Attacking autism

Parents use Floor Time to communicate and interact with their child

By ANDREW S. HUGHES
Tribune Staff Writer

Jacob Hueni, 11, and brother Jordan, 8, play Peter Pan together while father Kevin and sister Jillian talk about her schoolwork. Jordan has been diagnosed with autism, and the Huenis have learned through Logan Center's Building Blocks program how to expand his fine motor skills and exercise his imagination through play to involve Jordan more with people and the outside world. Tribune Photo/SHAYNA BRESLIN

Through the first 15 months of his life, Jordan Hueni developed in accordance with expectations for a baby on his way to toddlerhood.

He had begun to speak. He moved with deliberate purpose. He had begun to understand the consequences of his actions. He was active and involved in the life of his family's household, which includes three siblings and his parents, Laura and Kevin Hueni.

And then Jordan suddenly became quiet and unresponsive.

Repetitive behaviors such as flapping his arms replaced playing with his toys. He lost his ability to speak or understand speech, solve problems and make eye contact with other people.

After months of testing and evaluation, Jordan was officially diagnosed with autism at the age of 3.

"When you are given that label, you're devastated," Laura Hueni says. "You don't know where to begin. Language is basic to everything. He didn't even respond to his name anymore."

Jordan entered Logan Community Resources' Building Blocks program at the age of 2, however, while he was being tested and began therapy then. Laura Hueni says Logan's Building Blocks program gave her and her husband ideas for how to treat Jordan and coax him back into communicating with them.

"They gave us a starting point for getting into his world and gaining his trust," she says. "They give you ideas for things you can do to make your child's childhood as normal as possible."

The Building Blocks program, part of the state-funded First Steps program, serves children up to their third birthday, providing them with speech therapists, physical therapists, developmental therapists and occupational therapists to work with them and their families to develop their communication skills.

Through the Building Blocks program, the Huenis learned to implement a program called Floor Time that was developed by Dr. Stanley Greenspan of George Washington University Medical School.

On Friday, Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center and Logan present Greenspan in a seminar on addressing developmental, learning and emotional disorders in children with special needs.

Greenspan, a child psychiatrist, will appear at the conference through a live, closed-circuit broadcast that will include an overview of his treatment model, examples of parents implementing it and a question-and-answer session.

Jordan, Jillian and Jacob Hueni dance together to the soundtrack of the movie "Shrek." In the past, Jordan didn't interact with his brother and sister at all, said their mother, Laura Hueni. Now, he comes up with games and ideas for them all to take part in. Tribune Photo/SHAYNA BRESLIN   Special kids conference Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center and Logan Community Resources Inc. present Dr. Stanley Greenspan in a live video conference, "Helping Children Realize Their Potential for Intellectual and Emotional Growth." The conference will address developmental, learning and emotional disorders in children with special needs. The conference is from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday at the Bendix Theatre in Century Center, 120 S. St. Joseph St., South Bend. Admission is $80 for professionals and $50 per family member of a special-needs child. For more information, call Dan Ryan at 289-4831.

Jane Schmidt, an occupational therapist at Logan who worked with Jordan Hueni, says Greenspan's Floor Time model is a "way of supporting a child in play, following his lead and encouraging the child to expand upon the play skills he already" possesses.

"The Floor Time intervention approach is to get involved with (the child) in the activity he's involved in," she says. "You're trying to expand the amount of interaction he has with the person as well as the complexity of the play."

Schmidt says Greenspan's methods also work with children diagnosed with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and fetal alcohol syndrome, among other developmental disorders.

"What this approach does is look at each child's particular capabilities and difficulties in the area of processing," she says. "If a child has special needs in auditory processing, all other activities would be developed to include auditory processing."

Schmidt says that although Floor Time activities become more complex, that's secondary to the child's developing relationship with "significant" people in his or her life.

"You wouldn't just set out a toy; you would join in on the play," she says. "It's not so much the toy. It's the interaction because the issue is communicating and interacting."

That appealed to the Huenis.

"I wanted it to be a (treatment) where I could get into his world and bring him back to mine," Laura Hueni says. "Greenspan's Floor Time is a form of play that develops, and we eventually got to where it was more complex, imaginative play."

Hueni says Greenspan advocates parents follow the interests and lead of their children during Floor Time activities so that the child's attention and interest is engaged.

"You can develop language skills, motor planning -- problem solving --without a tantrum," she says of the program. "Imaginative play is the key to thinking later in life. Now, he loves action figures and makes his own swords from things around the house."

At the age of 5, Jordan started talking again.

"Now he's doing more complex sentences and communicating his needs when he's upset," Laura Hueni says. "He still gets frustrated if things aren't symmetrical to him."

Jordan now attends Horizon Elementary School and is in the second grade. He rides a regular school bus each morning and afternoon and is mainstreamed for most of his classes. The exceptions are physical education, music class and library time.

"Most of his academic skills are scattered between first and second grades," his mother says. "There are things that because of his lack of ability to communicate, they're not sure of the full spectrum of his learning."

Staff writer Andrew S. Hughes:

(574) 235-6377