Can my child get DIR Floortime in school instead of ABA?

According to clinical psychologist and the president of the DIRFloortime Coalition of California, Dr. Andrea Davis, "What most often happens is that a family will convince their district that [their] child does much better with DIR, so if they're going to have a 1:1 support, this should not be someone supervised by a BCBA or someone doing ABA. This should be someone supervised by someone trained in DIR. And that works beautifully to take a relationship-based approach to supporting a student to be functional in that and to have that safe, secure base in that relationship from which to begin to explore the opportunities at school, social and academic.

"But that is that is something we really hope to see changing in California law, which requires everybody to study positive behavior support from a behaviorist lens. You can study positive behavior support from a developmental lens, and that's what we're hoping is to expand so that people who are working with all ages in the schools all the way up to 22 could be well-versed in a beautiful model of human development."

For more from Dr. Davis, see this article with updates about funding for DIR Floortime.