Books : Autism Aspergers: Solving the Relationship Puzzle--A New Developmental Program that Opens the Door to Lifelong Social and Emotional Growth
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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 649
EAN num: 9781885477705
ISBN number: 1885477708
Label: Future Horizons
Manufacturer: Future Horizons
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 200
Printing Date: March 14, 2001
Publishing house: Future Horizons
Sale Popularity Level: 135924
Studio: Future Horizons
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Product Description:
A practicing psychologist offers a new approach to developing social skills and relationships in children diagnosed with autism or Asperger's Syndrome. Dr. Gutstein describes ways to steer these children onto a bright new path of self discovery and social awareness, one that will ultimately bring them home to meaningful friendships, shared emotions and heartfelt connection with the people in their lives.
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Rated by buyers 
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RDI enables the child to move from the self-imposed safety of a static system of his/her own making to engagement in the fluid world at large. The steps are based on the developmental stages of a normal childs venturing into world while he/she looks to the caregiver for support and referencing. The child on the autism spectrum ventures out until the world becomes confusing and chaotic and because he/she does not look back at the caregiver for a broadening understanding becomes overwhelmed and retreats into stimms or idiosyncratic habits to create a static, safe or predicatable environment. The child looks odd as he/she is not engaged in the fluidity life. The words static and fluid or big with RDI as the idea is the child is constantly controlling his/her environment to block out anything which might change the order they seek. The step by step process of RDI is a very optimistic idea in action as it can be used with a 2 year old or an older more entrenched Aspergers child with defined obsessions for example - basically it doesn't matter the treatment begins with breaking into the child's stimm or obsessions in a playful fashion to make them used to the interruptions of their solo activities. This is pretreatment then the program moves through levels based on developmental stages. Level 1 for example is about co-ordination and self referencing with the care giver and the child is never allowed to move forward without the caregiver right there step by step - this is a back and forth relationship play level, based on facial gazing for information - infact avoiding language at this stage is very important as the child should learn to read anothers face at this point the caregiver says "I need to see your words" - once the child has mastered back and forth - gaze reading and shared joint attention it progresses to shared novel interactions that involve spontanity, a higher level of emotional attunement and fluidity. The goal is for the child to become an initiator and to become adept at keeping co-ordination when actions and reactions grow more complicated. I believe this program is a neccessary component to any intensive program with developmentally disabled children as ABA only goes so far - ABA is great at working with these kids excellent memories to teach rote skills - but it does not provide for the rich experience of life which can not be predicted and which gives life meaning. Lynn Koegal at UCSB discovered looking back over her 20 years of videos that the kids who really mainstreamed indistinguishable from typical peers and became independent adults had self-initiation skills and this is the ultimate outcome of RDI. That they learn through referencing the other, where the self is in the relationship, and the payoff is equally enjoying what they can add or initiate in relationships.
Rated by buyers 
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I was given this book by another parent whose son has autism, and my son has a preliminary diagnosis of PDD-NOS. While I do agree that an important part of the missing piece for specturm children has to do with their inability to read and respond to the emotional and social cues of their peers, I have my doubts as to whether or not that certain "piece" is the most critical and primary component of autism that needs to be adressed very first and primarily in order to begin the process of recovery. Frankly, I am dubious of any therapy that requires parents to spend $3,000 on a four day seminar before they can purchase more therapy, which will likely have to be paid for out of pocket. I find that the RDI's official websites use of guilt and fear in goading parents out of their precious resources is not only irresponsible, but generally reprehensable as well. When I hear something like recovery, or hope for you child's fullest potential, initially comes with a three-thousand dollar cash outlay plus the cost of travel and hotel accomodations, so that someone can tell me over the course of four days, that my son has a deficit when it comes to socialization, I immediately become suspicious. Buyer's beware I say: when therapists have our children's best interest at heart, they never use guilt or fear to get parents into their offices so that treatment and help can begin to lighten the already heavy load of caring for a child with autisim spectrum disorders.
Rated by buyers -
If you're a parent looking into treatment options, then I most definitely recommend RDI as a part of your treatment program. It's focuses on many of the very important skills that are not well addressed through other approaches - things like socialization, forming and maintaining relationships, abstract language/thought, and creativity. Let me make this clear: the approach - I love! I think it's much-needed, well-researched, and great! Some of the PR surrounding the approach, however, I do not.
Unfortunately RDI falls into the "Just use us, we want to be the only game in town!" mentality that so many treatment approaches do. If you explore RDI further (i.e., decide to do a conference or consultation after reading this book), you may be told that:
- ABA programs make children "more autistic", even though they appear to be getting better this is only a short term illusion, underneath it all they are being taught to think in a more black-and-white 'autistic' way.
- Language fundamentals (i.e., basic vocabulary, following directions, speaking in sentences using correct grammar) are not a core defecit of autism despite the fact that they are listed as part of the diagnostic criteria, and so they are not targeted. The child will 'get' all of this language by doing RDI, however, even though it's not specifically addressed.
- The child's age when they begin treatment isn't important, the birth to five time frame for early intervention is arbitrary. Also, intensity of treatment isn't important, quality of treatment is (again, this is said as 'fact' despite the fact that it is not supported and seems to be contradicted by research)
This is some of the information that was presented when I went to an RDI conference and checked out their website, from Dr. Gutstein himself. So I recommend this program to parents with a warning - keep your common sense. Do not fire your speech therapist or your verbal behavior consultant if you're happy with these programs and you think they are working. I like RDI a lot, I think it's a great program and very beneficial to the child, but some of the information they are passing along to parents as 'fact' seem more like their own theories that do not appear to be consistently supported by research.
Bottom line - there is no one 'right' approach for any child! Some kids will need to sit down and drill on vocabulary words over and over in order to develop a functional vocabulary. Yet this would be silly and pointless for some other children. Some kids will benefit from behavioral, sensory, or other techniques as part of a combined program, some won't. Why this fact is so rarely recognized by the 'heads' of these various therapies is beyond me.
Rated by buyers 
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I'm actually revising this review having reread the book and learned more about RDI, as I feel I have a better idea of what the approach is really all about now. My new in-a-nutshell assessment: there are some things I really love about RDI, and some things that I don't care for. To be fair, I would say the same about most treatment approaches.
To start with the positive: I think the thing that makes RDI special are what they now call the "Child Goals". There was a time when we thought teaching children with autism to be 'social' meant drilling them on how to say "Hi, my name is ____ what's your name how are you do you want to play", and other such catch phrases that would be fairly useless on a real life, chaotic playground full of it's own hidden codes and rules. The same for abstract thought, imagination, perspective taking. Some things don't translate well to the old "10 trials" format. So a big bravo to RDI for researching this topic and developing goals based around how these skills emerge in typical development.
Now for what I see as the core problems in RDI. First, it is all set up around the philosophy that if children feel competent, they will participate (as opposed to ABA, which says if children feel MOTIVATED they will participate.) So if you are trying to do a social activity with an autistic child, and they keep running away trying to go play with light switches or Thomas Tank Engine, RDI says it's because they don't feel competent. Make the situation easier, help them more, slow down, and they will happily engage with you.
Nothing wrong with this philosophy, but I'm here to say, I haven't found it to be true. There is actually emerging research to suggest that children with autism may be wired to be 'systemizers' and to pay attention to more mechanical/mathematical type information while lacking typical levels of motivation to attend to social information. If this is the case for a child, you can simplify all you want and the issue isn't that they don't understand, it's that they don't care and you're not creating a reason for them to care. You can be the best teacher in the world but it won't do much for a student who is tuning you out.
Second, RDI says that most of the methods used in ABA teaching are Bad with a capital B, and encourage families to really avoid these methods. Again, the problem? A lot of those methods are extremely effective with autistic children, and taking them off the table really limits your teaching tools. This includes methods such as giving the child a direct instruction or asking them a direct question, prompting them to answer or respond, or teaching new material in a very repetitive, predictable way.
I think the interesting argument that you get down to here is: when teaching an autistic child, how much should you accommodate a child's autism vs. how much you should try to change it? In my mind, using ABA type methods lean more toward accommodation - teaching in a way that is easier for an autistic child and more in line with their style of learning. RDI methods stress change - you teach more in the way you would expect a neurotypical child to learn and hope they will in turn adapt to this.
What I have seen to happen, in my admittedly very limited observation, is that children who are closer to that neurotypical way of thinking do well with RDI, whereas children who are more classically autistic don't seem to get much out of RDI unless it's adapted for them. For the children who have some of those base skills already, RDI can be the push they need into becoming a dynamic thinker. For a child who doesn't attend well to social information, needs to have their interest/motivations incorporated to a large degree, and doesn't learn well outside of highly structured teaching situations, I almost wonder if it's akin to teaching a deaf child with nothing but verbal direction.
So my advice? I like the ideas, I do. I would recommend this therapy for high-functioning children with fairly good language and some pre-existing social motivation. For more involved children, I would recommend it as an add-on to other types of therapy such as Floortime or Verbal Behavior, that are more focused on adapting to the child's way of thinking instead of waiting for them to adapt to yours.
Rated by buyers -
Its about time that a book was written that focuses on the motivation of kids with autism. Further, this therapy addresses one of the key defecits of kids with autism: social skills. Defintely a breath of fresh air for those tired of the rote, ungeneralizable, and BORING appraches of ABA.
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