Glossary of Terms

• Adaptive and Coping Strategies: A child's ability to stay regulated while adapting to new situations, environments, etc. Their ability to use coping strategies during challenging situations (e.g., Do they fall apart under stress or do they adapt and cope?).
  
• Affect: The use of facial expressions, gestures, body language and tone of voice to express ideas and emotions.
  
• Circle of Interaction: This is a two-way interaction where one participant initiates and the other responds. For example, an adult tickles a child and the child gestures for more. Developmentally a child should be able to regulate themselves and sustain multiple circles of interaction as a foundation to other learning and development.
  
• DIR: Developmental Individual Relationship-based Intervention created by Drs. Greenspan and Wieder. WWW.ICDL.COM
  
• Emotional Thinking: The child leans to elaborate fantasies and to make connections between different ideas.
  
• Engagement: Babies coo, smile, gesture and exchange motor movements with their partners. An older child is able to sustain engagement while sharing ideas, experiencing a range of emotions, etc..
  
• Extending and Expanding the Drama: Tuning in to the child's imagination and ideas and taking them one step further through gestures and words.
  
• Floor Time: A warm and intimate way of relating to a child. A floor time philosophy means engaging, respecting and getting in tune with the child in order to help the child elaborate through gestures, words, and pretend play what is on the child's mind. As a technique, floor time a process that is used to support the emotional and social development of the child.
  
• Following the Child's Lead: Using naturally motivating interactions to target development. For example, a child is interested in stacking blocks of the same color. You gently suggest another color, or hold all the blocks of the desired color in your hand. This forces the child to be interactive and specific developmental goals can be targeted.
  
• Motor Planning: This is the ability to "think and do" or to "execute ideas" using physical movement and/or language. For example, a child has the idea that the doll should ride in the car. She bends the legs and pushes the car while saying "Vroooom!" Sequencing in motor planning is needed for problem solving, sustained attention and play. A child's developmental profile will describe motor planning abilities can be strong or weak as they relate to language, fine and gross motor abilities.
  
• Observing: Noticing how the child is special and unique in style, rhythm and mood.
  
• Regulation: The ability to stay regulated rather than being over or understimulated. Children with sensory processing difficulties that make organizing incoming information difficult, often are challenged in the area of regulation. Regulation is best when the following areas come together: sensory integration, cognitive understanding, problem solving, adaptive and coping abilities, and the ability to sustain interactions.
  
• Rhythm and Timing (also see Shared Timing): This refers to the child's ability to sustain rhythm and timing during interactions. A child must be regulated to sustain rhythm and timing. This ability is a core foundation to successful back and forth interactions with others.
  
• Sensory Processing the child's ability to process sensory information and maintain regulation in their environment.
  
• Sensory Processing Profile: A child's individual neurological make-up including processing abilities related to auditory, visual, proprioceptive, vestibular, and tactile systems.
  
• Shared Meanings: The child begins to communicate ideas with words or pretend play. Emotional themes enter the child's play. The child uses themes not only to express wants and needs but also to expand fantasies and creativity.
  
• Shared Timing: This refers to the ability to sustain a back and forth interaction in a rhythmic way. For example, two people take turns hitting a drum while maintaining a rhythm. It is important during shared timing to attend to the other person, know when to act and when to hold back. This activity encourages regulation and sustained interaction. It is used to build the foundations of sustaining back and forth interactions. A hierarchy of activities is used to build from simple back and forth turn taking to more complex back and forth interactions that require thinking and language.
  
• Stages of Relating: Stages in emotional and social development of children.
  
• Theory of Mind: The ability to understand what other people experience the world differently than you do. That they have different thoughts, beliefs and desires. That they know things you do not know and visa versa. And that, people can be deceived.
  
• Threshold for affect: This is to what extent and what type of affect a child can cope with. Due to sensory processing differences, children can tolerate different types and different levels of affect at different times. For example, a child may respond to high affect one minute but get overstimulated and need lower tones and less affect the next minute. It is crucial to gage a child's threshold for affect at all times and respond accordingly to sustain regulation and engagement. Children with sensory processing difficulties often need heightened affect or soft affect in order to respond. The goal is to help the child eventually process a range of affect while staying regulated, engaged and purposeful.
  
• Two-Way Communication: The child is able to have an emotional dialogue. Opening and closing circles can take place. You need to take an interest in and respond to the child, and the child responds with gestural and verbal reactions.
  Some of the items in the materials list and glossary were adapted from the following website: Coping.org Tools for Coping with Life's Stressors/Tools for Early Identification and Intervention - 0-5 years/ The "Greenspan" Floor Time Model/ http://www.coping.org/earlyin/floortm.htm#Abstract