You've Come a Long Way Baby

Every six months or so I realize how far we’ve come. It’s funny because when I’m in the moment, in the thick of recognizing a whole ream of new things that need to be addressed, it can be hard to see progress. 

Today is one such day that I’m savouring the progress. I can remember the little man used to bounce in the stroller so hard I thought he would knock it over or knock his brains out - this was just two summers ago (just over a year ago). I remember the running back and forth, the lying on the ground, the saying “I’m tired” to anything that had a sniff of difficulty in it (walking, playdoh, colouring, you name it) or getting so distracted that I thought I would lose my marbles. This was as recent as six months ago.

There are times when I explain what we’re doing to help Z to other people it feels so flaky, so deceivingly simple that I wonder if its doing anything at all. These times are rare because I have huge faith in the philosophy of RDI, but inevitably doubt creeps in when I see the differences that remain with Z and his peers.

The Importance of Simple but Clear Intentions
But the reality is that these simple things that we are doing, and most importantly the intention behind them being to give him a feeling of competence, have made a world of difference.

Today I realized how long ago it is that he bounced in his stroller and car seat - something that he did for years before RDI. This morning he pulled out the badminton set and wanted to play - we couldn’t play any sort of back and forth ball game a year ago because of all the perceived failure when the ball would drop and now he asks to play badminton? Something that we fail at after two hits? And then I had to stop the activity because I was getting bored. Such persistence!!!

It seems so simple that it’s easy to underestimate the monumental progress this represents. It’s significant because he is not just wanting to try badminton, he’s experiencing a desire to try what seems like anything and everything. So his development is just taking off without me having to pull him along. And the interesting thing is this started a year ago and I celebrated it then - but a year later this desire is so much deeper and his confidence and idea creation so much more mature. I’m beginning to understand that each RDI objective we work on will mature over a long period of time to become even more remarkable than it first appears when he “gets” the objective. 

I can imagine many people would think, oh he’s just maturing... or big deal he wants to play badminton. The point is, the strategies in RDI style parenting helped us get to this point - they are clearly driven toward building intrinsic desire to learn and participate and that is what makes RDI different (one feature among many). We’ve never tried to develop certain “skills” like ball throwing in RDI. And that was so relieving to me because there are SO many skills to be learned in life! I found skill focused therapy exhausting and terrifying to think about the millions of skills he would need to thrive in life.

But instead focusing on building the desire to learn and participate changes everything. The activity doesn’t matter, its just the intention you bring to any activity. I don’t even have to think about what skills to work on anymore - finally the freedom that a typical parent enjoys! Just trusting that development will happen because the child is driving it forward - this is a freedom that for a while I thought I would never have.

What Does Our Progress Look Like?
In the past six months (perhaps even just the past two months) he’s started embracing fine motor activities like a mad man. I don’t do ANY of these with him as a guided activity - I feel like I need to be really careful with this because we made him do so many of these for so long that he had major anxiety around those activities whenever I would try them. So we focus our RDI stuff on other things. But the desire to learn that is arising from our RDI is translating to activities that he does on his own!

So now in unschooling fashion I just casually provide him with art and fine motor materials. First it was just a black crayon and a high quality writing pad. One colour of paint and paper always on the easel - he responded by creating a painting every day (talk about building fine motor strength!!!). Then I added markers, scissors and glue to his little box of markers to take in the car and he made 10 different creations and gave them to his Dad as a gift. No pressure, just opportunity to explore. And he is flourishing - I think largely because he has developed such an interest in expanding his competencies and exploring the world over the past year or so.

Part of why I’m reflecting on this today is because we just returned from a playdate where we brought our homemade playdoh (that we made together as an RDI activity in the morning). He sat at the table for an hour exploring the playdoh, trying it in different molds and using a rolling pin and interacting with the kids - I couldn’t have really even imagined this 6 months ago because of the fine motor issues.

So yes, we have made remarkable progress - and it kinda sneaks up on us. 

He’s exploring, experimenting, trying new things, coming up with his own ideas for us to do, and beyond that his “skill” development of new concepts and activities he can do is just exploding. His favourite sayings right now are “Look what I can do” or “Look what I made”. His social interaction skills with me (primary guide) are phenomenally changed, he still has a long way to go with peers when he experiences anxiety but as I write this I realize how much can change - almost imperceptibly at the time - over six months. And his co-regulation with peers when his anxiety is in check is already impressive compared to a year ago.

Gratitude
And we have been through enough to be incredibly, deeply, grateful for this gift of progress.

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