Thanks for sharing!  I should have included a list of everything we've done.  We tried a year of Floortime during our last  year of ABA, thinking it was the "missing piece".  It was not.   I hated every minute of Floortime.  Mostly, all our daughter did was shut us out, close circles.  We had to be extremely careful and gifted to get into her circle and she controlled every single minute of it.  It was NOT recriprocal interaction, not fun to try to find whatever little opening she'd allow us and jump through her restrictive and repetitive hoops to stay there. 

The rest of the world learns in an adult-led intersubjective relationship, using what psychology has labeled "guided participation" in an relationship of "expert" or "guide" or "master" (the adult in this case) / apprentice (the child) relationship, not a child-led one.  If you look at RDI, there is time for child-led variations, but not until the child is a competent apprentice,  joiner and follower, with appropriate pre-speech, pre-verbal foundations in place, where there is much adult-led meaning making between people without "talk", because that is the way development unfolds.

I know several Floortime families whose children are only competent if they're in control and leading;  the children are not good apprentices, which basically means they still lack intersubjectivity, the "between you and me" functions.  Floortime families who switch to RDI often struggle because the children don't want to give up the control and become a willing apprentice.  They, like our family, have some interesting stuff to undo and/or relearn.  I had the kid who could follow orders; they have kids who have to lead. 

I know there's not just one intervention that fits all children; however, after trying a LOT of them, RDI is the most natural, and is the best fit for our family.  And there are families with older children who are seeing wonderful progress in the area of intersubjectivity with RDI.  Some of their stories are amazing.

Penny

--- In autismlist@yahoogroups.com, "Lisa" <jochumlisa@...> wrote:
>
> I am sorry to hear about the splinter skills you encountered after
> your ABA interventions. I have found the floortime/DIR model to be
> quite rewarding. It has some similiarities to RDI in that it is a
> RELATIONSHIP model yet it differs in that it is more child dircted.
>
> What this means is that the childs wishes or "intentions" are thought
> to be very key ====it is often very hard for an autistic child to
> connect his affect or his intentions to his actions or words---and
> helping a child do this helps the child better establish these
> abilities.
>
> I hope you might also consider some child directed relationhips based
> work in your therapies----I have found it brings great joy and
> engagement to a child who then can find a way to share with his loved
> ones his inner self! This is a wonderful shared experience that
> child and parent can share and then all other experiences can build
> upon this deeper base-----
>
> RDI has some nice checklists and relationship activities that are
> organized well in a book----yet they are more often following the
> adults agenda------I find that this may be helpful at times in what
> DIR might call the "semistructured" part of the intervention and then
> there should also be an unstructured time that helps the child to
> connect to their own intentions and make things happen!
>
> Interestingly----ABA can be a useful strategy or intervention in a
> DIR program ----for specific circumstances----yet what I find is it
> is applied to broadly and often not stopped when the child would
> benefit from another approach-----For example---some young children
> have a hard time learning to imitate. This then limits much of their
> learning. If the chld had some ABA interventions just to get the
> idea of imitation going---that would be great and then move to a more
> semistructured and unstructured intervention with the childs new
> capability. I think this would help limit the robotic and splinter
> skills problems----
>
> I have digressed a bit and want to just highlight my main message---
> and that is how important the childs wishes and ideas are---and how
> helping to connect to the childs ideas and helping him to act on
> these ideas with some important person in his life ----this is a
> very powerful therapeutic experience. In the play relationship or
> parent child relationsip----the necesary building blocks for more
> complicated social exchanges in the real world can be built but slow
> and emotionally important or relevant experiences from the childs
> perspective can really get the ball rolling. Plus the two players
> often share a wonderful bond that makes it all very worthwhile!
>
> Plus the risk of just repeating words or actions without any real
> meaning is significantly reduced since you are starting and always
> incorporating something that the child values --------he is invested
> and brings the meaning to the situation------unlike a robot--
>