Social Skills & Relationship Development
If your child has a learning disability or ADHD, maybe this isn’t an issue for him or her. Maybe your child has an active social life, or at least one or two really good friends. For individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (Autism, Pervasive Development Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome), on the other hand, weak social skills and poor relationship development are the heart of their problem.
We parents of kids with ASD have always known this. We long to truly connect with our kids, to really understand what makes them tick. We feel the pain when they don’t get invited to parties or to go on play dates, or when they’re rejected or taunted by their peers. We’ve had psychologists recommend play therapy and speech therapists tell us they need to focus on “pragmatic” conversation skills (such as making eye contact, taking turns, etc.) with our children. Many of us have even enrolled our children in special social skills groups, in the hopes that they will have that one place where they feel like they belong, and just maybe find one special friend who understands them.
Unfortunately, our experience has been that many of these well-intentioned efforts have fallen short. The play therapy wasn’t the right form of play therapy for our children. It was designed for children with other emotional needs that needed an outlet. The child was supposed to take the lead and the adults were to follow. That doesn’t work for children with ASD, because ASD children don’t know how to play. Teaching pragmatic skills works, but only to a point. Each time they encounter a social situation that they haven’t rehearsed, our ASD kids don’t know how to react. A few of us have been fortunate enough to find a social skills group where our kids really do feel like they belong. As soon as they leave the group, however, they go back to feeling like outsiders again.
Recently, however, we at PEP/Albany have found a reason to be hopeful. We learned about Relationship Development Intervention. Its founder, Steve Gutstein, Ph.D., had years of experience counseling individuals with ASD. His efforts were successful by conventional standards, but he felt like something was missing from his practice. So he did his homework. He read everything he could find about ASD and its long-term prognosis. He also read about normal relationship development, which is supposed to occur in infancy. (No wonder schools have such a hard time addressing these needs!)
Based on his research, Dr. Gutstein came up with 6 levels, divided into 24 stages of relationship development. He also developed a plan and activities for teaching these stages of relationship development. The whole process is very time-consuming, so much of the work occurs in the home and is accomplished with one of the parents in the role of chief relationship coach. Many families who participate in the program refer to their RDI lifestyle. Later on, when the child is developmentally ready, a peer at the same level of relationship development is brought into the picture.
Obviously, parents who choose to do RDI with their child need some form of training. The
Our advice to parents is to do as much as you can afford. We highly recommend the books, especially Solving the Relationship Puzzle (see full bibliographic information below). We believe that this book should be required reading for anyone that lives and/or works with anyone with an ASD. The activity books are also excellent. If your child is a teenager, we recommend that you get the book Relationship Development Intervention with Children, Adolescents and Adults. If you live in the
Finally, parents doing RDI ideally should have some guidance from a professional who is trained in RDI assessment and intervention techniques. Just as children who are reading disabled need a trained professional to help them identify their instructional reading level, ASD individuals need someone to objectively assess their level of relationship development. If the activities are too advanced, the person flounders and may even give up on participating. If they’re too easy, the person can become bored or at least progress will become stagnated. The
For more information, go to The Connections Center web-site at www.rdiconnect.com.
If you're looking for support for doing RDI with a teenager, check out this web forum: http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/RDITEENS/
The books, two of which are listed below, can be purchased through the
Gutstein, Steven E. Autism Aspergers: Solving the Relationship Puzzle: A New Development Program that Opens the Door to Lifelong Social & Emotional Growth.
Gutstein, Steven E. & Rachelle Sheehy. Relationship Development Intervention with Children, Adolescents and Adults: Social and Emotional Development Activities for Asperger Syndrome, Autism, PDD and NLD.
PEP of the Capital Region has no financial relationship with the