Relationship Development Intervention (RDI)

RDI is a developmental and cognitive based family focused intervention dedicated to treating the core deficits of autism spectrum disorders. Prior to beginning, families are extensively assessed and provided with specific tools and objectives to remediate (treat until they are no longer deficits) the core deficits of autism spectrum disorders. Below is a brief list of the core deficits that are treated.

1. Dynamic Analysis: The process of evaluating information in our environment on a moment-to-moment basis. Involves picking out the important features and placing less emphasis on peripheral aspects of the environment or interaction. "Good enough" thinking is a major focus of dynamic analysis and requires one to accept less than perfection.
2. Experience Sharing: The goal of most human communication is to share observations, ideas, thoughts, memories, plans, perspectives and predictions with another person. Experience sharing involves combining something from two people in order to create something new. In addition, it calls for both people to have the desire to know something about, or share with, another person. Experience sharing communication does not require a specific response but rather, encourages flexible thinking and invites another person to reciprocate.
3. Episodic Memory: A representation we form of an event in our lives, strongly anchored by an emotional appraisal of that episode, which we use to form a sense of ourselves and to anticipate the future. The critical component is that the event and meaning are organized around an emotional experience.
4. Creative, Flexible Problem-Solving: Calls for the ongoing monitoring of a problem and altering solutions based on current effectiveness. In addition, a person can rapidly adjust to circumstances that suddenly change is able to think in a relative manner depending on the circumstance and is capable of managing uncertainty and the anxiety that accompanies it.
5. Self -Awareness: Developing a coherent sense of self that is unique and continues to grow. This self becomes the primary organizing principle for appraisal and evaluation. Self-awareness encompasses behavior regulation, self-evaluation and emotional regulation.

How do neurotypical children become proficient in these areas?

They function as apprentices to more capable adults who guide them into more and more complex Dynamic Systems in a manner that makes them trust and feel competent.

Provided Assessments

            Relationship Development Assessment (RDA)

The RDA is an extensive assessment which is utilized to develop an individualized RDI program for both the child and parents.