PPP Day 7 - Getting Started with RDI

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Fluffy on the beach his first summer; 2001. Can you believe the cuteness?

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Before I launch in, I must urge you all to vote! Vote once! Vote twice! Vote thrice and then again!

Okay, getting started with RDI is actually much easier than you think. I mean, the concepts are easy and readily employable. The practice of it, well, takes practice. It's one of those uncomplicated but hard to do things since you are breaking habits and starting new ones, becoming more conscious of your pace and communication style, working to slow things down so your children have more time to process. They need it.

And they need it in a low pressure setting. You cannot underestimate how much that will be felt by your child or how much the pressure to do, be, or say has had on them. I believe kids on the spectrum are all far more sensitive that the typical person, with a much thinner filter. Everything affects them far more than we realize. Things can easily be felt as a BOMBARDMENT. 

Disclaimer: I am NOT an RDI consultant. I am just this mom, weaving RDI into my household, modifying it along with our consultant, to best suit my own individual guy, my Fluffy. The things I am about to say may come as a shock to you--no! no! That’s from another story. The things I am about to say here are what I’ve said to parents who’ve contacted me, wanting to know what they could do to get started. They like the sound of RDI but they are saving up for a conference or are on a waiting list for a consultant or are completely overwhelmed and isn’t there anything I can say to help them find some footing?

Well. Yes! And here it is.

SLOOOOOOOOOOW DOWN
For us, this was the most important thing BY FAR.  Slow down. Slow down the pace of interaction, the rate of speech, the amount of things you are attempting to accomplish, and the length of time in which you are attempting to accomplish said thing. Become an under acheiver, in this regard.

SIMPLIFY
Simplify routines. Cut out all therapies/trips/ outings that don't feel essential. Simplify the home setting or at least one room or one section of a room so you have a place to play simple games with very little that distracts.

TALK LESS
This is huge regardless of how much language the child has. It's as critical for a child with few words as with guy like Fluffy with thousands. Use less words and utter them more slowly.
Don't feel you must turn into an automaton or speak                like            this          in       an      odd        way, but notice just how fast you might be speaking and how much you might be saying and try slowing it down as much as you can and still sound like yourself. Pause before you begin speaking. Add pauses as you speak. Before you answer a question or launch into an explanation (for those with more verbal kids) think about it, literally. Say, Hmmm, or, Huh, or, Ummmm. Make a face of thinking about it. Consider a way to answer the question or convey the information in the shortest, simplest way. Or even don’t answer the question even if you know. Find the wonder in the question and respond from there. How does the freezer make ice. Huh! Hmmm. I wonder. Let there be space. See what happens. Don’t fill in.

Try looking at the clock and spending 15 or 20 minutes and resolve not to ask ONE question, just to see how it feels, just to see what other ways you could express what you want. It's not that asking questions is against the RDI law (!) but paying attention to how much of our communication IS imperative will help us shift to a more INVITATIONAL and less demanding mode of interaction. One substitution that I use a lot is the phrase, “I wonder”. I wonder what we could do next, or, I wonder how that works, or, I wonder if there are any sticks over there.

RDI is all about taking a child through the social developmental steps and stages they missed. It relies on years and years of research in child development and neurobiology. Our kids are DELAYED. If we can look at a child's social development and say, this 5 year old is socially at a 2 year old level, why not the same thing with communication?

I know from listening to other RDI parents of nonverbal or very low-verbal kids that they make a true leap of faith when they switch to or start RDI since RDI doesn’t ‘teach’ language. We didn’t have that issue since Fluffy never stopped talking but the truth is, communication is not about how many WORDS a person has. You can watch an interaction between a parent and a one year old and see how much is communicated long before words are spoken by the child.  One needs to see how language develops in the typical infant and toddler: tone, prosody, expression, gesture--these all come first, then receptive language, then a word or two, then syntactically INcorrect 2 or 3 word sentences. And all this happens gradually and, this is the most important part as far as RDI is concerned, it all develops in the CONTEXT OF RELATIONSHIP. Brain research has shown that this is extremely important in the laying down of new brain pathways, that is happens more dynamically, more quickly, more organically when it is done in the context of a relationship.

NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION
Use non verbal communication as much as possible without it being overly weird or creating undo anxiety. Nod you head for yes or even smile or thumbs up; shake you head or make a BIG frown for no; shrug shoulders for I don't know; make a VERY puzzled face when you aren't sure; open wide your mouth for surprise or astonishment. Overall, exaggerate facial expressions and body postures. Now, not ALL THE TIME like you’re having a three stooges-a-thon, but throughout the day. This is a way to heighten the moment, refocus the attention, plant it back IN THE RELATIONSHIP between you two rather than in the WORDS being said or information being conveyed.

EXPERIENCE SHARING LANGUAGE
Shoot for about 80 % Experience Sharing language versus 20 % Imperative language, the ratio in typical kids and adults. Imperatives are any kind of communication that require an answer. Here are some examples off the top of my head:

(1) What color is that?
(2) This boy looks.....? (for him to fill in the blank)
(3) What's that?
(4) Tell me what you’re doing?
(5) What did you do today?

Experience sharing (ES) language is any communication that is about sharing an experience together, when you are talking about what matters to you, where what you are creating together is more important than a particular answer or outcome. So, in the above examples, ES alternatives might be:

(1) I love that color!
(2) Gee, I wonder what that boy is feeling.
(3) Hey! That's cool!
(4) Wow. I am so interested in what you're building.
(5) This morning, I took a walk on the beach.

That last one is a biggie. Fluffy often didn’t answer those sort of questions, what did you do this morning, or this weekend, because he didn’t remember or he wasn’t sure what you meant, when this morning? What part of the morning? What part of the weekend? That’s an eternity to a kid, especially one with autism. His perfectionism made it hard to answer because he didn’t want to be wrong, or more to the point, because accuracy is important to him and if he couldn’t be accurate, he ignored it. When you share from your own life, it opens things up for him to share from his own life, and then there can be no right or wrong.

Remember that all sorts of short sounds and words are examples of Experience Sharing language. Uh oh! Hmm. Oops! Wow! Ahhh. Cool! Whoa! Yipee! Tadaa! And often, one of those is all the words you need.

PRODUCTIVE UNCERTAINTY
Begin to think about the concept of productive uncertainty, which really means, acting in unexpected ways from time to time,  doing the silly or goofy or 'wrong' thing to create moments of pleasant surprise and an opportunity for facial gazing, a self directed desire to look at someone’s face to share pleasure or to get more information. You can have an OOPS! moment or a OH! SILLY MOMMY moment or Uh Oh! that's not what I meant! moment together.

Productive uncertainty example--at the grocery store, putting items from your cart onto the conveyer belt. You pass things to your child, he places them on the belt. (Or you pass things from the shelf to your child safely seated in the cart, he tosses them behind him in the basket.) After you have this pattern established, you do something unexpected, like casually hand him your shoe or your wallet and then, hopefully, he will stop, look at it and then at you and then you can hold his gaze in a silly moment of , oh, no, that's not right! maybe say, Oops! and then go back to handing him items from the cart. If all that sounds way out of your league at this point, just think of unexpected things you can do. Get in the back seat of the car with your child and pretend to drive, answer the banana when the phone rings, put your shoe on your head, put on your coat, call out Bye Bye and walk into the closet.

It's the kind of thing you can play by ear, get the sense of what works for your child. For Fluffy, I had to make it seem as if sometimes I really did make a mistake, did and said the wrong thing, forgot something, used a spoon to cut the bread, etc. which helped him with perfectionism, helping him be around others doing things imperfectly so it took some of the sting out of his own need to do it all perfectly or not do it AT ALL. Sometimes I let on that I was being silly and it was just about sharing a laugh, but be careful that you don’t get into entertaining FOR rather than sharing a moment BETWEEN. You also don’t want to overdo the uncertainty and cause anxiety. The goal is to keep your child at his edge, on his ‘toes’ but in an alert and engaged way, not worried and off balance and certainly NOT afraid.  My take on it is that it woke up Fluffy’s OWN DESIRE to perk up to what will happen next. Little by little, and I do mean little by little, Fluffy is developing a tolerance for the unexpected, learning to not only be okay with it but to actually enjoy it, look for it, and create it himself.

ANTICIPATORY MOMENT
Look for ways to spotlight the anticipatory moment. When I first heard that I was all, wha--? But it’s actually very straight forward. Spotlight just means underline, pull a moment out and help it to be noticed, slow down, pause, exaggerate your expression. The anticipatory moment is simply the moment BEFORE something happens. The moment BEFORE you pull the item out of the bag, the moment BEFORE you turn the page in the book to find out where the funny rabbit is going, the moment BEFORE you blow the bubbles, the moment BEFORE you let go of the balloon and send it flying through the air. Think of how you are naturally with an infant. Think of your pace, your tone, the way your voice lilts and hesitates. Think of the way you use repetition, as pattern formation and not as STATIC systems, you do almost the same thing but not quite, there is variation but subtle, like a sweet, slow moving game. Think of the faces you make, how big they are, how long you hold them, think of the way your simplify your body language and your movements. Think of playing This Little Piggy and the moment BEFORE the last little piggy goes wee wee wee all the way home!

Now, I’m not saying you ought to be doing this exactly with your child, as if they were an infant. But just think of it. There is a reason we all do the same thing with infants and toddlers. We are naturally going at the pace they need to take it in, to learn about patterns and relating, about communication and back and forth of interaction.

I am saying, very simple games are wonderful ways to work on the basics of RDI. Hide and Seek, Peek a Boo, This Little Piggy, any lap songs where you sit your child on your lap facing you and do something that has a surprise in it that you can slow down and help them anticipate. Fluffy and I play a game I got from an RDI mom. We call it, Here Comes.  You sit face to face, or sit over your child as they lie on the floor facing up at you. You say, gently, expectantly, “Here comes a...” and DRAW out that moment, the moment BEFORE you say the next word, with a smile, raised eyebrows, soft inhale, letting him/her know something nice is coming, but...what? Keep the words and things simple and sweet. I do,  Here comes a...kiss! Here comes a...raspberry! Here comes an...eskimo kiss! Here comes a...piggy all the way home! Fluffy loves it!

We also have races all over the house. I’ll say, Let’s race to the...(draw it out!) BEDROOM! and then we'd take off to the bedroom. Next: To the...FRONT DOOR! To the...BATHROOM! You can toss in a little productive uncertainty and say, To the...BATHROOM! when you are already standing right there. Oops! Silly me! We’re already here! Fluffy loves to run so he was highly motivated to play this game when we first started and still is. It’s worked through the stages too. Stage 1 is Emotion Sharing so it was all about having fun with each other. Stage 2 is Referencing so he had to watch me to know when to start--he could only go when I smiled or nodded my head. Stage 3, where we are now, is Coordinating Actions so now we try to get to our destination as a team, at the same time.

RDI is really a way of being with your child. It's more about adopting a certain communication style then employing descrete moments of therapy, and when you do that, it builds trust. I don’t know about anyone else, but whenever I focus on trying to get Fluffy to DO something, when I am attached to the outcome and TASK,  it is a major NO WIN situation. He feels it and resists and I get more tense. We are at the threshold of a power struggle or at the very center of one. Now, there are times when you have to pull out the stops, safety, health, boundaries. Yes to all of that. But I’m talking about putting the relationship first. Everything is done in the context of the relationship. That is where the action is, BETWEEN us, not IN the activity or the object or in the skill or script.

RDI stands for Relationship Development Intervention, after all.  It is about slow and gradual change. They call it a marathon not sprint. It's hard to trust that at first when we want so much to see progress for our child but the thing is, you DO start seeing progress early on and that builds confidence and the motivation to continue. And then you can start to relax, to let go of the emergency, to rediscover your instincts and ground as a parent.

I know I’ve said a mouthful. I’ll stop now and leave you with this: start with looking at what you already do in your day to day life that you might RDI-ify. Everything can be done in an RDI way once you get that it is a mindset more than anything else. That’s what we did, long before we started doing specific activities with Fluffy. And we could feel the change right away.

Good luck.

NOW, GO VOTE!

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   I drove home in a trance--my head to one side, my right arm on the wheel, my left limp in my lap, like from a stroke. I felt nothing. I was beyond feeling. All feelings were under great walls of cement. I drove past Tabor Field and looked at the naked trees without blinking, the dark black trunks dancing silently against the grayish blue sky. The silhouettes stark, exposed.

    Cecil was on the porch as I drove up. He watched the truck approach warily, tail twitching. It was just getting dark. Once inside, he jumped on the kitchen table and loudly meowed. I wondered if I fed him that day. Or the day before. I refilled his water dish.  I grabbed his bag of food and unfolded the top. It slipped to the floor by his dish and fell on its side. Little brown and red X’s scattered out. I left them there and walked up the stairs to crawl into bed still wrapped in my coat and scarf, not knowing if I’d shut the front door. I didn’t get up to check.

Comments

[Palmer]

I'm so grateful my kids are normal (neurotypical).
Before I went to law school I used to teach autistic teenage boys and it was rough. Then when I was expecting my first child I was convinced he would be autistic. It was sort of like I had that experience teaching in the school for autistic kids because I was going to need it someday.
Thank God they're all okay. I saw what the parents of my students went through and I don't think I could cope. There were many divorces and the parents with custody all looked about a decade older than their chronological age.
Even the parents with intact marriages looked exhausted and confused.
There's got to be an explanation for this awful thing that affects way too many kids today.

[gfcfmom]

This is a fascinating blog. Thank you for all the information. I look forward to more of your blog.

http://whattofeedyourkids.blogspot.com/

[othemsthesk]

It's a thorny subject!
Extrefox

[Julee Huy]

I am really excited to read this blog post! I have not finished it because I am going to print it out and enjoy it!

I am currently doing ABA with my 2 year old autistic son, but I am seriously looking into RDI. We homeschool and RDI just seems to fit that lifestyle so much better!

Thank you for the information!

[Love The Baby]

That is such a cute baby, I Love the baby.

[kyra]

hi mcewen! i'm so glad RDI is working for your household! funny, though, it doesn't feel at all like a bombardment to me! it's like the antidote to bombardment for us. that's what i love about it. it's more a way of being than a therapy to implement and the way of being has built in 'breaks' where you just 'live' your life. in fact, RDI is becoming more and more just living our life. on video. that a consultant reviews. okay, an odd life, but good nonetheless!

[mcewen]

RDI is like bombardment, and once you get into the swing of it, it does become easier. Best of all it works [disclaimer = for mine at least]Best wishes and don't forget to recharge the batteries and as gets pretty tiring.

[Ian Parker]

Time being what it is, I didn't get a chance to comment on this earlier. Thanks very much for posting this. It is a great explanation of some of the ideas and how to's behind RDI and a real keeper. This is one of those posts that you print out and read on a regular basis until the practices really become second nature.

Thank you

[autism_twins]

Thanks so much for this post.

[Bea]

Hi Kyra, thank you for this post. Its nice to have everything so nicely together. Very interseting what you wrote about Son-rise.The picture (I mean your boy) is sooo sweet. Its fun to read your blog everyday. I am looking forward too!!!
Bea

[kristina]

Interesting---both RDI and Son-Rise start from the premise that a child has missed certain developmental steps (especially in terms of relationships) and needs to go through them again.

[gretchen]

Yes, thanks for taking the time to spell this out for us Kyra! It all makes a lot of sense. MOM-NOS wrote a long while back about waiting a few extra beats after asking a question. I have tried that ever since (when I remember) and it really works and it's so easy.

I'm always bombarding Henry with questions: do you want to read this book? Or that book? Or listen to some music? Or listen to a story tape?

And he's still thinking about his response to the very first question... But I think he's not listening to me, so I keep throwing more words at him.

I will try harder to take a breath.

Thanks again.

[your mom]

I am mesmerized by your Monica Marty story. Want to read the entire thing, all 1600 words each day. And am proud of the role you are taking in helping others with their ASD journeys.

[MommyGuilt]

Seriously, thanks for "walking" us through the steps. It's reassuring to know that we've already gotten on the right track with SmallBoy. Having your brain to pick and your lead to follow will be a tremendous help!

[Vicki Forman]

Wow. Just WOW. Now that we actually know what you're doing all day, I think we can all sit back and wonder, "Where does she get all that energy?" And, of course, what an amazing person.

[DIANNE]

Thank you so much for a wonderful post!!

[Mamaroo]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to write this, Kyra! Now, instead of feeling so overwhelmed and full of doubt I have a "I can do this" feeling. I will be getting started! I sort of already have thanks to reading your blog and some of my other mommy friends.