RDI We have a fairly positive experience working with a RDI consultant for over 2 years. Our DD is 4.5 and currently at stage 3. She is in a regular private preschool with no help. We have seen a lot of positive changes with our DD for the past two years. The latest big change we saw in the past couple of months was she started making friends at her school. She used to say she did not like her classmate but now she loves her classmates. We were so thrilled when her classmate invited her for play date. We feel this is mostly due to her progress with RDI. RDI program is not perfect but it's not as bad as people made it appear here. There are good consultants around and finding the one that you feel comfortable with is the key. I think RDI is very difficult to be good at and the consultant is so helpful for us even after more than two years. Our consultant has a child on the spectrum so she understands the struggle and also shares her experience on other things. She used to be an attorney but we feel she knows RDI well enough to guide us. I think parents turned consultants are the best kind. I passed on RDI initially due to those bad words about Gutstein's marketing strategy and his making tons of money even though I really liked the theory in his book. At the end I decided that it does not really matter who is making all the money as long as it helps our DD. We have not been disappointed so far. It’s a lot of hard work but well worth the effort. [QUOTE=Daddy] I am not sure how much the parent training is necessary. They have recently published a new book named "The RDI book" which will probably (I hasve not received it yet) help to understand the theory behind RDI. I do not belive that without a consultatnt  RDI  is not possible. In our case the consultant made us more confused![/QUOTE] I'd love to hear about the book when you get it.  I already have all their old books, so if it's just a repackaging of them, I don't want to spend any more money. I felt much the same way about our consultant.  She spoke in constant jargon and couldn't seem to explain what any of it meant.  She also did an ADOS w/DS, and the results were a mess; it was like she'd tested some other child and was trying to convince us that it fit him.  She tried to convince us that he had no eye contact or pretend play, both of which he has - they're not NT, but they're really pretty good.  She also said that, since he smiled, he had completely normal facial expressions, but his expressions are actually fairly limited.  I'd love to see what the whole process would be like with a good consultant, but she's the only one in the area, and I couldn't afford to try again any time soon anyway.  I've had two other very reputable psychologists tell me recently that they respect the ideas, but not the program.  They both said that we should just pick 2 or 3 of the activities and work with them for a while until DS seems ready to move on, then continue with whatever works next.  That's what we're doing for now, and I really think we're geting results.  DS is making a ton of observations, starting to ask questions, and is getting a lot better about looking at people when he talks to them.  Those are the three things we are specifically working on with the RDI activities, so somethings working! Sorry to hear of your negative experiences.That must be so stressful. Our autism funding will pay for our consultant so thats helpful.We just finished a year and half of ABA which did help but it seems to be time to try something new.I will continue spending a couple hours a day doing that kind of teaching for my son to keep up with his writing and counting skills.Soon I will homeschool him so I thought I should get into that habit now to work out the kinks.Hopefully RDI will fit it to our family.So far it seems to me that we don't have to do any parent training other than some online modules.The consultant agrees that most parents are eager to start so she tries to get that happening ASAP.I quess we will see.THanks for your replies.I went to a 2 day RDI seminar given by Gutstein two years ago and I also left feeling that they were turning a decent idea into a money machine. The whole seminar was basically advertising to sign up for a consultant. Parents have to take training at a very high cost (4 days at something like 2.000 (can't quite rember but close)) and the consultents are trained by RDI for a very short time  at a very high cost: 12 days of seminar (!) plus 12month long distance supervision at about $10.000 - you can look it up at rdiconnect.com under their 'RDI for professionals' section. I don't know of anyone else in the field who is considered proffessional after 12 days. Their marketing is pretty aggressive. RDI is strictly trademarked with Gutstein making money all along the way. Throughout the seminar he kept saying that you need to do RDI with a consultant because the books are not at all sufficient and you can do more damage than good. He also said that he consideres ABA very damaging, so if you want to do ABA and RDI you might hear that from your consultant. I left the seminar feeling fairly disgusted with how it is run as a business. I think the RDI concepts are not bad and you can use the books. If money is no issue for you and have a good consultant in your area it might be worth it. If you look for consultants be sure to find out what their previous work was. Some might have worked as OTs or as speech therapists and they might be good, other might have done completely unrelated work and would really be missing base knowledge. If you are interested in a developmental therapy approach I consider floortime the better and more solid bet.  We tried it, but had more luck with ABA.  It may have had to do with the RDI therapist, who was not terribly consistent. I liked the idea of the program, but we needed more help implementing it.  Harriet Has anyone had success with a RDI program? I am not sure how much the parent training is necessary. They have recently published a new book named "The RDI book" which will probably (I hasve not received it yet) help to understand the theory behind RDI. I do not belive that without a consultatnt  RDI  is not possible. In our case the consultant made us more confused!   We have had luck doing some of the activities on our own, but our attempt at using a consultant was awful.  She clearly didn't know what she was doing (looooong story), and the cost for the parent training that you have to complete was just too much.  I do like the idea of the program, but in my DS's case, we're doing fine with it on our own for now. Are most parents paying privately for RDI?Micki, I have to agree with you. I went to one of Gutstein's seminars, too, and thought it was just a way for him to make money. The ideas were good, but the costs were way to prohibitive. HarrietRDI stands for relationship development intervention. It is a varient of looking at autism as a disorder where steps in delvelopment have been missed and parents are coached to help kids pass those milestones in the right order. In some ways I don't think it is that different from the floortime model. The concept itself is not bad and it has been helpful to a number of kids though personally I am very taken aback by there marketing. You can look RDI up on rdiconnect.comOk, so I'm ignorant, but what is RDI?
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