RDI & Imagination

[furrowed]

Hi guys,

my son (5). We are late addressing his behavioral needs. I feel he has significant deficits in imagination and pretend play. He also has some deficits in connectedness. He is murky - 1 dev ped says autism, Kennedy Krieger thinks not (ADOS scheduled, however)

Would RDI help foster imagination and pretend play?

We have done some Floortime - could I continue applying Floortime while doing RDI? (I have heard somethings that sound like this is discouraged by RDI)

Thank you so much for your help!

[sbgrace]

I think there is a yahoo group possibly that combines? I'm not sure. I kept some floortime principals in our RDI program. We used both--started in floortime and it did lots of good particularly in areas of experience sharing here. We then moved to RDI. It's a different paradigm---floortime is following the child's lead and RDI is guiding the child. It's just different mostly in initial approach I think honestly. I think RDI is how it really works developmentally (young neurotypical kids look to their parents as guides naturally-that's how they learn). Have you worked on this area in Floortime directly? It will, right? RDI will address this area too but it's going to look different. For example you might be working on flexible thinking and the child discovers that they can use something silly in place of a spoon. RDI takes a child through each (very detailed/broken down) developmental step they didn't take that a neurotypical child did from the beginning. So the initial stage in RDI is going to be things babies are doing (that spectrum kids aren't...like referencing for example for my son). You wouldn't typically be doing pretend until 18 months so you'd be hitting it at that point developmentally in RDI--not immediately. You'd also be hitting the underlying cognitive foundations as you go. Lots of stuff lead up to pretend play-even things like referencing your guide contribute to that forming. RDI is going to hit those steps. If you're just looking to address that particular area I'd do floortime or another even more targeted approach I think.

Did that make any sense?