WASHINGTON — Parents whose autistic children turn life upside down might turn to a movement therapist for help.
Understanding children's nonverbal expressions can be a springboard for managing their tantrums and improving their socialization, Suzi Tortora, Ed.D., explained at a press conference on Parkinson's disease sponsored by the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies.
Dr. Tortora, a certified movement analyst and dance therapist with a private practice in New York City, works with a variety of children, including those with autism and pervasive development disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and unspecified developmental delays.
Dr. Tortora's strategies are based on harnessing the child's unique ways of coping and responding to the environment and using the child's nonverbal actions as communication tools. She observes and interacts with her clients and their parents and uses principles of movement analysis to interpret a child's particular movement expressions and determine how the child is responding to his or her environment.
When working with autistic children, Dr. Tortora tries to help them transition from the experience of physical dysregulation to regulation.
“The key is that children with autistic spectrum disorder have a difficult time relating,” she said. “They are idiosyncratic in their movements. They are sensorially over- or understimulated, and they can quickly escalate to a place of total body dysregulation.”
Her therapy includes riding out a tantrum with the child by using movement and dance as a way to stay connected nonverbally. She mirrors the type and emotional quality of the child's movements to keep the child relating to her instead of disappearing into his or her own world. The goal is to help the child learn to communicate and stay connected during a tantrum to regain control. Although such therapy is not available everywhere, pediatricians can introduce it as a drug-free intervention for children with autism or other developmental delays or behavioral problems.
For more information about Dr. Tortora and the use of movement therapy in children, visit www.suzitortora.org