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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Mar 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Autism Dev Disord. 2013 Mar;43(3):540–555. doi: 10.1007/s10803-012-1584-y

Table 4.

Focused Playtime Intervention (FPI): Intervention topics and content

Topic 1: When and how does my child communicate?),

  • Develop the working relationship between parent and interventionist.

  • Help the parent acquire a thorough understanding of her child’s communication skills.

  • Discuss how difficulties in joint attention may interfere with the child’s ability to participate in collaborative play.

Topic 2: What do I hope to accomplish during play?

  • Encourage the parent to reflect her goals as they relate to shared toy play.

  • Relate the parents goals to the goals of the current intervention

Topic 3: How do I develop a special play time routine?

  • Help the parent recognize the “ups and downs” in their child’s socially engagent.

  • Identify aspects of the physical and social context that contribute to children’s social engagement.

  • Contextual factors include: whether the play encounter is embedded in a familiar routine, the presence of distractions, available play materials, and stimuli that elicit challenging behaviors.

  • Develop a “Special Play Time Routine” that can be incorporated in the family’s day-to-day life.

Topic 4: How to tackle play one step at a time?

  • Help the parent recognize the child’s attentional cues.

  • Discuss the importance of coordinated attention between parent and child

Topic 5: Who gets to pick the toys?

  • Discuss strategies to support coordinated attention.

  • Identify effective strategies for transitioning between toys.

Topic 6: Who decides the ‘correct’ way of using the toys?

  • Discuss strategies to ensure that parent and child find a shared way of using the toys. The focus is on the complexity of play acts (e.g., functional vs. symbolic) as well as the pace with which ne play behaviors are introduced.

Topic 7: How do I speak to my child during play?

  • Discuss strategies for modeling and eliciting spoken communication.

Topic 8: How do I make play more balanced between me and my child?

  • Discuss strategies to ‘up the ante” and encourage increasingly complex child communication and play.

  • Identify strategies for eliciting imitation, eye contact, responsiveness to the parents’ bids for joint attention, and communicative gestures.