The Playground Approach (ALP) - Intensive course

About the Program

How does connection take place when words are not the primary way of communicating? And what becomes possible when we do not begin by interpreting, correcting, or normalizing behavior, but by creating conditions in which connection, regulation, and communication can expand and develop within the encounter?

The Playground Approach offers practitioners a practical model for working with communication, particularly in situations where connection, regulation, or availability for interaction may be challenging. Through multisensory listening—including attention to voice, rhythm, movement, distance, silence, and presence—the practitioner learns to notice what is already happening within the interaction and to explore how their own way of participating can open new possibilities for connection and communication.

The multisensory layer of communication is present in every human encounter, whether a person expresses themselves fluently through words, uses verbal communication only partially, or does not primarily communicate through language. The Playground Approach therefore attends not only to what is said, but also to how connection emerges, changes, and expands within the interaction itself.

The program is designed for therapists and professionals working with neurodivergent children, adolescents, and adults, with a particular focus on autism and on diverse ways of communicating, with or without spoken language.

Within the Playground Approach, connection does not refer only to an emotional or mental bond. It also includes a sensory-relational layer: the ways in which people connect, coordinate, and attune to one another through rhythm, movement, intensity, repetition, timing, space, and presence.

This understanding is closely related to Daniel N. Stern’s work on affect attunement and forms of vitality, particularly his description of how dynamic qualities such as intensity, timing, rhythm, and movement can be shared across different forms of expression.

Multisensory communication refers to the living organization of qualities within an encounter: voice, movement, rhythm, tone, breath, distance, intensity, timing, and mutual response. It is not simply a matter of identifying nonverbal signals such as body language or facial expression, nor only attending to paralinguistic qualities such as tone, intonation, pauses, and rhythm. The practice is to learn how these dimensions act together, and how connection takes shape through them.

Within this layer, a potential play space can emerge. Rather than trying to interpret the other person from the outside, the practitioner learns to recognize what is already taking place within the interaction, to join it with precision, and to participate in ways that can expand what becomes possible between them. It is a space in which multiple sensory-expressive lines—voice, movement, rhythm, breath, gaze, distance, intensity, and timing—can coexist, interact, and participate in a shared communication.

The multisensory layer is always present within interaction, although it is not always available to our attention. Playground practice brings this layer into awareness and develops the practitioner’s ability to listen and respond to it. In situations where communication is challenging, this can provide another way of entering the interaction and participating in what is already happening.

As practitioners learn to listen to this multisensory layer, they can begin to recognize communication that is already taking place—even when it does not resemble a conventional conversation. Rather than interpreting, correcting, stopping, or normalizing behavior, the approach invites a different set of questions:

What is already happening between us?

What is the rhythm of the person in front of me?

Where does a moment of connection appear?

And how can I join what is happening without taking over?

When this dynamic finds some continuity—even briefly—a sense of togetherness can emerge. From this, safety, trust, and shared meaning may begin to develop. The shift is from simply doing something together toward being together within what we are doing. In many situations, this may open greater possibilities for flexibility, participation, and cooperation.

In work with autistic people, this point of departure has particular significance. Movement, repetition, sensory responses, and rhythmic patterns are not approached as an absence of communication, but as possible expressions of a communicative organization that may not yet be recognizable to the other person.

The practitioner is therefore not focused on changing or correcting the person, but on creating a shared space of safety, regulation, and continuity in which what is already taking place within the interaction can be recognized, joined, and expanded toward greater possibilities for connection, participation, flexibility, and learning. This way of working may support greater availability for interaction, a wider range of participation, flexibility, and openness to learning.

The program draws on Donald Winnicott’s understanding of play and the potential space as a relational and developmental domain, and on Daniel N. Stern’s understanding of human interaction through dynamic qualities of action, movement, intensity, and time.

From these foundations, the Playground Approach develops a practical way of listening, joining, and participating within an interaction as it unfolds.

Throughout the program, participants learn to work with multisensory communication through a structured model based on listening, joining, and continuity. Learning takes place through multisensory listening and reflexive practice: developing the ability to recognize how communication is taking shape within the interaction, and to respond in ways that allow the shared dynamic to continue, vary, and develop.

Keren Rosenbaum is a creator, facilitator, and professional working at the intersection of communication, listening, and creative practice. She is the developer of The Playground Approach (ALP), a model for communication and developmental practice.

The Playground Approach evolved through sustained work with children, adults, families, and professional teams, and particularly through encounters in which verbal communication was unavailable or insufficient. Over the years, Rosenbaum’s work has focused on recognizing and developing ways of creating connection through dynamics of movement, rhythm, timing, response, and presence as a foundation for interaction, regulation, and meaning.

The development of the approach draws on applied experience across educational, therapeutic, community, and artistic settings internationally. This includes systemic work in northern New Jersey in collaboration with Dr. Terzini-Hollar, educational psychologist.

The methodological and pedagogical articulation of the approach was subsequently developed in collaboration with Miriam Ben-Oz, MSW, social worker, senior supervisor, and psychotherapist. Miriam serves as the program’s Academic Advisor, contributes to the professional articulation of the approach.

The Playground Approach has developed as a model that brings theory and practice into continuous dialogue and focuses on working within the interaction itself—through reflexive listening, joining the dynamics of the encounter in real time, and creating conditions in which connection, regulation, and meaning can develop.

Today, the approach is applied by therapists, educators, and other professionals working in therapeutic, educational, support, and community settings in Israel and internationally, particularly in work with autistic and neurodivergent children and adults.