​In this episode of Autism: A New Perspective, Dr. Rachelle Sheely and Dr. Sarah Wayland discuss a question many parents have: What do you do when your teen ages out of RDI®? Is RDI® for Life? RDI® can help all families, and your child can benefit from starting RDI® at any age, but the program is designed to promote growth, learning, development, and the ability to have relationships and perform necessary life skills, and, eventually, independence in adulthood. Your child can benefit from RDI® into their teen years and into young adulthood, if they are not yet ready for adulthood. Is Your Child Ready for Adulthood? Your teen does not have to ‘age out’ of the RDI® program. If your child is not ready for adulthood, you can continue the program. How do you know if they are ready for adulthood? Ask yourself: How are they with problem-solving and self-awareness? How are they with ongoing growth and development and uncertainty management? How about flexibility, teamwork, relationship building, analysis and appraisal, perspective, creativity, and innovation? These are the things that you need to have in your toolbox in order to have relationships, and we want our children to have those fulfilling, reciprocal relationships in life. RDI® is Not Age-Limited Even if your child is a teen or a young adult, RDI® can work for your family, but it’s important, when you’re just starting anything, to know where you are. Our assessment will help you to figure out your child’s unique strengths and challenges, and how RDI® can help you to guide them to independence. RDI® can help your child, you, and your entire family to lead more growth-seeking lives.

Welcome to Autism: A New Perspective, the podcast show from RDIconnect. In this newest episode, we talk to Dr. Sarah Wayland about raising autistic teens, RDI® and navigating high school on the spectrum.

Using Functioning Labels with Autism When it comes to using terms like this “high-functioning” child or this “low-functioning” teen, it takes all of the humanness out of the person. It implies that they are just another statistic, “oh, this person will never be able to live independently” or it pigeonholes people and makes us forget that these are not small robots we are talking about, they are people. In order for each individual autistic person to get the supports they need in life – whatever those supports may look like we need to drop the labels because they are doing more harm than good. At RDI®, we’re not interested in the labels, we’re interested in the unique individual. And people who are dealing with autism are the same as you and me. We have a unique presentation and part of that unique presentation is that we all want the same things, but we’re all different, and understanding that gives us the ability to look carefully, like where we get started and how we move along once we’ve gotten started. https://www.rdiconnect.com/

In this episode of “Autism: A New Perspective,” we continue the discussion about raising girls with autism. Kat Lee is joined by special guest Sharon Sargeant, an RDI® parent whose daughter is now an adult. Sharon talks about the difficulty of getting a diagnosis in the early 90s, trying ABA, and discovering RDI® when her daughter was 12 years old. www.rdiconnect.com

Introducing Our Children to Our Dynamic World In this episode of Autism: A New Perspective, Dr. Gutstein talks about the RDI® program as an introduction to the dynamic world for our children. Typically developing children will naturally develop the MindGuiding Relationship with their parents and understand and interact with the dynamic world we live in. Children who go on to be diagnosed with autism, however, need help developing Dynamic Intelligence and connecting to that world. That’s where RDI® comes in. With the help of an RDI® Certified Consultant, parents can learn to re-build the Guiding Relationship and to guide their children though our world. As parents, we can use RDI® concepts to introduce our children to more variables and increasingly dynamic situations, when they are ready. Children with autism are more than capable of achieving growth, development, and quality of life, just like neurotypical children, but they must be given the chance – and they must be able to move at their own pace. Dynamic Intelligence is the Outcome of RDI® Autism can simply be described as the failure to be introduced to the dynamic world. This is not the fault of the child, the parents, or anyone else! When a child is born with certain neural vulnerabilities, they are unable to develop the Guiding Relationship with their parents, and they lose out on the opportunity to understand the dynamic world, and to develop Dynamic Intelligence. RDI® bridges this gap by providing parents with the knowledge and tools they need to introduce their child to the dynamic world, so they can continue to grow, learn, and develop throughout their life. https://www.rdiconnect.com/r

In this episode of “Autism: A New Perspective,” Kat Lee is joined by special guest RDI® Certified Consultant (and parent of an autistic daughter) Nargis Carnahan, to talk about raising a girl with autism. Nargis talks about her family’s experience with RDI® and how the program turned things around for them, starting with finally being able to have a relationship with her daughter.  Kat and Nargis delve into the joys and challenges of raising a daughter on the spectrum, and how autistic girls who grow up to be autistic women have a set of their own unique challenges they must face. Some of the topics they tackle in this episode include: Talking to your daughter about puberty and sexuality. Explaining the concepts of bullying, consent, and other situations where her vulnerabilities might be taken advantage of. Helping her to learn to communicate with others and build friendships. https://www.rdiconnect.com/

When parents first hear their child's diagnosis of autism, they often go straight into a state of crisis. We see it all the time and often the first thing we do is work with families to help them get over this initial state of crisis, to accept, and to move forward and focus on their child's growth and wellbeing. But many parents actually go back into a state of "re-crisis" later on in their journey. In this episode of "Autism: A New Perspective," Dr. Sheely talks about the things that might trigger a state of crisis again for some parents, how to know if you're in a crisis state, and what you can do to move yourself out of it. https://www.rdiconnect.com/

Without variability, there’s nothing worth experiencing. Variability is where our alive feelings come from, whether that's excitement, surprise, curiosity, discovery, mastery or loss, rejection, hurt, failure, all of our important human experiences.  What makes us human is the product of our orientation and our engagement with a dynamic variation. So how does this fit into a world where you are resistant to change? How can you help your child, without overwhelming or stressing them out, see the world as something to be discovered and experienced? Dr. Steven Gutstein talks about resistance to change in individuals with autism, and how RDI® can help.  https://www.rdiconnect.com/