ASP holds Relationship Development Intervention

Autism Society Philippines welcomed 27 participants to the seminar Relationship Development Intervention spoken by Ms. Stephanie Sy held in Autism Society Philippines Headquarters last 29 August 2015. Participants attended were composed of parents, professionals and students.

Stephanie Sy presenting RDI Seminar to 27 participants

Ms. Stephanie started the seminar by stating that Autism treatment should start with “Defining and Understanding what autism is?” She spoke about how autism was affected people in terms of behaviour, communications, socialization, etc. But autism also has co-occurring conditions like sensory and sleep disorder, speech and language disorder, anxiety and ADHD or ADD.

In this seminar, Static and Dynamic Intelligence were defined. Static Intelligence deals with patterned, predictable and rule based information, ability to process information that produces the same result and has no element of uncertainty while the Dynamic Intelligence deals with grey area, inferential, our ability to manage day to day, changing, emotional information and uncertain events.

Examples of Static Intelligence are memorizing facts, following rules, logic, answering questions or completing a math equation and formulas. But on the other hand, Dynamic Intelligence are managing multiple roles, dealing with surprises, emotional regulations, solve problems, accurately appraise situations, share experiences and collaborate with others and allow having quality of life.

It is said to be that people need both static and dynamic intelligence however Children with autism often have deficits in dynamic intelligence, either because of a difficulty learning certain ways and a failure of the Guiding Relationship. In this case, Dynamic intelligence is the central focus of RDI. Ms Stephanie described the Relationship Development Intervention as a cognitive, behavioral and developmental method of intervention. RDI said to be focused on remediation and developmental issues rather than compensation and symptoms. The goal of RDI program is to innovate, systematically build up the motivation and tools for successfully interacting in social relationships, to correct core deficits in this area that are thought to be common to PWAs.

Ms Stephanie showed a video on how a parent taught his / her child on how to do communications and lessons as facing those challenges. Participants shared how people with autism acted their behaviors as they make sounds without talking. She let participants listen about the brain of people with autism and without as how it affected the children.

“The seminar is very eye opening and relate-able to the participants," according to one of the participants.