Do any of you pay privately for floortime/DIR?

bigapplebride

I received a recommendation for someone who charges $100/HOUR! It seems really high to me considering ABA is like half the price. 

Anyway, I want to give this method a try, but it just seems like so much money.  We can swing it, but I don't want to be wasteful, and a $400/month floortime bill will prevent us from doing other (enjoyable) things as a family. 

 

Is it worth it? 

I'm open to all opinions.

ABA has helped my DD learn certain words and skills, but there is a "disconnect" with reality using this method.  I hope I'm articulating myself correctly.  Do you understand what I mean? 

ACK

Sobachka

I think you can learn it. You can actually take a training course (check their website for it) or go to a few sessions to observe and then read Greenspan's book on it.

$100 is a rate I saw here too, so not too surprised, but I would not shell big bucks for it over a long period of time.

ABA does not work the same way for everyone. Some thrive, but some kids do not respond as much. However, this is nearly the only proven and documented method. Can you try another provider? In-home versus center-based?

jrwb

$100/hour is probably a common rate for floortime, especially if it is provided by someone who is a masters level or above specialist.  In the area where I live, most ABA therapists are college students or work part time and have attended a 6 week training course to learn the methodsof ABA.  It sounds like one of Greenspan's goals is to create similar programs to train "floortime helpers" to come into the home and work with your child similar to the way an ABA therapist would.

 I am a speech pathologist and ASD is one of my main interests. I really advocate for an eclectic approach for children with ASD. I know the "disconnect" that you're talking about.  It sounds like you want her to learn to use the words that he's learning to communicate for a variety of reasons.  One of the goals of floortime is to teach children the early foundational skills that they need to become better thinkers and better social communicators. I have worked with many children who have had a 20-40 hr/week ABA regimine and they had tons of scatter skills (counting, letter, numbers, vocabulary, etc.) but they were missing foundational elements of communication  that would allow them to simply ask for help or respond to a conversational question.

I would accept ABA as the only research proven method  with caution. Even the research base on ABA is limited and not particularly solid. Floortime is based on what we already know about brain development and cognitive development in typical children. Greenspan's preliminary research looks so promising and I think we're going to see more exciting things from it for these children. 

 There is a beginners course available online for a reasonable price. I agree, an avenue like that might be good in helping you learn some floortime strategies that you can use with your DD throughout daily activities. You will be the best person to work with her because you already have that strong established relationship with her, which is the heart of floortime intervention. Another option might be to find a good speech therapist who has had some training/experience with floortime (even just a little) who can help guide/coach you and it could be billed through your insurance as speech therapy.

jrwb

https://www.playproject.org/ may also be a good resource for you on finding professionals who use floortime-esque methods

JenGK

DS's OT is Floortime-trained, and we pay $100 for 45 minutes.  We looked at going to DIR Support Services (headed by Dr. Greenspan's son, Jake) for OT/Floortime, and their charges were just over $100/hr. as well.

The program my son went to this summer was a Floortime-based "Interaction Group", overseen by Serena Wider, a colleague of Dr. Greenspan.  I thought it was great and well worth the money we spent (just over $100/hr.).  I'd read about Floortime before going into it, and gotten some quick training from Dr. Greenspan and DIR Support Services, but I thought it was very valuable to have someone training me on how to do it after working specifically with my son.  They had great ideas that I had never thought of, based on things that worked during their sessions.  If you decide to go forward, it might be worth having someone work with you for a short period of time to really train you on how to do it properly and give you ideas about how to expand beyond the basics with your particular child.

JenGK

To echo what Auntie says re time commitment, Floortime as envisioned by Dr. Greenspan takes a lot of time.  He wanted us to do 6 20-minute sessions per day with my son, in addition to 6 15-minute sensory sessions.  All of the other local parents I have spoken with received a similar treatment schedule from him.  We have not been able to get that kind of time in with him and aim for more of the one hour that Auntie suggests, broken up into 3 sessions over the day.  Our summer program was great because he was getting ~7.5 hours of 1:1 professional Floortime a week, plus what we do at home (they had a lot of people staffing that program so that each kid had one person assigned exclusively to him/her).

lysa3950

We paid $130/hr once a week for a couple months, then every other week, but honestly we couldn't keep up that fee.  It was helpful and did teach us to interact with our DS in a different manner (for the good)

melliott09

Depending on the diagnoses and age of your child, floortime may be covered either under Early Intervention or your insurance. The NJ laws changed recently regarding insurance coverage, but I'm not too familiar with them, as our school district pays for all therapy services and anything doctor-wise, the insurance has never fought us on.

I would seek out those options first. Also, if it's not something that is covered, I would look into starting a CAFE 125 plan through your employer, to help with the costs of the therapy.