We are currently attending the 4-day RDI (relationship development intervention) workshop this week. We have done three days out of four and it is really good. Everything about the technique makes loads of sense and we have seen a lot of video clips etc of it in action and the positive effects it can have.
I know there has been some discussion about whether it is suitable for non-verbal children and severely autistic children and I wanted to report back what we have seen. Dr Gutstein (whose brainchild it is) is adamant that it is actually easier to work with non-verbal children rather than verbal ones in the first instance because the language doesn’t get in the way or distract them. The sort of activities you start off with are similar for both verbal and non-verbal kids, just tailored more to the individual child. They are very simple “regulation” activities which help the child to see a pattern into which you start to introduce variations. For example – putting laundry into the laundry basket – you might do this with your child hand over hand making a different noise every time you do it, inserting pauses at unexpected moments etc. Another child we saw on the video was pouring water into a bottle hand over hand with his mother. Basically you can do any activity that is simple enough for your child to succeed at - the activity itself isn't relevant but the idea is to give your child the feeling of competence and to learn to regulate their behaviour in response to yours. Oh it's hard to summarise everything we've seen and all the theory but it is very clear to me that it is no different for non-verbal or verbal children. They have moved way beyond the sort of activities described in the RDI book. I just wanted to feed this back for people who are interested.