Individuals with autism process information slower than we do.  For some reason, the professional community has gotten into the habit of not providing these individuals with enough time to think.  They are constantly being given the answer and prompted through everything.

These individuals are also static, inflexible thinkers.  They are driven by sameness and routines.  This can be debilitating in the real world because it’s just not how the world is.  The professional community, again, has fallen into a pattern of providing that very same debilitating sameness and routines for these children, never allowing them to practice being flexible.  

A main focus of RDI is eliminating prompt dependency through increasing wait time to allow a child  to think.  Anyone who has seen or participated in RDI, knows that this can, at times, feel like an eternity.  If we never let the child practice thinking and just prompt them through life, of course they will be prompt dependent!

Another main focus of RDI is to improve flexibility by not engaging in rigid routines and not allowing the child to be controlled by their need for things to remain unchanged.

This moment is a parent’s discovery at how important this concept actually is.  Warning: this is not a feel good, make you all mushy inside at the end, moment.

Angela is a 13 year old girl with autism.  She’s a very passive and compliant kid who has learned through years of behavioral therapy that she can just wait to be told what to do.  It became clear, very early on in her RDI program that not only did she not have any intentional actions, she had even less intentional thought.

Angela’s shower and bedtime routine has been the same for well over a year.  Shower, pajamas on in the bathroom (which mom lays out), brush teeth, put on face lotion, brush hair, take medication, turn off light; all of which she does completely independently. 

Mom’s assignment was to change the bedtime routine and allow Angela the time she needed to think and figure out what she needed to do. The purpose of this was to address Angela’s overwhelming reliance on routines and schedules.  

The only change mom incorporated was that instead of laying her pajamas out in the bathroom, they were laid out in her bedroom, 1 door away.

Angela got out of the shower and mom guided her to her room, where she stood for 2 minutes with a towel, then the towel dropped and she stood for another minute, naked.  Mom then handed her her underwear which she proceeded to put on.  With the pajamas on the bed, only about a foot away, Angela stood, not knowing what to do.  After several minutes, mom looked toward the pajamas on the bed and Angela realized they were there and proceeded to put them on.  

Once she was dressed, she didn’t return to the bathroom to complete her routine.  After several minutes, mom guided her back to the bathroom where Angela stood at the sink, again, no idea what to do.  About a minute later, mom handed her her toothbrush and she brushed her teeth.  Once she was done, she went to turn out the light.  Mom just shook her head no and Angela became upset.  Again, after about a minute, mom gestured toward the lotion and she put it on.  She went for the light again.  This pattern continued through every single step of her routine.  

Her 20 minute shower routine turned into an hour. 

Angela has been mindlessly following this routine every night for over a year.  Some of you reading this might say, well, she obviously needs the routine or the prompting to be able to do this.  Not true. This will only exacerbate the problem.  What she needs is more opportunity to think on her own, to learn how to appraise  situations and to problem solve. 

Angela, as well as all children with autism, need people to believe they are capable, stop compensating for them and to be afforded the opportunity to think, consider and be successful.  Sure, maintaining a routine and prompting would have been much easier, not only for the Angela but for Mom as well. 

The reality is, the real world changes moment to moment, things rarely stay the same and there is no one to compensate for a person’s inability to manage that.

Laura Hynes, LMSW

RDI Program Certified Consultant

www.extraordinaryminds.org   

“He has autism?” is what one parent said about David, a vibrant 7 year old who had a whole lot to say, and he said it, barging into my office from the waiting room while I was with another parent.  This particular parent had a recently diagnosed two year old child who had no language.  

Perfect example of, “If you’ve met one child with autism, you’ve met one child with autism.”

David was an extremely inflexible child with a ton of language.  It was his way or the highway.  There was no negotiating, no compromise and no collaboration.  For example, we were playing with dot art on a giant piece of paper.  He would draw something, I would add to the drawing with my own idea, God forbid.  It took us about an hour for each of us to have two turns adding to the picture.  My vision of a giant picture ended up being a 6 inch drawing on 3 feet of paper. 

A child like David who has lots of knowledge and lots of language can be very misunderstood.  Yes, he has autism.  But at first glance, he can seem “typical,” especially to people like the dad he barged in on who think autism is only non- verbal, self injurous, and totally disconnected.  It can also be extremely verbal, socially motivated and with many interests. 

Here is our moment and how we got there.  We were setting up and playing with a bowling game.  David had an obsession with lining things up, his cars, stuffed animals and even food.  He had followed suit with bowling and lined the pins up the same way several times.  My goal here was not to get David to do it my way but for him to realize he could come up with his own idea that was not a straight line.  The following is literally, verbatim, transcribed from a video of the session.

D: “No! straight line, straight line!”

L: “How about a straight line this way?”

D: “No, a straight line this way, this way it’s got to be.  THAT is a straight line.”

L: “But we can do a straight line going this way…”

D: “But that’s not part of the game, you’re cheating! You’re breaking the rules and you’re only going to do is….make it a straight line like this and that’s only part of the game now do it, that’s the way we’re going to do it, it’s not boring, it’s fun.

L: Didn’t we have fun last time when we put 2 in the front (a struggle as well) that was fun and we got a spare.

D: No, I know but, now we’re going to do a straight line. New is cheating! Now you’re cheating!  You’re cheating right now!

L: Ok, how about, we’ll do it in a straight line but let’s pick a different place.

D:  Yeah! I know what, we can do it like a silly slide!

L: Ok!

D: That’s really fun.  It goes like this, preeeew, preeeew, wooo, wooo  (gesture gesture)

L: Wow, that sounds really fun.

D: It goes straight, and it turns and squiggles, a zig zag, and a flip!

L: That sounds like we’ll need a lot of pins, do you think we can do it with only these?

D: You mean these (points) you mean all of them?

L: Yup

D: Yea, let’s start it!!

And so we built a silly slide with the pins and there was no cheating…or straight lines.

Laura Hynes, LMSW

RDI Program Certified Consultant

www.extraordinaryminds.org

“He won’t show it to me because he doesn’t care what I think.” 

This is is an unfortunate assumption about individuals with autism that is made all too often. 

Perspective taking.  An infant is born into the world with the brain chemistry that  provides him with the tools as a toddler to assume that the entire world sees the world as he does.  It is called egocentricity.  He is also born into the world to discover, through his relationships with other people, that the reality is each person has a different perspective.  A child with autism, unfortunately gets stuck in the egocentric stage. 

Julian is a preschool aged child with autism who has been receiving intensive ABA  since early intervention.  When discussing with mom the concept of perspective taking, she felt that Julian was able to understand this as he shows her his work or drawings and brings her things all the time.  So I decided to test this out.  

Julian and I sat at a table and wrote some words.  After a few minutes, I told Julian, “Mommy wants to see it.”  Mom was sitting across the room.  Julian picked up the paper, walked across the room and held the paper up in front of mom; with the words facing himself.  

Mom: “I can’t see the words.”

Julian: Points to the words, “It’s right there.”

Mom: “But I can’t see it.”

Julian: Shaking the paper, “It’s right there!” 

Not a great moment.  Mom was disappointed and Julian was frustrated as he didn’t understand why bringing it to mom was not enough.  After all, he has been taught (and quite well) the behavior associated with the prompt of, “show to me” “bring to me” and “give to me.” 

The ABA world talks a lot about the function of behaviors when trying to extinguish “undesirable” behaviors (avoidance, attention).  Let me ask this question.  Why are you teaching “desirable” behaviors (bringing and showing) without ever teaching the function of those behaviors (that the world doesn’t see everything you see)?  Ironic and counterproductive.

Andrew is a young teenager with autism who is working on developmental goals from the 2nd and 3rd year of life, one of which is perspective taking.  His parents spent several weeks deliberately not being able to see what he was looking at and no longer compensating for him by coming to him instead of asking him to think and make some kind of adjustment.  He was making some progress but he hadn’t really made the connection, and then it happened.

Andrew has very limited computer access and it is a struggle for his parents to deal with the constant requests and often tantrums associated with this.  One weekend, during a family party, Andrew asked to go inside.  When mom went in to check on him, he wasn’t where he usually was.  A little panic.  Mom then noticed that the living room doors, which were always open, were closed.  She rushed over to open the door and there he was, hiding on the side of the couch, with Dad’s iPhone.

How sneaky.  (Yay!)

Laura Hynes, LMSW

RDI Program Certified Consultant

www.extraordinaryminds.org

Great post Laura ! We are just starting out with RDI .

Di,

   It is great that you are blogging your RDI expeirience. Please do provide a link to your blog :)

I just welled-up with tears.  What a perfect recount of the events!!!

Thanks Di, please share it. That would be great. Look forward to reading yours as well…a parent’s perspective can never be wrong!

A disclaimer to this and all other future posts:  Names and some other information will be changed to ensure anonymity of the individuals I speak about.  Nothing significant about the RDI process will be altered.

Ready for your first moment? Here we go. 

Riley is approximately 8 years old and has autism and apraxia.  She is a gorgeous little girl who is functioning in many areas of development, as an infant or young child.  Riley is compliant and cooperative most of the time but extremely disconnected from people.  She would much rather engage in non-meaningful activities than with people or with materials that have a purpose ie. cause and effect, puzzles etc.  

It is not unusual for a child who presents in this way to have extremely limited or no self awareness.  We can’t expect her to understand “me + you” when she doesn’t even realize there is a “me.”  We can’t expect her to engage in anything meaningful when she doesn’t know she can have an impact on the world.  

In discussing if Riley recognized herself in a mirror, her parent’s mentioned that they wanted her to be able to brush her hair.  They couldn’t understand why she would stand in the mirror with the brush and after hundreds of demonstrations, she wouldn’t do it.

Out came the mirror.  Riley didn’t know it was herself looking back at her.  Think about seeing a child look at themselves in the mirror.  Their eyes are fixed on themselves, the make faces, vogue, stick out their tongue and smile.  All of these things indicate that they recognize themselves.  Riley did none of these things, her eyes wandered from herself, to others and to the background with no preference. 

We spent some time in front of the mirror putting shaving cream and stickers on her nose, silly hats and toys on her head.  In order for Riley to realize her reflection was her, she had to feel something (cold, slimy shaving cream) and see something (white stuff on her nose) simultaneously and connect the two.

Riley’s initial impulse was to wipe the cold, slimy shaving cream immediately from her face prior to seeing it.  All of a sudden after about 10 minutes, shaving cream on her nose…she paused.  She looked at her nose in the mirror and shifted her gaze up to her eyes, and back down to her nose.  Smile.  Eyes fixed on her nose, she wiped the shaving cream off her face and laughed out loud.

From that point on, she smiled, opened and closed her mouth and posed in the mirror.  She couldn’t take her eyes off herself.  There were smiles and tears from those of us that saw her discover herself. 

And then, while we all celebrated her success she took her clip out, picked up a brush and brushed her hair.

Laura Hynes, LMSW

RDI Program Certified Consultant

www.extraordinaryminds.org 

Hi everyone.  Welcome. I’m introducing this blog partly as a generous offering of information but more so to provide some clarity to what it is I, and many others do and feel so passionate about. 

People often say you shouldn’t define yourself by the work that you do.  For some, that may be true.  For me, when I began my journey to become an RDI consultant, it changed my life, who I am, what I do, what I believe and most importantly how I parent my own children. 

My goal of this blog is to provide a more accurate picture of what RDI “looks like.”  RDI is so far removed from what most people envision what therapy looks like that it is often misunderstood and misrepresented by people that don’t really understand it.  So, instead of reacting to all of the misinformation out there, I thought I would practice what I preach day in and day out, and become proactive instead of reactive.

For you RDI folks, that makes sense.  For everyone else, it will come to make perfect sense to you as well.  I’ll give you a description of RDI in a nutshell so you know what you are looking forward to.  No one can put it more perfectly than the  man himself, Dr. Steven Gutstein, creator and developer of the most progressive approach out there and to us RDI people, our zealous leader.

“Foundations of the adult mind are developed in the first years of life through the “Guiding Relationship.”  From the middle of the first year of life, hour-by-hour, day-by-day, in every culture on earth, children interact with parents and other important adults in deceptively simple encounters, with a very serious underlying agenda; constructing the architecture of the child’s mind and brain.”

Dr. Steven Gutstein

Our goal in RDI is to create these moments between parent and child as they likely did not happen naturally in those first years of life.  What I hope to bring for you here is how RDI can teach parents and therapists to look at a child based on where their development faltered and start there.  Just because they didn’t learn them the first time around does not mean you can’t go back and reteach these missed milestones. 

For the record, this is by no means blaming parents. 

Parents of children with autism are actually my heroes.  They are, as a group, the most patient, resilient, and compassionate people I have ever met.  I strive to be that type of parent every day of my life and often fail.  The blame falls on neurology.  What to blame for that neurology is a whole other blog, which I’m sure you can find hundreds of if you search for 10 seconds. 

A child with autism’s brain is not wired to respond to early social-emotional interactions with their environment the way that a typically developing child’s brain is.  This leads to a remarkable loss of opportunity to learn about themselves, others and the world.

The difference between RDI and most other therapies is merely that we believe  that we can create opportunities to make this happen.  Bottom line; people that understand RDI and tell you that it won’t work, don’t believe in you or your child.  Sounds harsh, but it’s true.  

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they don’t understand it.  Most people don’t.  That’s why we’re here.

Laura Hynes, LMSW

RDI Program Certified Consultant

www.extraordinaryminds.org