What is RDI?

I googled Communication and Autism…this is what the highlight said People with autism have challenges with communication and social skills. They often find it hard to have conversations and may not pick up on social cues. Some people with autism may not talk at all, and others may talk very well. But all will have some challenges making friends and communicating socially. With my own experience as an Autism Parent, and the 15 years involved in RDI, I believe we still need to catch up to what the research says regarding how we can help individuals with Autism communicate.   Not one of us learned how to communicate through a set of social stories or teachings on what to say over every single possible situation that could occur…as if that would even be possible. We cannot control what other people say to us, life is not a script that everyone follows.   While perhaps well meaning, in Autism Circles today, this method of “if this ...

For older clients, we may still go through the family consultation program, however what we see with teens and adults is they have had many additional years to built up a storehouse of negative memories where they feel incompetent.  They have spent years trying to make sense of subtle clues in relationships, how to share perspective and reflect  on their own day and the events that have unfolded. They have spent many years keeping themselves safe in a world that is very complex . Imagine if every day was new,  struggling to learn from experience or to even see how each experience ties into another.   They have learned skills but have also learned how to compensate for challenges and many times how to avoid that uncertainty that comes with stepping in an experience that has some unknowns.  Many times this is where Anxiety takes hold, and seeing behaviors is common.  RDI and working on Dynamic Intelligence supports the family to get to the root of th...

RDI takes a family first through the family consultation process, first preparing for guiding by refocusing on What Autism is and how we can indeed change the brain and the outcome! Lets be clear,  by saying change the brain, I mean that we help the child with self affirming moments, where they can tell themselves things like, "I can fall down and get up".  Changing the brain to handle challenge is not changing who a child is at their core,  its removing the potential for the anxiety that could manifest because of that unproductive uncertainty. Together with families,  In a very deliberate step by step process from writing mission previews on where you want to see your child in 5 years or 10 years, to being more aware how to organize activities during the day to be optimal for that redo!  We go to learning about co regulation and framing, and spotlighting , to helping a child not feel like their whole world is crashing down when something changes in their day...

RDI is not just for those considered low functioning, high functioning, ( not thrilled with the terms) young children, tweens, teens and adults, etc. Every single individual deserves a chance to revisit their own development! In many therapies, while well meaning, they do not take this into account and they think general knowledge…what we call static skills, can be successful. The problem is interactions never go as planned, there is not a set script for true authentic interactions. Trying to build on a foundation that is not yet there and then wonder why nothing generalizes. This work on general knowledge does not even touch the deficit in personal knowledge which is how we all make sense of the world and how each interaction has PERSONAL relevance to our life Consider this... Semantic knowledge is information, Experience knowledge is how we encode and learn from our experiences, Agentic is our own self awareness and becoming knowledge is the knowledge we gain and use f...