I am a provider who is in the process of becoming a certified PLAY consultant, which is an RDI approach to treatment. I do ABA as well and although it has its purposes, I am really a HUGE fan of RDI based therapy. The thing about it is that it does focus on non-verbal skills with the goals of future verbal skills. RDI builds skills such as regulation, engagement, initiation, problem solving, and other social skills that ABA doesn't address in a social play-based way. All of these skills listed, when solidified, can give your child a better foundation to start learning language and to learn other higher level skills.

Hope this helped!

We did ABA with our nonverbal daughter. We went to a day long seminar on RDI and bought a bunch of training materials, but never actually tried implementing it. It didn't seem like it would work well for my daughter, who was not at all interactive then. Now that she's older, it might be worth looking at again, though. Hope you find some input!

RDI focuses first on non-verbal communication so that might be very valuable to your child. Learning to use and understand non-verbal might help with verbal communication since that is how NT children learn.

Hi! I have a friend who is a RDI consultant and had a non-verbal son. The doctors told her he would never speak. She started RDI with him at 4 years old and now he is talking and playing... he is a great success story. Her name is Kathy Darrow. She would be happy to answer any of your questions. [[email: [[email: [[email: (Email address can only be seen by the question and answer creators)

Hi @A MyAutismTeam Member this is an old post but I'm currently looking into RDI and play therapy. So far, just reading about it, I'm pretty excited about it. Can you tell me more about what type of a consultant you are? Thanks!

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