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HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Pediatric Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1384068
This article is part of the Research Topic Autism: The Movement (Sensing) Perspective a Decade Later View all 17 articles

A Handbook to Rhythmic Relating in Autism: Bidirectional Support for Social Timing in Play, Learning

Provisionally accepted
Stuart Daniel Stuart Daniel 1*Matthew Laurie Matthew Laurie 2,3Jonathan T. Delafield-Butt Jonathan T. Delafield-Butt 4,5*
  • 1 British Association of Play Therapists, London, United Kingdom
  • 2 Wooley Wood School, Sheffield, United Kingdom
  • 3 Concept Training, Lancashire, United Kingdom
  • 4 Laboratory for Innovation in Autism, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom
  • 5 Strathclyde Institute of Education, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    We present a handbook to Rhythmic Relating, an approach developed to support play, learning and therapy with young autistic children, unconventional communicators, and autistic people who have additional learning needs. Rhythmic Relating is based on the Movement Sensing perspective, a growing body of research that recognizes that autistic social difficulties stem from more basic sensory and motor differences. These sensorimotor differences directly affect embodied experience and social timing in communication. The Rhythmic Relating approach acknowledges that autistic/non-autistic interactive mismatch goes both ways and offers bidirectional support for social timing and expressive action in play. This handbook is presented in an accessible fashion, allowing the reader to develop at their own pace through three skill-levels and encouraging time out to practice. We begin with the basics of building rapport (seeing, copying, and celebrating interactional behaviors), introduce the basic foundations of sensory stability, and then move on to developing reciprocal play (using mirroring, matching, looping, and ‘Yes…and’ techniques), and further to understanding sensory impetus (using sensory contours, accents and flows) and its potential in support of social timing. Rhythmic Relating is offered in support of each practitioner’s creative practice and personal sense of fun and humor in play. The model is offered as a foundation for interaction and learning, as a base practice in schools, for Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists, and can also provide a basis for tailoring creative arts therapies when working with autistic clients.

    Keywords: autism, Rhythmic Relating, Education, therapy, early intervention (EI), Movement, synchrony, coregulation

    Received: 08 Feb 2024; Accepted: 11 Jun 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Daniel, Laurie and Delafield-Butt. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Stuart Daniel, British Association of Play Therapists, London, United Kingdom
    Jonathan T. Delafield-Butt, Laboratory for Innovation in Autism, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.