RDIconnect.com ---> what do you think of it?

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http://www.rdiconnect.com this guy from that page says he has this treatment which has done "miracles" for children and adults on the autism spectrum. He even says a quite large percenteage of children treated by him have scored in the "non autistic" group and others had "moved" in the diagnosis to a less severe form, etc...

What do you think of it? has somebody here been treated with this?

We looked into RDI - and really some of it is just common sense. However, they had a statistic once that said that something like 80 to 90% of people with AS were unhappy - a baseless statistic really because it didn't mention how they supposedly determined this. The thing that I noticed is that after is has become available in our area some of the parents are now sounding as annoying as the ABA-only types. Absolutely everything revolves around these RDI principles and such. I really have to say though that Dr. Gustein makes a comment that they do not want to cure autism - just try to help kids reach their potential (and that makes some ABA types unhappy) and that is one major difference. It is just in the definition of what is success that I wonder about.

We are about to do an RDI intake; we were referred by our social worker and when we went to visit, the intake social worker seemed to instantly have a good sense of our son - she offered several very astute observations just in our short conversation: she said that many high-functioning kids mistake "offloading information" for socialization and this is problematic because, because it can pass for "normal," (meaning this is why we struggle to get help) but instead gets in the way of social relationships - my kid to a T. She was also careful not to label him with a single diagnosis this early; I liked that. I like that the treatment involves reviewing videotapes of us working with our son in their lab - we'll be offered pointers on how to help him based on how we interact. I did not get the sense that they thought of my son as broken in any way, I liked how she said "he must be exhausted" which is a more accurate picture IMO.

Insurance is particularly difficult and we're working it out; I don't know if we can actually afford this treatment, but I will report back on the intake and how it went/what I thought about it.

In my own experience with therapy: there is no one-size-fits-all. Not every therapist will work for every patient, and the same goes for therapies/philosophies; I'm willing to try more than one thing to see what works, although I recognize that means putting an honest effort and a certain amount of time into each thing (well, unless it is patently unhelpful.) We worked with our former social worker for about a year before mutually agreeing that we needed some other kind of intervention.

OK, we had our diagnostic intake: it involved each of us separately in a room with our son. My husband was given a few tasks: playing with him with a giant pile of beanbags, looking through some random photos they provided. My son and I were told to "keep the balls in play" for a time, then we were asked to make a house out of index cards together, then we looked at some family photos and discussed them.

Afterwards, we met for a short time with the social worker. Though we still have some trepidation, I will say this: she was incredibly sharp, in that short time she picked up on stuff we'd stopped noticing - for instance, my son rarely makes eye contact, but he covers it so well that you don't see it unless someone points it out. He also tends to take over a task completely and stop collaborating after the first few moments, but the shift is so very subtle that it happens before anyone realizes it.

The next step is an online parent training course, which we're starting shortly.

Momsparky, I went to an informational meeting on RDI, and I was very interested in it. However, it is so expensive. Not sure if I can get my husband on board with it. Keep us posted!

angelbear, it is very expensive, and we're still not even certain that we can swing it. Beyond the social worker's fees, which we are waiting to hear from our insurance how much falls in or out of "usual and customary" there is a $50-per-month fee for accessing the online webinar that is a part of the program.

We did our first webinar last night - I should preface this by saying I've done a lot of different kinds of therapy over my lifetime, and am pretty familiar with therapies wrapped in a layer of new-agey-type self-aggrandizement - which this one decidedly is. In my experience with therapies, this is not unusual, and is not an indicator of how good or bad a system of support is, just that it takes some time to filter through all the explanations of why this method works while all the other ones fail etc, etc. I've tried treatments that have gone both ways after this point, (to be fair, at least one did work where others failed!) so I'm going to give it a fair shot, though I admit to a bit of eye-rolling (fortunately, they can't see me through the internet...unless they read this )

After doing that, some short thoughts about what I took from the 50-minute intro (it reminded me of a TED lecture) was that they will try to help us create a "feedback system" to know when to push our son and when to stop (pointing out that this is very tricky with kids on the spectrum, because they instantly refuse to try anything outside the structure they're comfortable with) It is very tricky to figure out the line between overwhelming my son and stepping out of his comfort zone, so this alone makes me want to see where this will go. Also, I liked that they specifically stated we were not to "get" our child to do anything in particular, but to respect him.

They also discussed communicating in an interesting way: making sure you think about the various kinds of communication that NTs coordinate naturally, e.g. gesture, facial expression, tone of voice, vocalizations, etc. This system of treatment seems to focus on building collaborative and communication skills. Another good thing - the concept is that the program is supposed to be something parents take over and eventually do on their own; while they (like any therapist) won't say how long the program will take, there is a sense that it has a specific exit point.

I'll keep everyone as posted as I am able...

I hope this is not too far off topic.

If someone genuinely had an excellent and consistently effective method of improving outcomes for people with autism, then health services and governments would pay those people exceptionally well to share their expertise. They would then be running training courses and the treatment method (with appropriate scientific validation) would become standard practice.

If someone claims an excellent treatment, keeps it secret, trademarks the name and copyrights the methods, whilst charging the families of people with autism their lifetime savings, then I would distrust the method, their ethics or both.

You definitely have a lot more faith in existing health systems than I.




I would think the simplest way to find out is just to ask? Happiness is a subjective thing anyway, so the only person that truly knows whether they are happy, is the person themselves. It's not really a difficult thing to collect statistics on. Whether they actually did this, I couldn't tell you.



Can you, or somebody, please explain what "ABA" means. That acronym is used for so many different things, I have no idea which one you mean.

@ the OP:

What little I read on the site so far looks a lot like the approaches we are trying to build for our family right now. When I first clicked the link, I was expecting a bunch of hyped up promises about supposed cures. What they seem to be doing makes perfect sense to me. The description is pretty ambiguous, but believe it or not, that's one thing I did like about it. Sites that offer specific methodologies turn me off. I don't believe there is any "one" way to deal with Autism. It's too ambiguous itself. I think it requires a somewhat ambiguous approach. At least for now...

Stuart, while I'd agree with the above poster's assessment that government health systems and health services are slow adopters, I definitely agree that the copyright is suspect and it does make me a bit nervous, as I've written.

We are trying this method because we are looking for specific feedback on how to be better parents to our child who is on the spectrum, which is what this method says it offers - and because we were referred by someone we trust. We are also very impressed with the social worker who is handling our case. The e-course....well, I'm not so impressed, but it was only the first one. The social worker asked us to give them a three-month trial, I think that's a pretty fair request. In my lifetime, I've tried and abandoned a number of therapies for myself until I found one that works for me: some things didn't work because they were BS, (some of the worst were much heavier on the BS - I did a very poorly handled version of Transactional Analysis for a few sessions; ugh. They thought they were saving the world, too.) some because they didn't work for me personally (all, even the ones that work, have varying degrees of "why my system works when yours fails.")

An addendum re: life savings. We got the R&C from the health insurance - RDI's hourly rate is about double the current reasonable and customary standards in IL (therapy when I started 20 years ago was about at the R&C rate, so as is typical, insurance has no relationship to what social workers/therapists actually make)

I was impressed with the theory behind RDI, but I think they should make it a bit more affordable. I think in time, they probably will have to if not enough people are able to afford it.

OK, we are a couple weeks in now, still not sure how much our insurance is going to pay, but so far so good.

A couple of things I like - their definition of autism. RDI views autism as a brain coordination (my words, not theirs, but I think the meaning is the same) disorder. In other words, the brain isn't working together to process information - NTs take in all the same information, but their brains nimbly organize and condense the input into the important information, discarding information that may not be relevant - people on the spectrum aren't necessarily able to do so. For instance, they may disregard less relevant information, or might overemphasize the wrong information, and become overwhelmed in a number of different ways (e.g. an autistic person may not use their language center to process letters, but the brain center used for processing shapes, which doesn't offer the same perspective on the information) This makes sense to me - it also explains the so-called "savant" abilities some people on the spectrum have - if their mind tends to zone in on one thing (say, visuals) they may have a photographic memory, but be unable to tie their shoes. The video instruction remains annoying, but did have what I felt was good information (I'm curious what those of you who've been dealing with this longer than me think about the brain coordination idea.)

The general gist I've gotten is that RDI treatment is to help people on the spectrum NOT to rely solely on lists of instructions and routines, but to develop and exercise mental flexibility and thus be able to make choices based on the information they are offered. We will be starting to find out how what to do with this information in the next set of steps. We had our first post-diagnostic meeting with the social worker, we talked about what she'd observed - for instance, my son (who is very high-functioning) doesn't collaborate on a project, he either follows instructions blindly or he takes it over and does it completely by himself in his own way. One suggestion she made - when he disengages during a shared task, we might pause and touch him gently, while looking at him to see if he will return our eye contact, and then, when he does, to continue working together. Baby steps, but we'll see how it works.

There's an RDI book available online as well as a DVD - if you're concerned about the cost, I'd suggest asking your local library to purchase them and review it before starting this expensive therapy. At this point, we're in it for the social worker - but I'd be curious to see what other parents/people have to say about reading/viewing their stuff.

OK, am reaching the point of frustration. Latest installment of the infomercial ("e-course") pissed me off more than anything else: it was an hour or so on how very little research has been done on quality of life for adults on the spectrum, and what research there has been shows that only 12% of all autistics, including HFA will get a job, only 3% will live independently, and only some insignificant number will have peer relationships. I am having a really hard time believing that these statistics are really representative of the spectrum population.

What's worse, they didn't offer any statistics on outcomes using THEIR program to show that it offers an advantage. So, basically, I wasted that hour.

We handed in a video assignment where we were supposed to do something new with our son. Therapist pointed out that DH did something for DS instead of engaging him and having him do it himself.

We knew that. It's a problem for both of us - what we don't know is how to engage him/deal with him when we're exhausted and overwhelmed.

I realize it's still early, but at this point, we've invested quite a bit of time, are out of pocket about $300 and have come away with 3-4 nuggets of useful information and almost no practical skills/strategies. Hard to say if this is indicative of the feedback we'll get, or if it's that we are still at the beginning of this program, but I'm frustrated.

Those figures sound wrong to me, and I recall a very lengthy thread in March - http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt121472.html - with many references.

What population are you interested in? All people with autism, all people with HFA, all people with Asperger's syndrome? I will locate the thread and relevant references.

Thank you - I don't know that I really need statistics; my own experience here and other places indicated to me that something was not right.

I'm interested in the thread you linked, though! I will look it over.