RDI update

Here's a photo of Jacob pretending to be....um, well, actually, I have no idea what he's pretending to be. It's something he came up with entirely on his own, from his own imagination, not from a video or movie or book or anything else recognizable. To be honest, I'm kind of enjoying the mystery!

In any case, I wanted to give everyone an update of where we're at with RDI and the new objectives. The past couple of months have been very trying on my patience, undertaking the tedious task of reading each and every objective in the first 5 stages of the new version of RDI, which they are calling RDI 5.0. These objectives are detailed and specific, and I've wanted to make sure I had a complete understanding of them before I put a check mark next to them, indicating that Jacob has mastered them. I want no holes left behind!

So last month I drove out to meet with our RDI Program Certified Consultant for a face-to-face meeting and chat about the objectives, and this week I set up a phone consultation with her. We have an RDA (Relationship Development Assessment -- the assessment tool used in RDI Program Planning) schedule for the end of this month, and we've been frantically (well, I've been somewhat frantic anyway, I don't think our consultant is all that flustered about it!) trying to determine where Jacob's "edge of competency" is. That edge is the place where we need to work on objectives, and is the place she'll want to be looking for and defining during our RDA.

I think we've finally found a resting place, though. During our phone consult this week, we determined a handful of Stage 5 (equivalent to typical development between 3 and 4 yrs of age) objectives to look at with Jacob over the next several weeks. Most of them he probably has mastered, but are things I've not thought to look at, so I'll test them out and see where we're at. We may or may not have one or two objectives that need a bit of work -- if so, we'll work on them.

So after we spoke, she went ahead and sent me the Stage 6 objectives to look at. The new objectives are grouped in "Foundation" (abilities/understandings they need to have coming into the stage, in order for any stage work to get accomplished), "Discovery" (new abilities/understandings that would naturally develop in a typical child at this age), and "Elaborations" (which are the continued development of abilities/understandings discovered during preivous stages).

I read through the Foundation objectives for Stage 6, and, after giving each a bit of thought, checked them all off.

Then I read through the Discovery objectives, and while I did check off about half of them, the other half I put question marks next to, which means that either I'm not sure if he has it (I need more clarification about the objective, or I haven't seen Jacob demonstrate it), or I'm sure he does NOT have it.

I didn't even bother reading any of the Elaborations. Reading the Discovery objectives was enough for me to realize that there is plenty for us to work on in this stage. This is the edge of his competence. Stage 6 is equivalent to the development of typical 4-5 year olds, which jives with my own observations and interpretations of Jacob's abilities.

I'm very much looking forward to our RDA to further define where he's at and what we'll be working on in the coming months!