Relationship Development Intervention with Children, Adolescents and Adults: Social and Emotional Development Activities for Asperger Syndrome, Autism, PDD, and NLD

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Summary: My daughter is feeling and saying things never said before!!
Review: I read this book thinking it "sounded" good but how could I use the info its seems quite complex and overwhelming. THen I attended one of Dr G's conferences and realized the book was never meant to stand alone!!! It is needed to progress and have a reference for the stages as you do them but RDI requires coaching and support. Ill tell you from me and many families who have done it, it has been the one thing that finally tackles the issues no other methodology can!!! We have been doing it for merely 2 months with an agency certifying throught DR G's practice and we have experienced spine tingling miracles. Most importantly it has made my daughter EASY to take ANYWHERE better than any ABA or VB has. In all honesty we have used many different methods, PRT, ABA, DIR-Floortime, Incidental Learning, You name it weve been there. But the commonality is that they still all allow the child to stay in their comfort zone- they are basically child centered approaches. This method MAKES your child come out of their shell, forces them through mutual enjoyment and love for the interaction to allow themselves to be lead.
The residual of all of the other methods was that they left my child having a hard time KEEPING friends due to her need to control situations (PRT and flootime) or be depended on adults to always allow for things to happen (ABA). THis changes all of it!! Not only is she beginning to appreciate and read social cues in just the mere first level of this method, but she is asking more age appropriate why questions and asking about things that happened to her when she was NONVERBAL!!! Her school is on board and wanting to do this and we know we cant stop. I highly recomend looking at this book and then going to a conference or purchasing their video, or even check out their website. (connectionscenter.com)YOU HAVE TO SEE IT IN ACTION!! And My prayers and blessings of frutiion to all!!!

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Summary: Esoteric tone overwhelms the practical suggestions
Review: My overall impression of this book is that is contrived and forced in places. The book is structured around a layered model of progress; essentially progressing the student from the lowest level of competence on through higher levels. One might presume that the authors were stuck for a teaching metaphor and grabbed the apprentice-expert metaphor as scaffolding on which to hang the lessons. The book is replete with various lesson plans and tactics for enagaging the AS person's interest. To be fair, a reasonable amount of what is here is worthwhile reading and reflecting on - once you filter out the esotericism of much of the language.

However, the book seems to stumble as it tries to fill its 400 odd pages with 'advanced' lesson plans. Some of the section titles made me wonder was this a case of Asperger Syndrome meets Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The AS subject moves through Novice, Apprentice, Challenger, Voyager and Partner levels as just one example. There are sublevels within each of these. Finding one's unique idenitity and place in the environment etc, are major objectives.

The tenor of a lot of this, for me at least, verged on almost cultish twaddle. I prefer a reasonable scientific tenor to any behavioural modification programme. However, others may find the book's approach illuminating and helpful.

The book emphasises coaching and that the real business of interventions is coaching. My problem with this is that it doesn't tie coaching into any particular theory - though if you take one of the authors' RDI courses presumably the theory will be revealed. There is a growing emphasis on putting intervention programmes on some sort of scientific footing, and it behooves the authors of such programmes to produce the goods on the worth of their offerings.

The latter sections of the book, in my opinion, presume a lot of the AS subject. In particular the use of others to faciliate interaction, learn about emotions and generally mediate social interactions is just not a an easy thing to acomplish with an AS subject. The 'partner' that turns up today may not be there tomorrow. So how do you coach an AS teenager to fall back on there own resources?

The authors state that the book is suitable for use by parents, adolescents and adults, teachers and therapists (not many left out there). Personally I found this to be the most questionable claim of the whole book. How on Earth can it be a manual satisfying the requirements of such different audiences. It is verging on cyncical to suggest it has so much to offer to so many.

In conclusion, there are aspects of the book that are useful and other aspects that I found incongrous, if not downright peculiar. If I had a larger budget, I would definitely prefer Kathleen Quill's book, Do-Watch-Listen-Say even though it is not explicitly aimed at adolescents, and couple it with one of the Boystown Teaching Basic Social Skills to Youth as a more convincing pair. It is a personal choice, and different people may have different requirements.