Me and Bren chatting last night just before bedtime.

Floortime – Musings on what I did wrong (and right)

My goal with this episode of Bren TV was to work a little on visualization. I wanted to help Bren stay happy and positive about school (which I thought might be scary, but to him it wasn’t at all – obviously) and I wanted to reflect on what happened. I wanted to help him create those pictures in his mind, and be able to share those pictures with others (by verbalizing them).

So, what did I do wrong? (Plenty)

1. I was in a hurry. Time got away from me and by the time I got my act together to film, it was bedtime. Dr. Greenspan has said “if you’re in a hurry, you’re not doing floortime.”
2. I asked lots of questions. Granted this was an interview (my mistake goes back as far as choosing the format), and Bren stayed engaged the whole time… but, by wondering aloud about his day (or sharing about MY day) rather than asking direct questions, I probably could have gotten more of his ideas and feelings, rather than simple direct answers. Mili (Bren’s OT) taught me months ago (yeah, you can see how well I learned the lesson) that asking questions is uninteresting, and can be stressful. Image this scenario: A person walks up to you and says “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “Where do you work?” “What’s your favorite color?” “How old are you?”. You might feel put off by the interrogation and you probably would be looking for an opportunity to get away from the inquisitor. Now, imagine the same person walks up, makes eye contact, and smiles. You might say “hi”, or maybe you just smile back. Then the person says “Hello, I’m Mike.” (Surprise – the person is me – hehe) and then shuts his yapper for more than 2 seconds (sorry, I talk a lot – I’m trying to slow down). You may introduce yourself, or maybe you just smile again. So the person says “Hey, nice shirt. That’s my favorite color.” By this time, you’re (hopefully) thinking, ‘this Mike character is a little strange, but he seems harmless enough’ and you start to open up. Before long, you’re talking about the answers to the questions from the inquisition willingly, without the questions ever being asked.
3. My questions weren’t thinking questions. What I mean by that is they were usually questions with only one possible correct answer. Dr. Greenspan has said “if you ask a question you know the answer to, it’s not a thinking question.” An example of a non-thinking question: “How many people actually sleep in this room?” Dumb. A better question was “what was your favorite thing you did today?” But even better than that would have been something like “my favorite thing I did today was walking you to school” then leaving the door open for him to add whatever he wanted.
4. I missed the obvious cues that Bren was craving some motor activity and proprioception. Bren pulled me in (literally) but I didn’t stay with it. We should have done the interview on horseback, galloping around the room, or between wrestling moves.
5. I was impatient. Bren is really starting to open up more and share his thoughts and ideas. But due to probably some praxis issues, some visualization issues, and even some anxiety issues, he has a hard time getting things out sometimes and he needs lots of time to process. There should have been lots more dead air in the video. There should have been more times when I threw out an idea and then just gave him time to think and share.

I’ll stop there. It was only a 5 minute video, 5 mistakes is plenty.

So, was it a total loss? Did I do anything right?

1. We did work on visualization. We talked about his day, even if what we talked about was superficial. Next time I’ll dig down to a more affective level to help leverage his emotions with the visualization to promote higher level thinking and analysis.
2. I gave him some control. He picked the location, and used the remote to turn the camera on and off. I want to start getting him BEHIND the camera. I want this to develop into something that is HIS vision, not mine. He’s not quite comfortable with the camera yet, but he does like the remote.
3. We spent time together. You can tell even if the questions were superficial and the activity was mundane, we both really had fun just being with each other.
4. We shared the video with others. Bren loves watching himself on video. He loves watching it with other people and talking about what he did on camera. So, those 5 minutes of video have turned into an hour or two of emotional shared experiences between Bren and others. And that does even more to help develop his ability for visualizing and relating.

So, I guess the take away for me in this is… sure I made mistakes – things that I know I could have done better. But I also had a good time with my son. And that’s the most important thing. I was hesitant to put this video up because it is such a poor example of floortime. But then I decided that’s precisely why I should share it. Watching it helps me learn a lot about how I interact with Bren. And hopefully watching it will help you learn a little bit too.