Internet Show Links Caregivers, Child Experts

A new show that blends the best aspects of talk radio and the Internet is educating the public about the needs of children with developmental disorders and serious emotional disturbances.

“Infants, Children, and Families” is a weekly Web-based program hosted by Stanley Greenspan, M.D., a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at George Washington University School of Medicine. Among the books he has written or co-written are The Challenging Child and The Child With Special Needs: Encouraging Intellectual and Emotional Growth. Greenspan is chair of the Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders, which he established to improve care for children with special needs.

On Thursdays from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time, Greenspan discusses a topic related to the development of children with communication, learning, attention, speech, or impulse control disorders. He also discusses each topic in relation to children who develop normally.

Although the show is held in an interactive, talk-radio format in which Greenspan takes questions from audience members who call in, the audience doesn’t tune in to a radio station. Instead, they are at their computers at the Web site www.floortime.org, which uses streaming video and audio. Thus, the audience can also submit questions via e-mail.

“The great thing about the Web is that there are no breaks, no advertisements, and if you miss the live show, it’s archived, so you can access it anytime,” Greenspan told Psychiatric News.

His approach to children with developmental disorders is based on the Developmental, Individual-Difference, Relationship-Based/Floortime Model (DIR), which he developed with colleagues such as Serena Wieder, Ph.D., in the 1990s.

Greenspan designed the DIR model to help children master a number of fundamental emotional and intellectual skills through play, problem solving, and language, for instance, and the approach is customized to individual differences in auditory and visual processing, as well as motor planning and sequencing, according to Greenspan.

The first show, “We Can Do Better,” debuted in February and dealt with revising educational goals for children. In later shows, Greenspan discussed topics such as helping parents and caregivers better understand the different ways in which their children process the world and how to create learning opportunities at home and school.

Future shows will focus on topics such as helping children with developmental and emotional problems learn how to regulate their moods and behavior, learn empathy, and acquire high levels of reflective thinking.

“These are skills that were once thought to be unattainable for children with developmental challenges,” he noted.

Thus far, according to Greenspan, he has gotten questions from people all over the United States, including parents of autistic children who, for example, are concerned because their children will not make eye contact or otherwise engage people around them.

In such cases, he said, it is best to get involved in the child’s natural interests, because “that’s where their emotional investment lies.”

“Infants, Children, and Families” can be accessed online at www.floortime.org. ▪