Why RDI® centers parents as the primary guides
For three decades, RDI® has emphasized that parents are the first and primary guides in their child’s development. Dr. Steven Gutstein underscores that this is not unique to RDI®. Across cultures and child development literature, growth emerges when a more experienced person shares lived experience and creates safe, challenging opportunities for the child to adapt.
Resource allocation that actually helps parents guide
Families often receive support that replaces their presence rather than strengthening it. Dr. Gutstein suggests a shift: use caregiving help to create breathing room for parents so they can rest, plan, and then engage mindfully with their child. Extenders and aides are valuable when they protect parent capacity rather than substitute for it.
What makes autism a unique guiding challenge
RDI® frames autism as a developmental mismatch: a parent may be capable of intuitive guiding, yet the child is not providing the signals and growth-seeking behaviors that typically invite guidance. Many autistic children initially seek stability or avoid dynamic environments. Parents need a different approach that establishes co-regulation, shared experiences, and gradual challenges so the child can begin to risk adaptive growth.
Parent education is essential, not optional
RDI® invests heavily in parent learning at the outset. Dr. Gutstein’s background in systems and family therapy shaped this commitment. Families need emotional support, time to move out of crisis mindsets, and a path to rebuild self-confidence as guides. The goal is not to make parents clinicians, but to help them design everyday experiences where growth can happen.
Culture, extended family, and the real meaning of “parent”
Parent often means more than biological parent. In many families and cultures, grandparents and other relatives take on significant guiding roles. RDI® honors these real-world networks and seeks to strengthen whoever is in the parental role to share experience, scaffold challenge, and cultivate resilience.
Start where the family is ready
RDI® consultants begin with readiness, not a rigid program. Dr. Gutstein advises setting the smallest successful step first. Ten successful minutes in a week is better than an ambitious plan that collapses. Consistent, achievable success builds momentum; momentum drives motivation; motivation sustains change.
The emotional reality for parents
Parents can feel both deeply loved and painfully rejected by the same child, sometimes in the same moment. That tension is hard. RDI® does not minimize it. Instead, the model supports parents to hold steady, slow down the frantic search for the next fix, and return to the core work of becoming mindful guides. This includes pacing, rest, and practical structures that protect time and attention.
Practical takeaways for families
- Protect parent capacity. Use helpers to create time to rest and prepare, not to replace you.
- Start small. Aim for one ten-minute success this week.
- Focus on co-regulation first. Calm bodies make better learners.
- Value shared experience. Build short, repeated moments of doing and noticing together.
- Expect momentum from success. Do less, better. Let results accumulate.
- Invite your network. Grandparents or other relatives can be powerful co-guides.
Where to go next
- Find a Certified RDI® Consultant: RDI®connect.com/find-a-consultant
- About RDI®: RDI®connect.com/about-RDI®
Moving into Adulthood with RDI®: RDI®connect.com/moving-into-adulthood-with-RDI®
Autism: A New Perspective is available on iTunes!
Full Transcript:
Kat Lee: Welcome back to Autism, A New Perspective, the podcast where we help you understand what is going on in the mind of your child. We also encourage you that growth for your child is possible. I am Kat Lee, and in this week’s special podcast I spoke with the developer of RDI Connect, Dr. Steven Gutstein, about parents, autism, and RDI in 2025. Let’s listen in. Dr. Gutstein, I wanted to talk to you today about something I feel very redundant on. For 30 years you have been working on RDI, is that right?
Dr. Steven Gutstein: Yes, that sounds right.
Kat Lee: You have been saying that parents are the main guides. They are the first guides. They are the main guides. It is not something you just dreamed up. Across cultures, there is a lot of written research supporting that idea.
What I keep hearing as I meet new parents, whether they are parents of a four-year-old or a twenty-year-old, is a lack of empowerment for guiding their children. Sometimes I feel like our world is a hamster on a wheel, where parents are not getting the break they need to learn to guide. Do you feel that way sometimes for parents?
Dr. Steven Gutstein: That is an interesting way to put it, that parents are not getting a break to guide their children. If you think about where resources have traditionally gone in autism, they often do not go toward giving parents the space and support to guide. The resources go to replacing them with other people who come in to interact with the child. That can give parents a break, but it does not provide a way for parents to learn to engage mindfully with their child.
If there are funds for support, I have always said this: hire someone to be with your child while you get groceries done, the laundry done, or simply rest. That allows you to take a breath so you can then mindfully engage with your child. That is a wise way to use resources.
This is really a question of resource allocation. Extenders and aides can be helpful, but they will not make the developmental difference by themselves. Used well, they give you the chance to breathe, have a life, and then plan meaningful engagements with your child.
If that is not happening, parents remain stressed or in crisis mode and cannot find the energy to be experiential guides. This is difficult today. Many parents work, have multiple children, and live paycheck to paycheck. Guiding is hard in any family, but it is especially hard when a child needs mindful guiding and will not simply raise themselves.
In different cultures, different family members also take guiding roles. As a grandparent, I have been very involved in guiding my grandchildren. In some families there are several generations engaged. That is an incredible resource.
When we say parents, we are talking about people in a parental role. What is that role today? Is it just transporting children to appointments and providing food and safety? Or is it also having joint experiences with a child so that a more experienced person can share their experience and provide growth-promoting opportunities? That is invaluable in every culture. There is nothing in RDI that is unique about valuing that. It is a universal concept. It has always been key for child development.
Kat Lee: That brings me to another point. This should not be controversial. Parents need guidance from guides to help them learn to guide their children. They need training.
Dr. Steven Gutstein: For children with autism, yes. We begin with the assumption that most parents are capable of guiding a typically developing child. This is different. A child on the spectrum often is not initially providing the necessary ingredients for a guiding relationship.
Even the best intuitive guide will struggle if the child is not supplying what the parent needs to be successful. That is the essence of autism as we define it: a mismatch between a parent who can intuitively guide and a child who, because of vulnerabilities, is not yet providing the signals, motivation, or actions that support growth-seeking.
These children may not move into growth-seeking mode. They may not yet explore, experiment, and invite an adult to help them become more competent. They may seek stability, prefer a static world, or withdraw from the more dynamic world. Parents who want to promote growth are then stymied. That is how we define the problem.
Kat Lee: You created a plan for training parents that takes the child into consideration and puts strong emphasis on parent education, especially in the beginning, so parents know what they are learning to do. How did you know 30 years ago that you had to do that? I have watched it evolve. You kept building the model for parent education.
Dr. Steven Gutstein: There is still a long way to go, but this comes from my background. I used to be the director of training and family therapy at Baylor College of Medicine when I was younger. I came out of a systems model where the family is key to children’s development. To help children, families need to function as well as they can.
I also come from a model that focuses on growth rather than pathology. We ask how to construct growth-oriented environments. That includes the family and parents. We try to find resources and ways for each family to function as a system that supports development.
When I say parents, I often mean extended families and networks of people invested in the child’s development. We are not talking about professional supports. We are speaking about people invested in being a family. That has been my work across many populations before autism: returning veterans, people with addiction, severely suicidal adolescents, teens with eating disorders at Texas Children’s Hospital.
My investment in family also comes from my life. My mother died when I was young. My father worked constantly. Extended relatives were not around. I had to navigate a lot without guidance. It is possible, but risky. That shaped my commitment to finding resources for families across every population I served.
With autism, this is natural. It is part of the tradition of child development literature. I did not invent the idea of supporting families to do their job. Across cultures, we must understand the family’s culture and the individuals in that parenting role so they can be competent. Rather than blaming or pathologizing, we try to see their heroism and provide resources so they can be competent. Sometimes that even means finding other people who can function in the guiding role when parents cannot.
We also have to keep working on how we help parents learn. Not everyone is ready in an educational sense. Some need emotional support first. Many need help moving out of a crisis mindset, which is natural when you have a child with autism. Others need to slow the frantic search for services and cures. We help them feel they can be mindful and take time to gather themselves. We support parents in regaining self-esteem.
It is difficult to have a child on the spectrum. You are loved by your child, and you can feel rejected when you try to guide. Those feelings can co-exist. Parents fear losing love if they push. If they do not push, the child misses opportunities to develop competence. It is a dilemma.
Different families respond in different ways. Our consultants must be sensitive to each family’s dynamics and readiness. I tell consultants to start where the family is ready. Provide success. When a family commits to RDI, if they can engage successfully for ten minutes that week, that is a starting point. Do not overwhelm them with a long list. Ask what step they are ready to take. Success builds momentum. Failure does not.
Our families have had enough experiences of failure. Exhaustion comes from that. When people arrive at RDI they often ask for twenty things to do right now. We must say no. Right now you are not ready for twenty things. Can you do one thing for five minutes this week a little differently? That is the way to start. Starting well is critical.
Kat Lee: Thanks for joining us for Autism, A New Perspective. We hope this helps you understand what is going on in the mind of your child. Growth for your child is possible. I am Kat Lee. See you next time.
0 Comments