Stanley I. Greenspan, a child psychiatrist who wrote more than 10 parenting books and developed the popular "floor-time" method for reaching children with autism and other developmental disorders, died Tuesday at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., of complications from a stroke. He was 68.
In a career spanning 40 years, Greenspan drew praise for his early research on infant development and later found a wide following as an author and public speaker. At the time of his death, he was a professor at George Washington University's medical school.
In such books as First Feelings (1985), The Essential Partnership (1989) and Playground Politics (1993), Greenspan gave parents a map of the developmental stages that most children experience from birth to age 7. He said that parents could best help their children by engaging in intensive, child-led play for 30 minutes every day. Such "floor time," he wrote, teaches children how to confidently take initiative and "creates the whole basis for security, trust, and self-worth that a child will need from here on."
In 1995, Greenspan published The Challenging Child, about raising difficult children, including those who are aggressive, defiant or highly sensitive.
Engaging Autism, his 2006 book co-written with Serena Wieder, received positive reviews at a time when autism diagnoses were skyrocketing. The book explained how the floor-time method could be tailored to respond to the social and emotional deficits of children with autism.
Greenspan struggled with reading and writing as a boy and developed ways to meet academic requirements -- scanning books for key ideas, for example.
The experience of overcoming his learning difficulties taught him two things, he told The Washington Post in 1996: "One, that kids have different learning styles that are real and need to be paid attention to. And two, that people have an enormous capacity to use their strengths to compensate for any areas of vulnerability."
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