DIR is the Developmental, Individual-differences, & Relationship-based model that has become the foundation for understanding child development and providing support and intervention that helps children reach their fullest potential.

Six basic developmental levels (AKA: stages, milestones, or capacities) lay a foundation for all our learning and development. Children without special needs often master these skills relatively easily. Children with challenges often don’t, not necessarily because they can’t, but because their biological challenges make the mastery more difficult. By understanding these skills and the factors that influence them and by working direction on them, caregivers, educators, and therapists often can help even those children with what are thought to be chronic disorders master many of them. Appropriate emotional experiences during each of the six developmental levels help develop critical cognitive, social, emotional, language, and motor skills, as well as a sense of self.

Level 1: Self regulation
Level 2: Engagement
Level 3: 2-way communication
Level 4: Problem solving
Level 5: Emotional ideas
Level 6: Emotional and logical thinking