Way to Play is an approach to playing joyously with young autistic children developed by Neil Stuart and Tanya Blakey from Autism New Zealand.

It draws on principles of intersubjectivity and approaches such as the Developmental Individual-Differences Relationship Model (DIR) and the Routines-Based Intervention (RBI). The Way to Play approach was developed to help build children’s communication, social reciprocity, shared attention, imitation, emotion regulation, planning, and problem-solving skills through joyful caregiver-child interactions.

In this workshop, Neil Stuart (from Autism New Zealand) will describe the theoretical basis of this approach as well as demonstrate strategies used in Way to Play. The approach expects the parents/care givers to adapt their play and interaction styles to their child’s interests.

Way to Play is delivered nationally within in New Zealand and offered as Professional development to early childhood teachers.

Let’s Play is a parent mediated programme developed from Way to play. The Let’s Play programme focuses on three target areas: (1) caregivers’ play skills, (2) caregivers’ communication strategies, and (3) the well-being of the family. Neil draws on Way to Play and Let’s Play within this talk. He will be using a combination of theory, narrative, metaphor, video and interactive examples.