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To me, intersubjectivity is a relational skill, and, more deeply, it is an embodied way of being with another person. Children don’t come to us as a collection of sensory integrative processing patterns or developmental challenges. They arrive carrying a lifetime of experiences, each reflected in their nervous systems.
Relationship-based practice asks us to cultivate our own awareness of what a session or experience feels like from the child’s perspective. We must notice our assumptions, maintain our own regulation, and remain curious when we don't yet understand. When we become interested in how the child experiences the world, we create the conditions for something remarkable to happen: the relationship itself becomes therapeutic.
This is differentiation and linkage in action. We differentiate by recognizing that the child's inner world is beautifully distinct from our own. We create linkage through attunement, empathy, playfulness, shared joy, and authentic presence.
Within the SpIRiT© and the STEPPSI©, this way of thinking reminds us that our clinical reasoning extends beyond sensory integrative processing. We are continually asking ourselves how the child experiences the world, and how our own presence shapes those experiences.
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