Stanley Greenspan & Serena Wieder DIR® © www.icdl.

com

Guidelines for Promoting Functional

Emotional and Intellectual
Development
Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder
Stage One: Self-Regulation and Shared Attention (Interest in the World)

The child’s ability to enter and sustain a state of shared attention with another person and
stay focused, organized and calm. Learned at 0-3 months.

 Harness all available senses, as well as motor capacities, to help child stay calm and
regulated in order to draw child into shared attention.
 Involve child in enjoyable interactions that involve looking (look and examine faces),
hearing (focus on voices), touch (pleasurable tickles, stroking or sharing an object or
toy) and movement.
 Increase the interactive circles of communication and sustain shared attention as child
develops with increased referencing.
 Use constructive and playfully obstructive strategies with affect cues to stretch the
child’s capacity for shared attention.
 When shared attention is not developed child’s attention may be fleeting, easily
distracted, preoccupied and/or lethargic and passive.

Stage2: Engagement and Relating

The ability to form relationships, attachment and engage another person with warmth and
pleasure. Learned between 2-7 months.

 Woo the baby into engaging with you with pleasure and delight – Seen when baby
brightens with a smile, focuses on faces, moves arms or legs to the rhythm of
caregiver’s voice, vocalizes in response to caregiver’s cadences, turns or reaches
toward caregiver.
 Encourage growth of intimacy and caring - notice the gleam in the child’s eye when
child interacts with you and sense falling in love.
 As child develops, deepen the relationship to include the full range of feelings such as
assertiveness, anger or sadness that can be incorporated into the quality and stability
of the child's engagement (e.g., does she withdraw or become aimless when under
stress, does she stay connected when angry or scared?).
 Emphasize relationships all the time to help the child develop a sense of security,
intimacy, caring and empathy for others. Relationships also provide the foundation to
encourage progress in related areas where child must work so hard to development
motor planning, language acquisition, and a positive attitude towards all new
Stanley Greenspan & Serena Wieder DIR® © www.icdl.com

learning.
 When relationships and engagement are weak (e.g., the absence of trusting, positive
expectations), avoidance, distrust, or apathy may take their place.

Stage3: Two-Way Intentional Communication

Back and forth affective signaling and communication to convey intentions, interests and
needs.
Learned between 3-10 months.

 Follow baby’s lead and challenge her to communicate with you through the exchange
of gestures and emotional signals about her affects (interests, needs or intentions) and
also respond to your affective signals in a back and forth reciprocal pattern.
 Elicit communication. Use affect cues (signals) to woo and wait for child’s
purposeful social gestures (facial expressions, making sounds, reaching, pointing,
throwing, movement, etc.) to express his or her desires, objections or other feelings.
 Encourage the flow of continuous communication by opening and closing circles. A
circle is opened when the child evidences some interest or initiates a behavior. For
example, the child looks at a toy, and the parent or caregiver follows the child's lead
by picking up the toy and showing it to the child. The child closes the circle by
reaching for the toy, while acknowledging (looking at) the parent, nodding with a
smile, etc.
 Encourage communication by building on child’s interests, initiative, and purposeful
behavior. Challenge him to do things to you, help him achieve his goal, and later
build obstacles to add steps and increase the number of circles.
 Two-way communication is the basis for all relationships, as well as language and
learning where conversations and exchanging information are necessary.

Stage 4: Purposeful Problem Solving Communication

The ability to use long chains of co-regulated emotional signaling (complex circles of
communications) by stringing together a series of gestures, actions and words into an
elaborate problem solving sequence of interactions which helps child develop a sense of
self. Learned at 9-18 months.

 Become an interactive partner with a toddler as he learns to use a continuous flow of

gestures with you to pursue his interests , wishes and meet his needs.
 Combine affect cues with action (be animated and show affect through tone of voice
and facial expressions) while creating interactions. Your goal is to help your child
learn to open and close multiple circles of communication. Begins with a dialogue
without words through subtle facial expressions, a gleam in the eye, and other
emotional signals or gestures, to a dialogue with problem solving words.
 Work up to a continuous flow of 20 to 30+ back and forth circles of communication,
e.g., child can take a parent by the hand, walk her to the door, point that he wants to
Stanley Greenspan & Serena Wieder DIR® © www.icdl.com

go out, and perhaps vocalize a sound or word to further the caregiver’s understanding
of his intentions.
 Expand the conversation by asking where child wants to go, what they need, who
else will come, what they will get, what else and where else, etc. These conversations
are necessary for negotiating the most important emotional needs of life, e.g., being
close to others, exploring and being assertive, limiting aggression, negotiating safety,
etc.
 Increase interactive range of affects and emotions when solving problems (e.g. feed
hungry baby, bandage hurt knee, fix broken truck, chase away hungry wolf, etc.).
 Encourage different emotional patterns, e.g., dependency, assertiveness, pleasure,
etc., organized into integrated, problem solving affective interactions. Look out for
child polarizing and being dominated by one or another feeling state (organized
aggression and impulsivity, organized clinging, needy or dependent behavior,
organized fearful patterns).

Stage 5: Creating and Elaborating Symbols (Ideas )

The child's ability to create ideas (symbols) observed in pretend play and words (phrases
and sentences) to convey some emotional intention. Learned between 24 to 30 months.

 Encourage child to relate sensations, gestures and behaviors to the world of ideas
that have meanings which can be shared with others in pretend play and drama.
Whether the animals are fighting, the dolls are hugging, or there is a tea party,
ideas (symbols) are guiding this play.
 Enter the child’s ideas through his make believe world as a character in his drama
using words and actions together. Let child initiate the play idea and through
interaction (dramatization in roles), elaborate with expanding themes and range of
emotions (closeness, assertiveness, fear, anger, jealousy, aggression, etc.) which
child can explore and express safely.
 Encourage action words instead of acting out to convey intent and feelings. When
feelings and impulses are elevated to the level of ideas they can be expressed
through words and play instead of acting out (e.g., child doesn’t have to hit her
friend, but can say, “I’m mad.”).
 Engage in long conversations to communicate interests, feelings, desires and
objections throughout the day.
 Promote symbolic play in order to provide the distance from real life and
immediacy of needs to differentiating self from others through different roles,
feelings, and actions (child pretends to be a mommy comforting her frustrated
baby who broke his toy).
.
Stage 6: Building Bridges Between Symbols (Ideas) – Logical Thinking

The ability to build logical bridges or make connections between different emotional
ideas (emotional thinking). Begins between 36-48 months.

 Challenge child to connect his ideas together by seeking his opinion, enjoying his
Stanley Greenspan & Serena Wieder DIR® © www.icdl.com

debates, and negotiating for things he wants using logical reasons. Begins with
logical conversation involving at least two give and takes: “Time for school” “I
don’t want to” “ Why”, “I feel sick now.”
 Encourage child to engage in pretend play with both peers and adults where the
story or drama “makes sense”, with a beginning, middle and end where elements
in the drama logically fit together, motives are understood, and child can put
himself in someone else’s shoes.
 Promote the use of pretend play, words, and/or visual symbols to elaborate a
partially planned pretend drama (theme or idea is identified in advance), or
engage in logical conversation dealing with causal, spatial, and/or temporal
relationships between themes.
 Challenge child to create connections between differentiated feeling states, e.g., “I
feel happy when you are proud of me!” Identify relationship (contingency)
between feelings, thoughts and actions.
 Expand identification and differentiation of more and more subtle feelings states,
e.g., lonely, sad, disappointed, annoyed, frustrated, etc.
 This capacity is a foundation for higher level thinking, problem solving and such
capacities as separating reality from fantasy, modulating impulses and mood, and
learning how to concentrate and plan.