My Journey with RDI
Published on LinkedIn, 31 October 2025
I believe few experiences test and deepen love the way autism does.
For those of you not familiar with me, my name is Manish Gupta and I am the proud parent of 14-year-old Atharv. He is so incredibly cute and affectionate that I can’t get enough of him. So much so, that I didn’t have to think twice about quitting my twenty-five year long international corporate career to become a full-time parent. I feel immensely grateful that I was able to take this step. Here I am sharing some bits of our journey so far with autism and RDI.
What is RDI?
RDI is a parent-led program that helps families support their neurodivergent children in their growth. It’s built around everyday interactions rather than formal therapy sessions. Some of its key principles are:
Parent-Led Intervention: Implemented in natural settings (home, daily life)
Guided Participation: Based on Vygotsky’s theories, RDI emphasizes that children learn best through guided participation with a more experienced partner (usually a parent or caregiver).
Focus on Dynamic Intelligence: Skills like problem-solving, coping with change, and emotional understanding are emphasized over rote learning or compliance.
Developmental Model: RDI follows a stage-based developmental path, helping children progress through increasingly complex levels of social and emotional understanding.
Discovering RDI
It was the summer of 2017. I had just moved to Mumbai for a new role with an Indo-German joint venture, and we were in the middle of searching for a suitable school for Atharv. That’s when we came across Sai Connections. We hadn’t heard of RDI before, but when we met Kamini Ma’am, she warmly introduced us to the approach. She explained that it was a parent coaching program, describing how it works. We thanked her and left her office.
Back of my mind, I was thinking - it's our son who needs coaching, not us. We are Atharv’s parents – he is our child and we already know everything about him and understand him. We were born on this planet with all the knowledge that is needed for parenting a child, right? or we somehow acquired it while growing up. It is only the mundane stuff such as Hindi, English, Physics, Maths, Medicine, Engineering, Finance and almost everything else under the sun that we need someone else to teach us at home, in schools and universities. God is great and we humans are wonderful!
So we went back home and found another school. But I did subscribe to Kamini Ma'am's blog and those were so illuminating and absolutely made sense. I used to print out those blogs and take them to the other family members.
After a couple of years, we went back to Kamini Ma'am, scheduled an RDI assessment. First, she made us do activities with Atharv like play with ball, putting together a jigsaw puzzle, which we really struggled with. Atharv was about eight years old then and just wouldn't engage with us. Also, we had paid for this session, so we could not run away! But then what followed was magic, there were Atharv and Kamini Ma'am playing ball, putting together a jigsaw puzzle, sorting objects and at the end summarizing what they did together - it was unbelievable.
I joined RDI as a parent – it’s been more than five years now. My relationship with Atharv is much stronger and deeper. I have learnt what works with Atharv and what does not. I am able to understand him much better and accordingly support him much better in his journey.
I have witnessed Atharv increasingly becoming self-aware, showing empathy, gradually becoming resilient to face the challenges and uncertainties of life, becoming more expressive, solving little problems and making efforts to regulate himself, which are all pre-requisites for an independent life.
It has been a blessing to have Kamini Ma’am as my mentor - I have seen the knowledge and wisdom from her and RDI play out so positively in our lives. She is a goldmine of insight and every time I interact with her, I learn something.
Looking back, we must have spent an enormous amount of money on so many kinds of interventions and therapies and RDI has been the most positive and useful thing that has truly stayed with me. It has been the best investment of my life. RDI has actually saved me money.
Medication and puberty
As Atharv entered his teenage years, I often heard from other parents about behavioural challenges, aggression and some of them seeking psychiatric interventions. It motivated me to understand these experiences better — to learn psychology and see how professionals approach such situations.
I wanted to ensure that Atharv had joyful teen years. I ended up enrolling in a distance learning PG Diploma in Psychology and Neuroscience from King's College London. Imagine, a middle-aged man like me, with an engineering and corporate background, studying research papers and writing essays (something that I used to dread back in school) for eighteen months! But I actually enjoyed it and even passed with merit.
It did not make me an expert in psychology or psychiatry but it helped me understand the current state of research in neurodivergence and also various psychological disorders and their treatment. What stood out for me was understanding the role of social and environmental factors in challenges such as anxiety, aggression and other disorders – both in their onset as well as their treatment. While medication has made significant advances – they still do have limitations and significant side effects.
Atharv had been put on two medicines when his epilepsy was diagnosed about five years back. I assumed both were for epilepsy. But when I read about the medicines, I wanted to get Atharv off one of the medicines in particular and after consulting with his neurologist we began a taper down program. As timing would have it, Atharv was also experiencing adolescence, learning to navigate puberty along with all the changes it brings. That’s a lot for anyone to process.
But Atharv managed it remarkably well. Despite withdrawal symptoms, he worked hard to regulate himself without being disruptive. He continued to be his affectionate, cheerful self while also taking small but firm steps toward independence, socializing more, understanding and communicating his needs, and managing his emotions. Most importantly, I can feel that he is more at peace with himself. And gratefully, none of those “unexplained” disruptive behaviours.
All this while, RDI was the foundation of my interactions with Atharv - RDI has become my way of being, (though there’s still room to improve).
In closing
Our beautiful journey continues - not to say that there are no struggles and more will be coming our way but such is life. Whose life is without struggles! I have my flaws and my moments but I want to keep working on them. The confidence that we can overcome challenges together makes a huge difference and a large part of this confidence is because of RDI.
If I could go back and give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be: take a step back, reflect, and choose wisely — often less is more. Early intervention helps but the right one!
Atharv continues to surprise and inspire me. Our journey is far from over — and that’s the most beautiful part.
- Manish, a grateful parent