Wellness RDI Program
Introduction
When a family has children with special needs, the family undoubtedly has bigger challenges to overcome than we ever thought possible. This situation often force us to create unpredictable, and uncertain moment with immediate decision making that often put the family member into stress. Not only physical exhaustion but also mental and emotional exhaustion often takes place. This has a great impact in husband and wife relationship and the relationship with the child’s sibling. RDI comes as intervention that build parents’ competency with skills and strategies to help the special needs child and the whole family member to be in controlled of the situation and not being controlled by the situation.
What is RDI?
RDI has been described as “the missing piece of the puzzle” in the treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental difficulties. The child with special needs has missed some important milestone in their developmental path, in area of; cognitive, language, social emotional and behavior that unable the child to connect with others at their age level. RDI will help parents to travel back to this missing milestone, and work from their child’s level of readiness to foster the growth.
Research has shown that unlike the typical child who has the drive to learn new things from his environment (defined by RDI as growth seeking drive), the child with the special shows little interest in exploring their environment and prefer to be static. Therefore, the growth seeking drive needs to be activated.
Once this drive is activated, the child will be more open to seeking the change, willingness to connect and learning progressively toward independency.
Wellness RDI (Relationship Development Intervention) Program
Through Wellness RDI program, parents are empowered to guide their child through meaningful relationships, while addressing important core issues such as motivation, communication, emotional regulation, episodic memory, rapid attention-shifting, self-awareness, appraisal, executive functioning, flexible thinking and creative problem solving.
Wellness RDI Consultant working closely with parents to gradually understand their child, from the child’s development readiness, thinking process, strength, and challenges. Each program is carefully tailor individually to match the need of the family. The consultant breakdowns each skill into manageable steps to help parents from being overwhelmed.
The program will empower parents with the practical tools and strategy so parents can feel confidence with their guiding and mindfully use every opportunity as “teachable moments” to help the child overcoming challenges.
Wellness RDI program gives parents a chance to rebuild the connection into trusted relationship with their special needs child, as well as normalize the family environment. The program allows the entire family member to manage the situation and experience joy.
Benefit from RDI:
- Enhances the quality life of the child by getting the child prepared to handle the real, dynamic and unpredictable world
- Enables parents to be the primary influencer and to get back their control over the situation through guided participation relationship (GPR)
- RDI offers day to day opportunity for parents to address the child’s challenges in a safe environment and gradually add the challenge to develop the child’s autonomy and make own discoveries.
- The consultant’s skill will be gradually transferred to the parents that can be used by parents throughout the child’s life
- Restore and strengthen the whole family relationship and enable the family to function normally and working as a team.
How does the program work?
The consultant meets with parents regularly to develop and customize their program. Between meetings, parents use video to record specific interactions with their child and, with their consultant’s support, learn how to analyze their own role in the guiding relationship. Video review is documented as a very effective tool for changing how we parent. Thus the parents learn how to continuously improve their interactions with their child to provide ‘just right’ challenges, which facilitate his dynamic development. Over time, need for consultation reduces and RDI becomes a way of life, and the consultant is no longer needed.
Parents have access to a community of consultants and other families and a wealth of webinars, articles, videos and blogs to support their journey, as well as their consultant to guide them.
Getting to know our RDI consultant:
As parent coach and family counselor at Wellness Indonesia Counseling and Coaching Center, Chyntia Poedjokerto MS.Ed has specialty in providing guidance and assistance for parents whose children and teens are struggling in area of academic, emotional, behavior, emotional and social. She has years of experience in working with students with various learning needs in special needs and inclusive setting.
As family counselor and parents coach, Chyntia understands the challenges every parents faced in raising up children in the 21st century, Chyntia works closely with parents to provide the child with emotionally healthy home. At the same time she works with teachers to create supportive school environment that enables the child to reach maximum potential.
With her Master Degree in Special Education from USA and as the first RDI Certified consultant in Indonesia, Chyntia uses her experiences and skills, from identifying the issue, setting up the goals/priority, breaking it down into manageable and practical steps. She monitors each of her program carefully and make necessary adjustment as it fits
Chyntia presents at conferences and run various forms of training and workshop for parents, teacher and professional in the education/parenting sector. Chyntia combines her personal and professional coaching experiences, in the dynamic ways with practical and ready to use strategies.
