Early Start Denver Model (ESDM)

The Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) is an assessment and a curriculum for autistic kids aged 12 to 48 months that aims to build positive relationships through joint attention routines and multi-sensory learning, in order to facilitate skill acquisition and generalization at a faster rate.

Per the official Early Start Denver Model website: “While ESDM addresses all developmental areas in which children are behind, it mainly focuses on boosting children’s social-emotional, cognitive, and language abilities because development in these domains is particularly affected by autism… Because infant-toddler learning is strongly influenced by the quality of relationships between children and adults, ESDM involves using sensitive, responsive strategies within everyday learning opportunities provided by parents, family members, and others to support child learning. ESDM thus fuses a developmental, play-based, relationship-based approach with principles of applied behavior analysis to create an integrated whole that is both individualized and manualized: a naturalistic, developmental-behavioral intervention (NDBI) that allows for step-wise alterations in a teaching approach based on an individual child’s learning profiles to assure maximum progress on learning objectives.”

For more information, check out: ESDM Training Program