Frequently Asked Questions about RDI

What Is RDI?

RDI is an innovative, research based therapeutic intervention that was created, and continues to be influenced, by the research of Dr. Steven Gutstein, an internationally renowned researcher and clinical pioneer in the field of autism and developmental disabilities. 

How Will RDI Help You Support Your Child’s Development?

RDI empowers parents. RDI will empower you. RDI will provide you with the knowledge and skills you need to become a powerful change agent in your child’s life. RDI will teach you how to structure developmentally appropriate ‘just right ‘social and cognitive learning experiences for your child and will teach you how to guide your child’s growth and mental development in these experiences.

How Will RDI Benefit My Child?

RDI will help your child develop important mental processes. The guided, ‘just right’ learning engagements that I will help you structure for your child will help them develop the mental processes that support social, emotional and cognitive growth. 

Will RDI Help My Child Play with Other Children More Successfully?

Yes, RDI will help your child develop many of the mental processes and abilities that support successful peer play. 

• The ability to shift attention.
• The ability to respond more spontaneously and more successfully in an improvised, flexible manner to nonverbal and verbal communication.
• The ability to coordinate one’s thoughts, actions and words with a partner‘s thoughts, actions and words.
• The ability to notice and repair communication breakdowns.
• The ability to understand the perspective of others.
• The ability to collaborate.

Will RDI Help My Child Learn to Handle Change More Confidently and More Comfortably?

Yes, RDI will help your child develop personal agency and a growth seeking mindset.  A growth seeking mindset will support the development of curiosity. A child who develops a sense of agency and possesses a growth seeking mindset will become more interested in novelty and will develop the intrinsic drive and motivation to engage with new challenges. 

Will RDI Help My Child Develop Greater Regulation?

Yes, RDI will help your child develop greater self-regulatory ability.

RDI will teach you how to develop the mental processes that support the development of independent self-regulation. 

RDI will teach you about the process of co-regulation and help you structure and successfully engage your child in the precursor co-regulatory activities that support the development of self-regulation.

Children are not born with the ability to self-regulate. Children learn self-regulation through the process of co-regulation. 

Children need to be able to participate successfully in co-regulatory joint activities with their parents before they can learn to self-regulate.  Co-regulatory joint activity requires a parent and a child to make self-regulatory adjustments to one another. It is through this process of co-regulatory mutual adjustment that self-regulatory control and independent self-regulation develops