Ask questions to help the children maintain focus
on each other and the activity.
 ex. When a child wants to play a game, ask the
child, “What do your friends think?” or “What
do your friends want to play?”
Techniques to Encourage
Socialization
 Create physical problems that need to be solved
with the help of many children
 Encourage a child to get a friend to help them.
 Ask questions that encourage the children to agree
on different decisions before they get a need met.
 What should we do? Swing or bounce?
Techniques to Encourage
Socialization
 If children are having trouble initiating their own
games or activities, or are getting disregulated, use
 Semi-structured games
 Art projects
 Music
Initially structure the expectations, and allow them
to expand creatively.
Facilitators must always…
 Encourage interaction/communication between the
children.
 Redirect children toward one another vs. doing
the floortime yourself
 Counter-regulate
 Keep environment under control
 Patience
 Let the interaction develop naturally
The Floortime Center
Contact Information:
4827 Rugby Ave.
Bethesda, MD 20814
 Email: info@dirss.com
 Website: www.thefloortimecenter.com
 Phone: (301) 657-1130