From ABA to RDI

[zumbaleena]

When did you decide to shift from ABA to RDI....if you did? I have a good play based vb program that has made dd verbally conversational but everything in dd looks rote and like a studied response now. My effort is to work on getting her to think for herself and focus on executive functioning. Have any of you thought or dealt with this in an advanced ABA vb program?

Music therapy was useful for dc1 at this stage.

Yes, we tried both, and RDI looked promising but found that the fact that we both work full time and the nearest consultant was in Peterborough and not easily accessible was a problem.

The guy who runs it from the US and does the on-line tutorials also took half an hour in the tutorials to explain a concept which should really only have taken 5 minutes, so we found it very slow moving, and it was (like many of these things) incredibly expensive for what was actually offered.

We decided to ditch it after the first 3 month period (which cost, from memory, about 2K) and are now just working with a freelance autism lady who does social skills for an hour a week between the two boys. We also sit and read social stories with them when needed and invite friends over to play. They're mostly doing very well!

Yes, by the way, we did also find ABA very prescriptive. We've found that as the boys get older it can work better just to explain why they had to do certain things instead of teaching them by rote - although there's a place for that too!

i m gonna pm you wild and wolly tonight

Music therapy review article