
The DIR (Developmental Individual-differences, and Relationship-based) model originated in the 1980s from the work of Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder. It has a deep foundation in the science of human development and can sound very technical, but it is very simple. “It is a way to understand our children and each other that builds connections, understanding, love, communication, and engagement”. Through this approach, the true potential of each person can be discovered.
The objectives of the DIR Model are to build healthy foundations for social, emotional, and intellectual capacities rather than focusing on skills and isolated behaviors.
The D (Developmental) part of the Model describes the building blocks of this foundation. Understanding where the child is developmentally is critical to planning a treatment program. The Six Developmental Levels describes the developmental milestones that every child must master for healthy emotional and intellectual growth. This includes helping children to develop capacities to attend and remain calm and regulated, engage and relate to others, initiate and respond to all types of communication beginning with emotional and social affect based gestures, engage in shared social problem-solving and intentional behavior involving a continuous flow of interactions in a row, use ideas to communicate needs and think and play creatively, and build bridges between ideas in logical ways which lead to higher level capacities to think in multicausal, grey area and reflective ways. These developmental capacities are essential for spontaneous and empathic relationships as well as the mastery of academic skills.
The I (Individual differences) part of the Model describes the unique biologically-based ways each child takes in, regulates, responds to, and comprehends sensations such as sound, touch, and the planning and sequencing of actions and ideas. Some children, for example, are very hyper responsive to touch and sound, while others are under-reactive, and still others seek out these sensations.
The R (Relationship-based) part of the Model describes the learning relationships with caregivers, educators, therapists, peers, and others who tailor their interactions to the child’s individual differences and developmental capacities to enable progress in mastering the essential foundations. 
The DIR Model is a comprehensive framework which enables clinicians, parents and educators to construct a program tailored to the child’s unique challenges and strengths. Central to the DIR® Model is the role of the child’s natural emotions and interests which has been shown to be essential for learning interactions that enable the different parts of the mind and brain to work together and build successively higher levels of social, emotional, and intellectual capacities. In other words, emotion is critical to the growth of the child’s mind and brain.
Floortime or DIRFloorime is at the heart of the DIR model. It is the application of the DIR Model into practice. The method in called Floortime because it wants adults to get down on the floor and follow the child’s lead. They should try to understand his/her emotions, interests, and joys and enter his/her emotional world. In other words, Floortime is a particular technique where we get down on the
floor and we work with the child to master each of their developmental capacities. But it
is also a philosophy that guides the way occupational therapists work and speech
pathologists work and educators work with the children. So you need to think about
Floortime in two ways:

1. A specific technique where for 20 or more minutes mommy or daddy gets down
on the floor with their little child.

2. A general philosophy that characterizes all the interactions with the child, because
all interactions have to incorporate the features of Floortime as well as the
particular goals of that interaction.

Following the Child's lead The most widely known dimension of Floortime is following the child’s lead, harnessing the child’s natural interests. Why do we follow the child’s lead? A child’s interests of the child’s lead is the window.



