I came to RDI as a parent, not as a professional.
My journey with RDI began because I was trying to understand my son, Atharv. As a single parent raising a neurodivergent child, I often found myself asking questions:
What is needed to support learning and growth?
How could I engage him? Why is he resisting?
Why was something that seemed simple on one day so difficult on another?
How could I help him handle own emotions and find calm?
And perhaps most importantly — how could I help my son become more independent?
I was simply trying to become a better parent for my son.
Discovering RDI
I first came across Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) in 2017. My initial reaction was probably much like that of many parents:
“It’s my son who needs help — not me.”
But the more I learned, the more I began to question that assumption. RDI shifted my attention from simply teaching my son skills to thinking about how we were learning and experiencing things together.
Instead of always trying to make things easier for him, I began learning how to create opportunities for him to think, make choices, cope with uncertainty, solve problems and participate with me.
That wasn’t always easy.
Changing my own way of interacting with my son required me to slow down, observe more carefully and become comfortable with not immediately stepping in to fix things.
But gradually, I began to see something different.
I saw moments of greater awareness, initiative, problem solving, resilience and connection. More importantly, I began to experience my relationship with Atharv differently.
RDI wasn’t simply something I was doing with my son.
It was changing the way I understood him and the way I understood my role as a parent.
From parent to professional
Over the years, RDI became an increasingly important part of our everyday life.
In 2020, I formally began the RDI parent program, and my involvement continued to deepen. What started as a search for answers gradually became a way of thinking about development, relationships and parenting.
I eventually realised that I wanted to understand this work at a much deeper level and, if possible, help other parents who were asking some of the same questions.
That led me to professional training in RDI.
Along the way, I also pursued formal studies in psychology and neuroscience and psychological counselling. My earlier professional career in the corporate world had taught me to analyse complex problems, but parenting taught me something different:
People don’t develop simply because we teach them more. Development happens through relationships, experiences and the opportunities we create for one another.
I am now in the final stage of my RDI professional certification and have begun supporting other families while continuing this professional journey.
What I bring to this work
I don’t come to RDI only as a trained professional. I come to it first as a parent.
I know what it feels like to wonder whether you are doing enough. To worry about the future. To try one approach after another. To feel that sometimes you are helping your child — and sometimes you are simply helping them get through the next task.
And I also know how powerful it can be when the goal begins to shift.
From: “How do I get my child to do this?”
to: “How can I help my child think through this with me?”
That shift has changed my relationship with my son. It is also the reason I chose to become an RDI professional.
My focus is on helping parents explore how everyday interactions can become opportunities for connection, thinking, flexibility, problem solving and growing independence.
I don’t believe there is a single approach that is right for every child or every family.
My role is to listen, understand your family’s priorities, and help you explore whether RDI may be a useful fit for your journey.
Because ultimately, this is not about becoming your child’s therapist.
It is about becoming a more thoughtful partner in your child’s development.
And that is a journey I continue to take every day with my own son.
Manish Gupta
→ RDI Parent → RDI Consultant in Training — Final Stage of Certification
→ PG Diploma, Psychology & Neuroscience of Mental Health — King’s College London (distance learning)
→ PG Diploma, Psychological Counselling
→ MBA, IIM Calcutta
→ BTech, IIT Delhi