FEDC 4: Complex Communication and Shared Problem Solving

Affect Autism: We chose play, joy every day

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This Week’s Topic

The topic of this episode is the fourth Functional Emotional Developmental Capacity (FEDC 4) of the Developmental, Individual differences, and Relationship (DIR) Model based on the presentation our guests in March at the New York City DIR/Floortime conference called, The Spectrum of FEDC 4.

This Week’s Guests

Katie Shepherd is a DIR Expert and Training Leader with the International Council on Development and Learning (ICDL) and a Speech-Language Pathologist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Sanette Louwrens is also a DIR Expert and Training Leader with ICDL and owner of Sensorium Therapy Inc., a DIR Occupational Therapy practice in Redding, California. Sanette completed the Napa/UC Davis Infant Parent Mental Health fellowship in 2022. Reflective practice development in DIR is one of her passions.

FEDC 4: Complex Communication and Shared Problem Solving

by Affect Autism

https://affectautism.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2024-07-19.mp3

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D = Developmental

I = Individual differences

R = Relationship-based

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The Spectrum of FEDC 4

I asked what made Sanette and Katie choose this topic to present at the DIR conference in March. Sanette says that Katie and her taught DIR 201- The DIRFloortime Basic Certificate Course together, and had such a wonderful synchrony, that they wanted to present together. They chose FEDC 4 because it is so complex. It’s called Complex Communication and Shared Problem Solving. It is such a shift in the child’s affective development and the development of ‘self’, Sanette says. It’s an incredibly foundational shift.

They called their presentation The Spectrum of FEDC 4 because you have an imagery of a white light lighting a prism and then radiating the colours of the rainbow. That is how FEDC 4 is. Everything is stepping up. The regulation is stepping up, the communication is getting more complex, and there’s more nuances. They were trying to capture this complexity in the title. They want this to be a resource for people so they can dig in and have more wonderings about FEDC 4.

You have an imagery of a white light lighting a prism and then radiating the colours of the rainbow. That is how FEDC 4 is.

DIR/Floortime Occupational Therapist Sanette Louwrens

When Katie and Sanette teach DIR 201, it covers the first four Functional Emotional Developmental Capacities (FEDC 1 through 4), and then in the Certificate of Proficiency course, DIR 202, they cover FEDC 4 through 6, so FEDC 4 is visited twice. Then, as they did their literature research and also looked at what Drs. Greenspan and Wieder have written about FEDC 4, Sanette says that her and Katie both expressed awe and humility in the breadth and depth of this fourth capacity and how beautiful this DIR model is at meeting every child and family.

Diving in to the Fourth Capacity

I referred listeners to our last podcast on the third FEDC with Naomi Wong and Andrea Snyder and Katie said that she attended their presentation at the DIR conference right before presenting hers and Sanette’s, which really helped because you can’t really think about one capacity without considering the earlier ones. Katie added that in the DIR model, she doesn’t think Dr. Greenspan intended on any of us to only work on only one capacity at a time. We’re always thinking about all of them.

Complex Communication As an individual is moving from the third to the fourth capacity, their back-and-forth interactions are becoming longer and more complex. These long chains–affectively charged and continuous–of circles of communication create a flow of communication. As the interaction progresses, these circles of communication become more complex. It also involves the use of many communicative signals such as facial expressions, gestures, all forms of body language, vocalizations, and/or words to communicate increasingly more complex ideas.

An Interactive Experience As a DIR 201 instructor, Katie values and celebrates the preverbal experience. The non speaking communication is so important to promote and encourage communication, she emphasizes. Individuals express more complex ideas gesturally with vocalizations or sound effects as well. We also want to highlight how this is interactive, Katie says. You’re interactively solving problems with a sense of ‘we’ in the fourth capacity. We think of the development of these interactions in this capacity.

Maintaining Regulation Another component is that we need to maintain regulation while maintaining a broader range of emotions, which is something we really want to focus on, for longer periods of time, Katie continues. Through all of these rich interactions, we establish a sense of self and this understanding of a ‘you’ and a ‘me’. An individual can begin to advocate for themselves and say ‘no’ when you have a sense of self, Katie shares.

Motor Planning We want to support an individual’s pursuit to lead reciprocal interactions and sequence and execute action plans, Katie adds. This is where the recognition of patterns comes in. All of this is interactive with a communication partner, even under healthy levels of stress, Katie adds. I shared that in ICDL’s parent support meetings, parents are learning the FEDCs and it took me years to even remember what they are, even having read about them numerous times.

Continuous Flow I pointed out that the developmental capacities are like a spiral. They are not stages or steps where you master one and move on to the next one. We’re working on this all the time. I highlighted Katie’s point about the flow of communication being continuous. This is different than start-stop interactions where you may ask a question that your child answers, then ask another question, etc. Or your child asks you a question or sends communication to you, and you answer, then you change the topic.

Broader Range of Emotions I also wanted to highlight Katie’s mention of maintaining regulation through a broad range of emotions. In my Floortime series, ‘We chose play‘, you can see my son starting to demonstrate this when his father presents a symbolic idea of the train putting out the fire which my son protests, but he stays in the interaction and his distress lessens because he is so motivated to continue playing trains with Dad.

Co-Regulation I didn’t realize at the time all the developmental capacities he was showing, even though he still had constrictions in his capacities. When he was younger than that, he would have got up and walked away, but he stayed in the interaction. I pointed out what Dr. Stanley Greenspan would say about reaching the point where one can co-regulate with another person using those affective signals versus having ‘catastrophic emotional reactions’. Getting to the point where your child feels safe enough so they can co-regulate with you through those dysregulating moments is a part of this fourth capacity.

The Genuine Relationship

Katie pointed out that the Relationship is so important in my example, and my son was motivated to continue being in that relationship with his Dad. She also wondered about the affective signalling Dad was providing in that interaction. I replied that Dad’s affect was pretty neutral and he was more focused on his agenda, as he was newer to Floortime then, but acknowledged Katie’s point that the child is affected by the parent’s affect and how I would have been much more reactive to my son being upset than his father was; he was always much more calm and chill.

I shared how important it is for parents to be able to find their genuine affect with their child because you have to be comfortable interacting with your child versus following how someone else is doing Floortime. Katie also highlighted that I said my son isn’t having catastrophic reactions much as he did when he was much younger. It’s because of the rich emotional interactions and emotional signalling, which helps a child learn to tame their own emotions.

Shared Problem Solving

Sanette added that in the train example, my son could stay in the interaction through distress. The individual’s regulation has more stability in the fourth capacity, whereas in the earlier capacities (FEDC 1 to 3) you have to work a lot harder at co-regulation, she explains. There was a ‘problem’ or ‘challenge’ created that had meaning to the child, so that was affect-mediated problem solving. Problem solving in FEDC 4 isn’t just having a problem in the play, Sanette continues. It’s about having meaning to the child, and in that meaning the child will negotiate and navigate through affect.

It’s interesting to reflect on how the circles of communication in the third capacity help the child realize they have an impact and influence through their initiation and gestures. It helps them figure out cause-and-effect, whereas in the fourth capacity, they realize the world is their oyster. This concept of signalling, negotiating, and navigating makes them realize they can resource the other in the problem, and the problem has meaning to the individual.

When you have the flow with interaction, you don’t have to do too much to regulate and bring a small challenge, Sanette continues. In order for this to be in the fourth capacity, we want to see that it’s affect-mediated and meaningful to the child, and the child resources you to solve the problem with them through their communication system, Sanette stresses again.

Many times when we do playful obstruction, Sanette says that we’ll use ‘magical’ problem solving: “Whoops! The fire is out!” or when playing with cars, you’ll say, “Oops! My car stopped!” The child might come and pretend to put gas in the car and ‘magically’ solve the problem instead of seeing the sequence of needing to call a tow truck so you can figure out what happened to the car. When you do playful obstruction, make sure the challenge has meaning for the child, Sanette stresses.

I shared that Dr. Gil Tippy really stressed with me in the past that any so-called ‘intervention’ can bring a child to FEDC 3 but DIR/Floortime stands out because getting a child to those higher capacities is where we see thinking emerge. I added that this is where the praxis piece comes in, too, because if you aren’t yet capable of planning, initiating, and executing your ideas, it’s a struggle in this fourth capacity to problem solve with someone.

Katie points out that’s it’s so important to realize that problem solving is so much more than verbal negotiation. There are so many ways to communicate with your body language what to do with your car during playful obstruction, for instance. You are seeing if the child can make sense of the vocal and social action patterns of the play partner’s movements of looking, showing curiosity, and wondering together, without words, really leaning your body in there and make meaning of whatever the solution is going to be.

Building Social Connections Through Shared Problem Solving

See ICDL’s Newsflash on this capacity HERE.

Promoting FEDC 4

I stated that in FEDC 3 we start by initiating circles of communication then eventually the child begins to initiate. In FEDC 4, we might suggest a solution first, such as going to get gas for the car that stopped, but I shared that perhaps the child will just repeat, “Go get gas” every time after that, without thinking of another idea. Sanette responds that we want to bring the thinking to meet the child’s ideation where it’s at. We want to support the child’s ideas.

One of the big components of FEDC 4, Sanette repeats, is that non verbal, gestural communication. That system is so foundational across the lifespan. It’s the glance of your eye, the way you place your head, or where your body is. It’s a mind-body system that is foundational on your interoceptive ability. The interoceptive system makes sense of what’s coming in from the outside. Sanette shares that her granddaughter had the raise of an eyebrow as a baby that had so much communication contained in it. As you develop this, you bring so much more of yourself into the play.

Let’s say that in play, Sanette explains, you make the noise of a car running out of gas (e.g., “putt, putt, putt…“) and gasp, this is way more inviting than asking, “What do I do now?” When you use these non verbal gestures in this way, you are giving the child feedback. The child has to use their eyes and ears to take your gestural system in, in a multi-system way. It’s a feedback loop that modulates and regulates the child. It provides the regulation to support ideation, Sanette explains.

An example of FEDC 4 in play

Katie shared an example of playing with a little girl who loved to play firefighters. They were putting out fires together. For one of the fires, they were too late, and the house was full of soot. They were trying to get the soot out. The girl was doing a lot of imitation of Katie. Katie had a sponge and ‘by accident’ got a hole in her sponge. The girl was magically fixing it. Then, the girl had a hole in hers. There was a lot of back-and-forth in capacity 3.

Next, Katie was standing, and the girl asked her to come over to her, but Katie asked if the floor was stable because she was scared the floor was going to fall. The girl said that it was fine, but Katie hesitated and showed on her face that she was afraid, without words. The girl lifted up her toe to test the floor without saying anything, and together they were figuring out this problem. Katie and her together put their toes down hesitantly to see if the floor was stable.

There was social referencing as they looked at each other, there was affective signal exchange with their facial expressions, and they were sharing the emotion of being nervous. Then, they tried it together and there was a sense of relief that the floor didn’t collapse. That moment of shared, social problem solving was done with their body language, Katie explains. It’s just about figuring out what to do next. It doesn’t have to be a grand, elaborate problem to solve.

One mistake I made early on was creating too many problems too quickly, instead of staying in the moment and using that affective signalling. Katie adds that it’s also important to support the child’s pursuit to lead. They will tell us what to do next. Follow their lead. I added to slow down as well. Slow down, then slow down more, then when you think you can’t go any slower, slow down ten times more than that. When you watch videos of yourself, you realize you didn’t wait at all for the child to jump in with an idea.

Sanette added that as Katie was recalling that experience, in her FEDC 4 example above, she was glowing. To bring in reflection as a source of information, we can think about the warmth, pleasure, and joy in the second FEDC. There’s a quality, too, of the collaboration as the ‘I’ and ‘me’ become a ‘we’. The quality of engagement and collaboration of doing something together is something you can sense, which is just beautiful.

Katie adds that this goes to the ‘R’: the relationship. Katie adores this little girl and has a wonderful relationship with her and her family. There’s a trust and co-regulation because of the relationship. The pacing and engagement also supported the interaction. It had so much to do with the relationship, though, Katie stresses!

Those Individual Differences

I highlighted paying attention to the child’s Individual differences. I shared an insight that my son’s speech-language pathologist had about how, despite him not having seemed to be a Gestalt language processor, she noticed that when she altered the way in which she spoke with him–the way she would with a Gestalt language processor–she could see him move up in his developmental capacities.

She was supporting him by taking into account this individual difference. Katie agrees that communication is such an important individual difference, and perhaps we are noticing that my son might be a bit of both an analytical and a Gestalt language processor, which many people are. Sanette continues on another individual difference–that of ideation. She said that we want to figure out how to support ideation so the idea can come into the individual’s body and they can express it in the sequencing and timing, then watching how it’s getting executed, and the feedback it gives to the body.

In thinking about how we support this in the interaction through the relationship, Sanette reflects on Katie’s example. The child had a dyspraxic profile, and the way Katie positioned her body, the way they were referencing one another, and the minimal language and use of affect, it gave the child feedback and scaffolded the child’s interaction. It goes back to how important it is to hone this skill as a Floortime play partner, Sanette says, when you are supporting the fourth capacity.

Even just the breath is a gestural signal, Sanette continues. You’re signalling to the child in an interoceptive, affective way, embodying emotion with that non verbal gestural system. It enables the child to truly feel the emotion, and helps the transition from emotion, into ideation, into symbol formation into FEDC 5, which is what we want. It’s the feedback they get through the eyes and ears–a multi-system feedback–in that continuous flow that is paced. Yes, you’re in the moment, but you’re also in an analytical place thinking about how you do all of this, Sanette insists.

Limit Setting

Limit-setting example

A huge topic in this fourth capacity is limit setting. Katie gave an example of a little boy who could climb across the monkey bars, but was not allowed to go up the ladder in a Floortime session. They used humour and affect to communicate the limit setting. They would sing, “No climbing on the ladder!” The child would test the limits to see what they would do.

Through the interaction that they stretched out about not climbing on the ladder, the child loved the affective exchanges they were having and understood the limit, while being silly and hinting to test it. They’d say, “I know you want to go on that ladder!” and if they used a firmer tone, the child understood and followed the limit.

Using the humour and through the relationship and affective cues, the child made a game of it, so they gave the child time and space and stretched it out as much as they could to get that continuous flow, and made meaning of what was happening. Sanette comments that there’s regulation that has a stable quality so the child could be more flexible in his ideation and engagement, which allowed a reciprocal interaction that had flow.

Sanette added that the affect was what the child needed to process and understand the limit. The child was developing and fortifying his sense of self by testing the limits, as kids do in FEDC 3 and 4. You have to understand that someone has an idea that’s different than yours. You have to have the capacity to receive and hold the space that someone has ideas different than theirs, but instead of it being a threat, it becomes a resource. The child was working on this in a very engaging, multi-system, supportive way.

I asked what to do when the child makes a repetitive game of testing those limits to get that reaction out of the parent that is so gratifying–the emotion-seeking–such as dropping things from the top of the stairs that they’re not supposed to do, to see what you do. They might be doing that cause-and-effect ‘object’ play that comes after ‘sensory’ play.

Once it becomes a pattern, our kids will often stick with the new ‘game’ or pattern that then is very difficult for the parents if they are more mischievous or dangerous, and in school, might be disruptive. Sanette says that they are many aspects to limit-setting. There are different qualities and needs to limit-setting and there’s definitely a requirement to set limits when there’s danger and risks, for instance. We want to be able to set safe limits.

As we are putting down our limits, we don’t always have the time to do playfulness around the limit, so we should set aside time to do this so children explore when an adult says ‘no’ and understand what it feels like. It’s important that they experience emotions in their body in a shared environment. But hearing ‘no’ puts them in a negative range of emotions. They might get frustrated and angry, which is so hard.

You need to play through how we are ‘together’ during these negative emotions. Sanette also adds that DIR is a developmental model. Limit setting is a threat for some children, depending on your developmental capacities, she explains. When you are threatened, you become dysregulated and it’s a matter of survival in terms of a physiological response.

There is a place for limit setting, but Sanette says let’s look at the shared world and look at what the interaction looks like. Sanette is saying that we should bring it into playful setting where we can act these limits out so the individual gets practice with them, when we aren’t rushed and have time. Katie adds to also connect before redirecting. ‘Connect before you correct’.

In play, when exploring a broad range of emotions, sometimes mischief and aggression come out, Katie adds. The more comfortable we, as care providers can feel playing with those emotions, the better children will understand the broad range of emotions and the limits we set.

In Summary

Besides strengthening the third capacity, which is always the answer, Katie says to create extra steps in your pretend play. Be animated, and use your affect through your facial expressions, gestures, and vocalizations. Deepen the plot rather than entertain the child, like it says in The Child with Special Needs. Stretch out those gestural exchanges, she encourages.

Sanette adds that when you’re working on problem solving, sequencing is involved, so think about how you can scaffold and support the child, looking at breaking down the solution into parts to figure out what part you can do so the child can do the next step. Use a variety of gestures because that is the feedback system for the child. Pair your gestures with your vocalizations and actions, and adding vocalizations and gestures to the child’s actions to strengthen the feedback loop.

We also want to be aware of counterbalancing the child’s regulation, Sanette adds. If the individual is more agitated, we’re more soothing. If they’re lethargic, we’re more energizing. If they’re impulsive, we’re more containing for them. If they’re fragmented–especially if the problem becomes dysregulating–think about how to scaffold and support their organization. That counter response is a way to build their range of emotion, Sanette explains.

This week’s PRACTICE TIP:

This week let’s practice focus on what Sanette stressed so much: strengthening the feedback loop to our child through our gestural, affective signalling.

For example: Position your body close to the child in their range of vision and at their eye level, use facial expressions, vocal intonations and gestures to indicate that you are eager to be a part of the interaction, and hold that space where they see you are waiting for them to initiate.

This podcast was long overdue, and I want to thank Sanette and Katie for taking the time to cover this vast fourth capacity with us! I hope you found it as helpful and will consider sharing this post on social media.

Until next time, here’s to choosing play and experiencing joy everyday!