I don't think I have all the right words to describe it, so here is a link to their site. http://www.rdiconnect.com/pages/RDI-Program-for...

For us it has been great. Our Rdi consultant evaluates my son and develops a plan with goals and objectives for us as parents and for our son. We meet every two weeks and communicate in between through the website and we submit videos of us working on the objectives. I would say that with Rdi we as patents work as guides for our son. We help him discover things that the autism caused him to miss. We use a lot of nonverbal communication to remind him that there is information he can get from our faces. As a result his eye contact has improved and he has even started using nonverbal communication himself. Right now we are working on verbalizing our thought and decision making processes so that he can watch and learn from us and how we react to a variety of problems, we think this will help him overcome his sometimes paralyzing indecision.

I don't know how well RDI can be done on your own. We have a coach that we meet with every two weeks (we used to meet in person, but we moved and now talk over Skype). She gives us assignments and we work on them and send videos to her with our feedback and she reviews them and adds her input and then we either move on to a new assignment or continue to work on an objective sometimes for a few weeks or a few months. She has access to hundreds of objects, some for parents, others for our son. And she has a plan in mind. We found our consultant here: http://www.rdiconnect.com/pages/Find-a-Consulta...

We have been using RDI for about 4 years and have seen great improvements. My son makes good eye contact, great with me, not as great with other people, he uses non-verbal communication, is developing great experience sharing, and has emerging skills recognizing when people are not interested in what he has to say and either dropping the conversation or finding a new way to engage his partner. We have a great coach that we have been working with. We started using her when we lived in CT and kept with her when we moved to VA, communicating through Skype every other week.

Things have not been all great though, he had two great friends at school, but one moved to another school and the other changed his schedule so they don't interact anymore and he has not made any effort to make new friends. I don't know if that is something that we have to keep working towards, but I hate to see him alone.

Thanks so much! Everything you mentioned your son has developed with RDI I feel ABA isn't helping with! Can you recommend any books? Do you put the program together yourself and if you do, do you use a website? I want to start RDI with my son.

Yes. Rdi can be used at any age!