**lite-bright**

KelleyBean

Can you tell me a bit more about your experience with RDI? It looks like something I am interested in exploring for DS. Do you do a lot of work with your DD at home? Is there a center or therapist that works with you regularly? Sorry for the third degree but I'm excited to get some feedback. Thanks!

lite-bright

We did RDI formally for about a year. 

We would meet with our RDI consultant, who was also a SLP, once a week. She would demonstrate things with DD1, we'd talk about activities and plan for the week, and get feedback on the previous week's work. During the week, I would video tape a few minutes of interaction on a specific type of task, fill out an assessment about DD1's reactions and progress, and decide whether she'd mastered the task or not. She gave me a lot of handouts and photocopies to read; there's also an RDI book available on Amazon, but I haven't read it. 

I liked the content, and their web site (which costs about $50 per month to access, which you need as part of the therapy program) is a huge wealth of information on a wide range of topics related to ASD and SN. Some of the videos are based on teaching parents the RDI principles, others are demo videos from other parents and consultants on activities and interactions. Some are meant to be educational and focus on a particular challenging topic (IEPs, transitioning to the workforce, etc. -- there are literally thousands of videos on the site and they do a great job with the content). I thought it was a very solid core therapy for high-functioning kids, and had some good lessons for us as parents. 

However, while we had an overall positive experience with our consultant's expertise as a therapist, her practice was a mess, business-wise. She was the owner of a mid-sized therapy practice with various other therapies offered, and she was the only one who did RDI. She was often late to appointments, and billing was a nightmare -- you'd think it would be simple, since we were paying OOP and there was no insurance billing, but we'd get bills randomly and sometimes go months without receiving one and then get a large sum due all at once. The bills rarely ever matched the actual hours she had worked with us, so I was constantly having to call and get them corrected and re-billed. When we stopped working with her, due to a combination of the billing issues along with travel and time, we asked several times for the final bill and received nothing for nine months and then a certified letter with the sums for the last three months of service marked as past due. We will never work with them again and sent a very civil-but-pissed-off letter to that effect when we paid the full bill to be done with the whole mess (although given the track record, I'm sure there were mistakes in those bills as well). 

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of RDI consultants in our area, and the other one that we met and liked wasn't accepting new patients when we were looking. So we've been concentrating more on Floortime and other therapy and general activities, and I try to incorporate RDI-type stuff in our daily life, which is pretty much the point of RDI anyway. I would like to get back to doing it formally at some point, but that will probably involve requesting records from this other provider, and I'm dreading that. :P I also want more buy-in from DH if we decide to start up again; towards the end, I felt like I was doing 99% of the work and the learning, and that's no good when it's supposed to be something that both parents support and are active in. 

It is parent-led, rather than child-led like Floortime can be. The idea is that the parent/child relationship is the most important and natural one for teaching a child how to relate to people and the world, and developing/strengthening that relationship in particular, conscious, cooperative ways eventually leads to the child being able to be have successful relationships and social interactions with other people. There's a lot of constructive sabotage involved to combat rigidity, and emphasis on using non-verbals, tone of voice, etc. to communicate -- the very thing that a lot of kids with autism struggle with. 

I like RDI, a lot. I think it has a lot to offer as a therapy approach, especially when you're talking about a high-functioning kid and a situation where hours and hours of ABA with a BCBA are out of the question for whatever reason. I also think there is a lot of focus on supporting parents of kids with ASD and educating them to on successful interactions and parenting of their kids, and that's fantastic. I wish it was better known than I feel like it is.

I just wish our experience with that our particular consultant had been better. 

HTH!  

KelleyBean

This is extremely helpful. Thank you!!