IMPORTANT NEWS about the RDI PROGRAM

[Guest guest]

Introducing RDI Program 5.0 and Advanced Parent Seminar

IMPORTANT NEWS about the RDI PROGRAM

02/06/07

In this issue:

Feature Article

Introducing: the new RDI® Program Curriculum and the Advanced Parent

Seminar (Part 1)

Story of the Week:

" It is because of of my son I tell people RDI® is for every kid on the

spectrum, even the most severely autistic. "

Video of the Week:

Walking Poolside (Part 3)

Upcoming Events

New on the Web Site

DVD Excerpt:

Mastering objectives and seeing development and competence unfold in the

real world.

Dr. Gutstein Quotable

Research Summary:

Monitoring the progress of preschool children with autism enrolled in

early intervention programmes: Problems in cognitive assessment.

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New to the

RDI® Program?

Relationship Development Intervention® Program

Download the Introduction to the RDI® Program

(32-page Booklet)

Preview the 5-hour " Going to the Heart of Autism " DVD

LISTEN! Radio interview with Dr. Gutstein about the RDI® Program (40

minutes)

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4-day Parent Seminars

Houston, TX

January 30-February 2.

Long Island, NY area

February 19-22.

Houston, TX*

March 13-16, 2007

*Advanced training (prerequisite: attendance at a past 4-day Parent

Seminar)

Ft. Lauderdale area:

April 10-13, 2007

Houston, TX

April 30-May 3, 2007

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THANK YOU:

Many thanks to all those who contributed and helped put the newsletter

together. Special thanks to Dr. Gutstein.

EDITOR:

Bev C

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Connections Center

4120 Bellaire Blvd.

Houston, TX 77025

Phone:

Fax:

Email:

feedback@...

© 2005-2007.

Connections Center.

All rights reserved

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Spotlights

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First-Ever Advanced 4-day Parent Seminar

Houston, TX - March 13-16, 2007

See below for more information.

Beginning 4-day Parent Seminar

Long Island, NY area - February 19-22, 2007 - Now completely updated

based on RDI® Program 5.0!

To receive your Free Parent Seminar Info-Pak, email us at

parents@... or call Nisha, our Parent Training Coordinator, at

ext. 108. (For calls within the U.S. or Canada, use our toll-free

number 1-, x108.) If you are interested in the seminar, we suggest

you register now to hold your space, as almost all of our seminars have waiting

lists.

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Regular registration extended!

Fort Lauderdale 2-Day Workshop

February 23-24, 2007

Hear Dr. Gutstein live in person in Fort Lauderdale, FL, for the

most up-to-date information available on the RDI® Program.

Regular Registration has been extended to Friday, February 9. Late

registration ends Monday, February 19. After that, registrations will only be

accepted at the door on Friday February 23, if space is available.

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Dr. Gutstein quoted in an article in Consumer Health Daily: " Autism

as a Cognitive Disorder "

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Calling all " Veteran Parents "

Live Chat with Dr. Gutstein, Tuesday, Feb. 13, 8-9 pm CST

Learn about the Advanced Parent Training, based on RDI® 5.0! The

Chat Room can be reached through the Member Services Page.

Live Chat with Dr. Gutstein, Tuesday, March 20, 8-9 pm CST

Converting from the old to the new objectives. See below.

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RDI® Program 4th Annual Conference - San Diego, CA

Mark these dates on your calendar! We will be providing more

information soon.

Professional Conference: August 2 through August 4, 2007

Parent Conference: August 4 through August 6, 2007

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Congratulations to newly Certified & ReCertified Consultants:

AUSTRALIA (Hornsby, NSW): Rochelle Appleby, B.Ed.

CANADA (Vancouver, BC): Berman, M.D.

JAPAN (Nagoya, Aichi): Koji Shiraki, B.A., Clinical Psychologist

USA:

OH (Gahanna): Benner Ohl, M.A.E.

IL (Skokie): Pam , M.Ed.

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2-Day Workshop Spotlights

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2-Day Introductory Workshops

" It will teach you to view autism is a whole new light. For me, it

made a lot of sense and created a new understanding of the spectrum. " - Kim

Rineer, Parent

Dr. Gutstein in Australia:

Sydney, Australia - May 21-22, 2007

Melbourne, Australia - May 25-26, 2007

Dr. Gutstein in North America:

Ft. Lauderdale, FL - Feb. 23-24, 2007

Washington, DC - March 9-10, 2007

Vancouver, BC, Canada - June 8-9, 2007

Minneapolis, MN - July 13-14, 200

San Diego, CA - July 27-28, 2007

Seattle, WA - October 5-6 2007

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Featured Resource

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Wisdom, Intelligence and Creativity Synthesized

" This is the latest work from noted Yale University professor Dr.

Sternberg who, more than any other scientists has worked to understand

intelligence in a real-world manner. In this book, Sternberg provides an

alternative model for understanding intelligence and many cogent ideas for

assessing it and developing the types of cognitive abilities that are most

related to real-life success. (Recommended for professionals and parents) " More

information about the book.

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Spotlights for Professionals

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Professional Chat Transcripts Library (all chats)

Dr. Gutstein's Jan 31 Chat (Update)

On the Resources Group (for Professionals only)

How many homeschooling families ... ? (POLL)

Recent Discussions: Music & Brain Function; Help! Ideas for 2nd

Grade Class needed! Flexibility and Thinking: Studies of Animal Cognition; No

screens and school exposure to computers; Contract for new RDI OS; Purpose of

pre RDA video?; Free Mini-consult from Dr G; Vocal stimming; RDI video clips on

the internet; New 4 Day Beginning Format; Wordless Books/ What's SELF got to do

with it; Help with new family; Siblings; Adult on the spectrum; Shea's 2004

paper; Financing a CIT through training ... and 5 new files!

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Professional Seminars:

Professionals talk about the Certification Process

Next Beginning & Intermediate Seminars:

Register for March 20-23 (Beginning) and March 26-29 (Intermediate).

Next Advanced Seminar with spaces available:

Register for August 14-17, 2007

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New on the Web Site:

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Tuesdays, 8 p.m. CENTRAL TIME: Live Chat Calendar

Parents RDI® Program Mission Previews

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DVD Excerpt

Mastering objectives and seeing development and competence unfold in

the real world.

You're going to make sure that a child masters objectives before you

move on. You're not going to be satisfied by just getting something done,

because you're going to be motivated and see the essential nature of the child

developing memories that they can be competent. And gradually, you're going to

up the ante and slowly require more and more responsibility for regulating the

interaction, so that they become more and more responsible partners with you,

rather than having you do all the work. And in that same light, you're going to

gradually introduce complexity. You're going to gradually add distractions and

multiple demands so that the apprentice, the child, is eventually capable of

handling almost any kind of real-world situation. -From Chapter 35, Developing

competence for real-world situations.

DVD Preview: If you're interested in learning more about the DVD,

view the video preview, The five-hour Going to the Heart of Autism DVD can be

ordered on-line from our secure, on-line store.

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Dr. Gutstein Quotable

We want parents to be the ones who really become the experts in

their children rather than the professionals.

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RDI® Program 5.0

Introducing the New RDI® Program Curriculum & the Advanced Parent

Seminar (Part 1)

This month marks an historic milestone in the evolution of the RDI®

Program with the release of a completely updated RDI® Program " curriculum. " In

development for the past 3 years, it is a major reworking of all the RDI®

Program levels and stages from the ground up--thousands of hours of work, based

on hundreds of research articles and books, supplemented by clinical feedback

from hundreds of parents. Breathtaking in scope, it contains over nine hundred

(900) developmentally-staged objectives explained in plain english, which cover

the five core deficit areas of autism: experience-sharing, episodic memory,

dynamic analysis, flexible, creative thinking/problem-solving and

self-awareness.

Far more comprehensive, precise and user-friendly than any previously

released version, this new curriculum flows from 5 dynamic cognitive processes

organized into 12 stages from birth to adulthood. The 5 cognitive processes are

broken down into 25 " cognitive tools, " and details their 150 pre-requisite

foundations. The curriculum sequentially maps out progress identifying 150 basic

prototypes ( " discoveries " ), and spells out more that 500 step-by-step

elaborations based on them. Each of these inter-related developmental pieces

were carefully researched and then fit together like a giant 3-dimensional

jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle was then organized into a framework of step-by-step

lessons, creating the first-ever curriculum of dynamic intelligence for the

remediation of autism spectrum disorders.

Setting Parents up for Success - the New Parent Objectives

Another major addition to this new work is the " companion curriculum " for

parents. It consists of 50 step-by-step parent objectives, designed to help

parents be more successful, more quickly, as they embark on an RDI® Program with

their child. It formally recognizes parents as the most important agent of

change in their child's remediation, and highlights the RDI® Program's focus on

methodically helping parents most easily and effectively regain their competence

as parents.

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Calendar of Events Related to the new Curriculum

Obviously a change of this magnitude in the RDI® Program will require a

transition period, and will occur in stages. We will be providing much more

information about the changes in the coming weeks and months, but would like to

start by announcing these initial events:

THIS MONTH

Week of February 6, 2007: Release to Professionals

To take advantage of the functionality new technology offers, the official

first release of the new curriculum is in digital format, and will be the first

RDI® Program On-line Progress Tracking System! This initial release will be

accessible to Consultants and Consultants-in-Training only, for use with their

clients. Once refined with their collective professional expertise, the new

On-line Progress Tracking System will form the heart of the sophisticated " RDI®

Operating System, " a feature-rich on-line program which will be released later

this year to both professionals and parents. It will provide exponentially more

functionality than a paper-based system.

February 13, 2007, 8-9 p.m. CST: Live Chat about the New Advanced Parent

Seminar

Next Tuesday, Dr. Gutstein will be doing a special on-line chat for

" veteran parents, " about the new Advanced Parent Seminars which will be based on

the new curriculum. The chat room can be accessed from the Member Services Page.

The first Advanced Seminar is scheduled for March 13-16, 2007. See below.

February 19-22, 2007: Beginning 4-day Intensive Parent Seminar (Long

Island, NY)

This seminar is now completely updated, based on the new curriculum of

parent and child objectives. A few spaces are still available.

February 23-24, 2007: 2-day Workshop, Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

Hear the latest directly from Dr. Gutstein. Regular registration has been

extended to Friday, February 9.

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NEXT MONTH

March 9-10, 2007: 2-day Workshop, Washington D.C. Regular registration

ends February 18.

March 13-16, 2007: First Advanced 4-day Intensive Parent Seminar (Houston,

TX)

This seminar, lead by Drs. Gutstein and Sheely, is the first Advanced

Parent Seminar ever offered and is also based on the new curriculum of parent

and child objectives. It will help parents currently involved in an RDI®

Program, make the transition to the new curriculum. Three major elements of this

Seminar will be: (1) helping parents focus on cognitive processes with their

child, (2) elaborating on these processes with the new child objectives, and (3)

helping parents successfully transfer more responsibility, self-regulation,

self-referencing, thinking etc. to their child. This will be done both through

large group lectures, and smaller, interactive breakout groups, with parents at

the same stage.

This Advanced Parent Seminar is for parents who:

• have attended a previous 4-day Parent Seminar,

• have been working with a Certified Consultant or Consultant-in-Training

for at least 6 months,

• have progressed past the early ‘master-apprentice’ stage, and past the

crisis stage,

• have already made changes in their priorities and begun implementing

RDI® as a lifestyle,

• have already had some experience with scaffolding, framing and

spotlighting,

• may feel they are doing OK, but want to move more quickly,

• may currently feel “stuck” and want to " jump-start " their abilities, or

who

• may be " veteran parents " who need to give their program a boost, and

• want to learn more about the new curriculum and understand the new

objectives better.

Class size will be limited to just 24 couples so parents can receive more

individual attention. Each couple will also have a one-on-one meeting with a

Certified Consultant and can expect to take home a realistic intervention plan

for the specific issues they bring for troubleshooting. As in the original 4-day

Seminar, parents will be asked to submit a recent videotape of their child,

which will be reviewed by their small group leader in advance of the Seminar.

For more information about the Advanced or Beginning 4-day Parent

Seminars, please email us at parents@... or call Nisha, our Parent

Training Coordinator, at ext. 108. (For calls within the U.S. or

Canada, use our toll-free number 1-, x108). Dr. Gutstein will also

be doing a special on-line chat about the Advanced Parent Seminars on Tuesday,

February 13, from 8-9 CST in his live chat room (accessible from the Member

Services Page.)

March 20, 2007, 8-9 p.m. CST: Live Chat about Converting from the Old to

the new Objectives

Dr. Gutstein will be doing a special on-line chat for " veteran parents, "

on " Converting from the Old to the New Objectives. " Learn more about working

with your Certified Consultant or Consultant-in-Training, when they do the

conversion for you. This will be an exciting process of review, making sure you

didn't miss any foundations based on the new, more comprehensive objectives.

NOTE: This chat is only for parents who have already progressed to working on

Child Objectives. The Chat Room can be accessed from the Member Services page.

March 20-23 and 26-29, 2007: Beginning and Intermediate Professional

Certification Seminars. A few spaces are still available.

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