About The PLAY Project™

The PLAY Project : Evidence-based, intensive, autism early intervention

Research shows that The PLAY Project leads to improved relationships between parents and their child who has autism. As a result, the child improves in their social and functional development.

A certified PLAY Project Consultant partners with families to build trust, promote family confidence and competence, and strengthen family-child relationships. PLAY sessions are typically 2-3 hours long, and take place in a family’s home once a month.

During each visit, the PLAY Consultant listens to updates from the family, answers questions, coaches the family, and models techniques and activities. Consultants also collect 10-15 minutes of video for which they provide written feedback that is sent to the family for review between visits.

Ongoing reassessments make sure the interventions are on point with the child’s needs (see 7 Circle of PLAY below).

The PLAY Project empowers parents, and other caregivers to engage the hard-to-engage child with autism. PLAY methods empower parents to build their skills and support their child with autism through the stages of development.

The intensive intervention is fun and developmentally appropriate, making it easily applicable to a family’s daily activities.

The PLAY Project trains professionals to help parents. Our rigorous certification program has been shown by research to work.

Hundreds of professionals—including speech/language pathologists, occupational therapists, early interventionists, pre/school teachers, social workers, psychologists, and doctors—have successfully learned The PLAY Project’s practical and effective approach to helping families who have a young child with autism.

for more information about our certification training program for professionals, click here

A 2015 pilot study of the Teaching PLAY program for preschools and kindergarten showed that teachers and school staff learned to implement PLAY Project methods in the classroom. Learn about Teaching PLAY

Click Here if you are a School Administrator

Has proved that PLAY Project parents consistently learned the model and their children made gains in social interaction and decreased their autism severity much more than children who didn’t get The PLAY Project’s intervention.

Read the Research Article

The 4 principles of The PLAY Project are:

1. Fun with People

By doing what the child loves, the child will want to interact. What the child finds fun changes as more interaction leads to developmental progress.

2. Put in the Time

Children with ASD have a lot of potential; to unlock their potential requires time and engagement through play sessions and daily activities. We recommend 10-15 hours per week of active engagement.

3. Accurately Profile the Child

We base our program on your child’s unique abilities, interests, and development. The play is individualized.

4. Play at the Right Level

By individualizing the program we meet your child where he or she is at developmentally.

Through home or office visits, PLAY Consultants help families learn The 7 Circles of The PLAY Project.

“Our step-by-step program empowers families.”

The 7 Circles of The PLAY Project

TEACHING PLAY Project principles, methods, techniques & activities

MODELING how to PLAY

COACHING parents as they PLAY

Taking VIDEO SAMPLES of consultant and parent PLAY

Giving a monthly practical WRITTEN FEEDBACK PLAN for parents

Encouraging families to PLAY THROUGHOUT THE DAY

Click on the image above to enlarge view

Dr. Solomon’s Book:
Autism: The Potential Within

Preview Dr. Solomon’s new book here:
Prologue | Chapter 1
Order Dr. Solomon’s new book here!

Our Services

Learn the Basics

Learn about The PLAY Project and Teaching PLAY through our online courses

Professionals

Learn how to become a certified PLAY Consultant

Find Upcoming Workshops

Find out about upcoming
PLAY Project workshops

Download Free Chapters

Download free chapters from Dr. Rick’s book, Autism: The Potential Within
Prologue | Chapter 1

Parents

Find the nearest
certified PLAY Consultant

Organizations

Learn how The PLAY Project can help your organization serve more children with autism

Sign up to get the latest PLAY Project news & updates!