life opportunities

Something else I wanted to highlight is the importance of finding opportunities throughout your day to spotlight your Stage Objectives. I'll talk about this more in the coming week or two, as I get to the part of our journey where "lifestyle" RDI really started kicking in (which brought us to the point we are now, where we don't often set up activities to work on RDI objectives anymore, we just spotlight them as they arise in our daily life). But right now I wanted to point out that even if you're still at the point in your RDI program where you need a totally undistracting room to set up a successful activity, you can still be looking for opportunities the rest of the day to spotlight your objectives as they occur.

For instance, you may be unloading the dishwasher, and you accidentally drop a bowl and it clatters to the ground. If your child looks at you in surprise, you can spotlight that emotion sharing moment with a gasp or a laugh or an exaggerated expression, and you've just "done" some RDI Stage 1 work.

If you're working on Stage 2 and are at the supermarket in the cereal isle looking for Froot Loops (yeah, we've got a real healthy diet....), you could say to yourself (aloud) "Hmm....I'm looking for the Froot Loops....I wonder where they are....oh, I see them!" and then pause for a few moments while looking in the direction (exaggerating if neccessary) where the item is sitting. If the child happens to take the cue and find the box too, you can spotlight that moment with a bit of celebration "hooray, we found them!".

If you're walking in the park, and you spot someone flying a kite, you can look up, point to the sky and say "Wow!". You might even scaffold that thought by lifting your child up (or getting down on their level) and adding "what a beautiful kite!". If you're working on stage one, you can help him see it too, so that you can share that moment together, and spotlight the excitement of both seeing it. If you're working on Stage 2, you would allow the child to figure out where the kite is by referencing you, and then spotlight that moment.