In this inspiring episode, Lisa Palasti opens up about her journey over the last 20 years as a mom of two boys with unique needs — one with intellectual delays and another diagnosed with autism. Feeling overwhelmed but determined, Lisa searched for ways to help her children thrive and grow into happy, well-adjusted adults.
A New Approach to Parenting Autistic Children
Initially, she turned to Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), but soon realized it focused too much on rote skills, lacking the depth needed for true independence and quality of life. Then, at an international autism conference in 2003, Lisa discovered Dr. Gutstein’s Relationship Development Intervention (RDI®)—a program centered on relationship-building over behavior conditioning, which completely shifted her perspective.
Embracing Mindful Parenting
Lisa’s journey with RDI went beyond benefiting her children; it transformed her parenting. Eventually, she trained to become an RDI consultant, learning how a few mindful minutes a day could integrate new approaches into everyday life.
“There’s no window of opportunity that’s been closed,” Lisa shares, urging parents to stay open to growth at any age and embrace mindful support for their children.
Throughout the episode, Lisa shares specific examples of how she learned to approach parenting with more intention. Her boys are now grown and living independently, proof of the power of nurturing and mindful parenting. Her journey offers hope to other parents, reminding them that growth is possible at every stage.
Support for Parents of Autistic Children
If you’re a parent or caregiver of an autistic child seeking guidance, consider connecting with an RDI® Program Certified Consultant. They provide valuable support and mentorship, helping you navigate family dynamics and integrate empowering practices into your daily life.
Connect with an RDI® Program Certified Consultant today. Find your consultant here.
Full Transcript
Kat Lee: Welcome back to Autism, A New Perspective, the podcast show where we help you understand what is going on in the mind of your child. And we always encourage you that growth for your child is possible. And let’s welcome today RDI Program Certified Consultant Lisa Polasty.
Now, Lisa has been a consultant for a long, long time, but she started RDI with her two young boys many years ago, and they are grown men today. And Lisa is going to give us an update as well as talk to us about their journey and her journey in RDI. You’ve been in RDI for what, 20 years, and you started with your two boys when they were a little bitty.
Why don’t we just do a time travel and go back and talk about how all of this started with RDI and the boys, because I think if we can get that story going, we’ll hear all this remarkable information you can share with us.
Lisa Palasti: So I have two boys, they are actually young men now, they’re 25 and 28. And my oldest had a lot of medical mismanagement, a lot of medical mix-ups, and so as a result, he ended up having more surgeries than necessary and lots of complications, but he also ended up with a diagnosis of intellectual delay. And so then I became pregnant with my second child, and he was colicky right from the get-go.
And by the time he was about two and a half, we had determined that he had autism, he was diagnosed with autism. So back then, around this time, when he was two and a half, that would have been about 2001. And the following year, in 2002, so 22 years ago, I went to this ADA international conference and during the lunch segment, I had asked this woman that I’d seen in some of the other workshops that I had joined, and this was a huge international conference, there was people from all over the world there.
And anyway, I sat next to this woman, and she tapped this book that said, Solving the Relationship Puzzle, and she said, this is the man to watch. And I said, oh, interesting, who is this guy? You know, because I wanted to learn as much as I possibly could.
So that was my first journey into learning about RDI. And then in 2003, Dr. Gutstein came to Toronto to deliver a two-day workshop. And then I started trying to do RDI.
There was only maybe not even a dozen consultants in the world yet. And some of you, I think, were still in training at this time, because this would have been March 2003. So I tried, there was nobody in Canada at the time.
And so I was trying to do the activities from the book. And I felt that I was missing something. So I decided to explore this further, because we also had a full-blown ADA program at this time, but I just was still having trouble sleeping at night, because I thought, how is these skills, these rote skills that they’re teaching my child, how is this going to equate to long-term quality of life and provide my child with all the mental tools and attributes that he’s going to need to live an independent life and to be able to achieve all that he wants and desires in his life? Because that’s really ultimately what I wanted, was to provide the kind of, for both of my children, to provide the type of upbringing that would allow them to be able to achieve their dreams and to be happy.
So anyway, and I was gravely concerned about what ADA was kind of conditioning my child and I can’t say that it left me feeling very, I didn’t feel very competent. I felt very uncertain and incompetent in being able to support my own children’s growth. I drove them from appointments to appointments and managed a team of six who delivered the therapy.
Many of them didn’t even have children themselves. My senior ABA, the BCBA said, pronouns will be the death of me. And I remember learning about RDI after, actually around the time that she said that to me, and I think I’d already embarked on the training and I said, well, of course it will because you don’t teach self-awareness and you have to have some level of self-awareness in order to be able to understand the self, other, and the nuances of pronouns.
You can’t teach it as a skill at a table, right? So yeah, so that’s where my, I started in this intensive ABA program and then Dr. Gutstein came in 2003. By then my son was about four and then I decided to travel to the U.S. to meet with my consultant, to finally meet with an RDI consultant because I felt like I was not really grasping what the full scope of what RDI was about, you know, from trying to do these activities in the book. The activities are great, but there is a lot of little subtleties that aren’t well understood. And so it can be a nice, the book can be kind of a nice addition, but it can’t replace the ability to fully consult with a family or to understand who each member of the family is and how to support them, you know, in their growth. So then I started training in 2000.
I went to the U.S. in January of that year and then by late spring I started the training to become an RDI consultant. And at the time, I just figured what better way, I did it primarily for my own children and I just felt that what better way to really develop my skills and competency and understanding of RDI than to become a consultant. And it seemed more cost effective too.
And I’m struck by all these years, I have to walk the talk. I had to. I think that becoming an RDI consultant actually helped me to be a better RDI parent than I would have otherwise been because if I had invested in somebody else just guiding me and telling me what to do and that, and I do that, you know, and I’m effective at it, but I found that also personally having to guide other families, you know, professionally has allowed me to go, oh yeah, yeah, like don’t forget to do that yourself, Lise. Like the carpenter whose kids don’t have any shoes, right? But it kept me in the game, you know, in a sense.
And so I think it was a really nice union, you know, professionally and personally. And I have really rewarding work, right?
Kat Lee: Yeah, for sure. And, you know, when I’m thinking about your journey and you come to that point that you decide to get a consultant and to be a consultant, over the years, we’ve talked about how parents will say RDI is the missing piece. But when I’m talking to you today, I think that’s almost selling it a bowl short.
It’s like the missing pieces. It’s more than one piece. There is a lot missing if you don’t find your way into this very important developmental program or a developmental program like this, right?
Because it’s not just one thing. It’s a lot that’s critical to living the life that you were describing you wanted for your boys.
Lisa Palasti: Yeah. Oh, my goodness. And it’s so intertwined.
But the work that we do allows us to try to pull pieces out so that it’s understandable and manageable for families. But it’s almost, I mean, that in itself is a bit of an artwork. But to be able to explain to a family how important it is that your child, in order to be able to play with peers on the playground, they need to be able to do all of these different developmental foundations.
And they all work together. It’s not just one missing piece. But it’s like, I love this analogy.
It was actually an RDI parent many, many years ago had shared it with me. But he said RDI parenting is like the plate spinner at the circus. You get one plate up, and it’s going.
And then you get the second one up. You don’t get all nine plates up at once. You have to build that kind of momentum and consistency and stability in the learning and the knowledge and the application.
And then you put up another one when you’re ready. And so it’s a constant period of this growth. And then by the time you’ve got the fourth one up, you’ve got to check back and make sure the first one’s still going.
But the beautiful thing about empowering parents is that they have this opportunity to be mindful about it, spending 10, 15 minutes a day, and then practicing. And that mindful practice truly is the conduit to integration. And then eventually, people don’t even have to think about it anymore.
It just becomes a part of the way that they parent. RDI is just really good mindful parenting for vulnerable children.
Kat Lee: It is true that when we have vulnerable children who have multiple vulnerabilities, there are a lot of things we have to be mindful about that we might not have had to be mindful about. And I said that with my son. I had my daughter first, and she didn’t have any vulnerability.
So I just kind of enjoyed her. These little big things I know now that just kind of came rolling in, as you say, that we’re building to move her toward a full life just came rolling in. And as a little one, I just enjoyed her as people do.
And then I saw them not roll in. But what was interesting was when we’re talking about the missing pieces, I did not know what was missing, even though I knew something was missing. And I think that is so important.
Because people will say to me, well, you have one child already. You probably knew. I knew something was missing, but I didn’t know what was missing until RDI.
Lisa Palasti: Exactly. And I felt the same exact way. It’s like you know there’s something missing, but you don’t know how to put your finger on it.
You certainly don’t know how to consider the developmental foundations that aren’t there, that are impacting this ability that other, let’s say, six-year-olds have. But it’s rooted in a very early foundation. And if that’s not there, you can’t teach it.
As a skill, it’s not going to stand up in the real world. So do you remember the first time that you interviewed me? Probably many years ago.
I don’t think it was quite 20, but it was a good 17 or 18 years ago. And I still remember saying to you that RDI was like the world had become my oyster. I went through the life going, oh, I understand this now about human development.
And I understand this now about relationships. And I understand, oh, why this is breaking down. Or I could see, I don’t know.
It was such a cool experience to be able to wear my RDI glasses and understand the world and the relationships so much easier.
Kat Lee: Yes, I do remember. And I still feel that way. I still feel that RDI continues to reveal to me and have better understanding of people, of their struggles, of why they struggle, and the importance of not retreating from growth seeking.
I think other things can cause people to retreat. All their vulnerabilities, things that happen to people can cause that. And to help them keep moving forward and keep having growth seeking, it comes from that space that you and I have been exposed to, which is that’s what we do as people and what causes us to retreat.
It’s going to be different for different people, just like it was for our boys. But it still makes you so mindful about that. So we’re in our time machine.
You’re in RDI now. The world is becoming your oyster. And what started happening with your voice?
Lisa Palasti: Oh, well, I remember every year. It’s kind of remarkable when people start to comment on things, because you’re right there and you see your child day after day after day. But there was this one really, really warm, playful, distant relative that we would only see once, maybe twice a year.
And I didn’t really realize, but I guess over the years, she was always trying to make that connection with my youngest. And so we had started RDI officially in January of 2004, 20 years ago. And anyway, so it was that year, Christmas, it was a year later.
And she approached me and she said, oh, my goodness, I don’t know what you’ve been doing. But it’s like night and day difference with your child. She was never able to connect with him before.
And now she saw a remarkable difference with him. I would say even early on, the education that I knew that I was going to be getting from RDI and the fact that I knew that I was going to be the one that was going to be empowered and that I was going to learn from my experience to really know how to make that difference in my children’s lives, I started to feel hopeful. I started to move out of crisis.
I remember being late on sending my VHS tape. It’s so funny because I mean, you know, VHS tapes to some people are like, what are those? You know, much younger generation.
But I had to send it through snail mail back then. And I was late and it was a week late and it was two weeks late. And then one day I said to myself, Lisa, get over it.
You’re not paying her to say good job. You know, I’m not paying her so she can say good job. Just get over any perfectionistic kind of tendencies that you’re feeling right now that I’m not good at this yet.
I can’t send it. That’s not the process. The process of guiding is through experiential learning.
You know, the good, the bad, the ugly. Sometimes the uglier, the better. One of my clients said to me one time, she said, oh, I did some videos this week.
I said, great. She said, I don’t want to send them to you. And I said, well, why not?
She said, because they were good. I only like to send you the bad stuff. And I’m like, that’s a good RDI parent because that’s one that says, I want to learn.
You know, our children are learning through the real world experiences and so are we. So I started to feel so good. I was feeling like the captain of my own ship.
I felt like the queen of my castle. I felt like I got this. Even when I knew that I didn’t know everything that I was going to learn, I knew that I was on the right path.
It finally made sense to me. I remember when I saw Dr. Gutstein speak in 2003, and he started talking about the dismal outcomes of the high-functioning individuals with autism and all the research that said that their level of independence, their level of gain, like meaningful employment, independence, marriage, relationship, it was all less than 10 percentile. You know, and he’s done much more research since then as well.
And I guess I’m a little bit of a glass half full kind of person because when I heard him talking about this, I thought, if he’s talking about it, that means he’s doing something about it. And this is exactly what was keeping me up at night was, how is this other program, the program, how is this going to equate to long-term quality of life? My son learned that he was supposed to raise his hand for a circle, you know, to speak in his junior kindergarten or kindergarten class, but he never did.
You know, he wasn’t conversational. He couldn’t maintain friendships. But anyway, so what I started to see was real-life evidence of the work that we had been doing.
He started to socially reference it more. I learned to modify my communication. I still remember early on, instead of telling him, put your shoes on.
It’s time to go. Instead, I said, I can’t wait to go to the park. I’ve got my shoes on.
And this is what I said to him, which was a complete contrast to the very directive comments that I used to always, you know, ask him questions or tell him what to do. Anyway, he, I could see him thinking and I gave him some processing time. And the next thing you know, he went, all of our shoes are in the front hall closet, but only his church shoes were in his bedroom.
He goes to his bedroom and he gets his shoes and he comes back and he goes, I got my shoes. And he was so proud, was so proud. I actually wrote a blog about it and I called it, I was a thinking robber, because when I learned how to modify my communication, I gave him opportunities to experience his own agency.
He, you know, it was really amazing. I still had to undo some of the RDA, some of the ABA impact. I remember one day I said, you know, let’s unload the dishwasher.
And he looked at me and he said, what do I get? And RDI empowers us, we have this right to be the more expert guides and we have to own that and know that, you know, this is why we had children and want to help raise them to grow up to be happy, healthy, well-adjusted, responsible human beings. So when he asked me, well, what do I get?
I said, you know what you get? You get to be a member of this family. Get over here.
Getting a Smarty or an M&MEminem, you know, get over here. But I also know how important it is to, you can say things like that, just do it very calmly, you know, in a very regulated way, you know, you get to be a member of this family. Now get over here.
Kat Lee: You know, I like what you were, I love your giving examples. And I think that’s the great part about RDI too, is it’s about us as parent guides and that Dr. Gutstein and Dr. Shealy designed the whole program with parents in mind. And I know I told you all those years ago that that’s one of the things that attracted me to it.
It was about all these foundations that our children needed, but it was also because they knew that having a designed program for parents, with parents in mind, for them to help them understand autism, understand guiding as a parent, understand having to be more mindful and how to do that was important. And I think we can’t understate that they have continued through all this time that we’ve been with them to improve on that. I remember at the time I thought it didn’t seem like it could be improved upon, and then I would see them working and working to improve.
And they’re still doing that today.
Lisa Palasti: And what’s really astounding is that all of those early pieces that were developed, that were part of RDI are still part of our program. I would say the only thing that’s not kind of a pivotal, critical part of RDI that was in the beginning is beanbags. I had a flood in my basement years ago, about five or six years ago now, and I didn’t replace my beanbags when I lost them.
But I mean, it did provide a lot of fun for some RDI activities, but it’s not a critical part of RDI.
Kat Lee: All those consultants had beanbags. I had 12 of them. Someone just gave me one because they had it in their office and they didn’t want any more, and I’m giving it away.
I haven’t had beanbags in forever. Like, no, I don’t have a place for this. But it did bring back those memories.
So we’re in our time machine. As a parent, you’re empowered. Your boys are moving forward, and people are noticing outside the circle, so to speak.
So let’s move forward in time. And how is that looking today? I mean, I know that’s a big time leap for us, but how are they doing?
And I guess, so your message is to other parents.
Lisa Palasti: Yeah, and just quickly, I’ll say in this kind of in-between stage of, you know, when I started RDI and now 20 years later, where are they at? It was a process. It was a process of knowing that sometimes it was two steps forward, one step back.
But I knew that we always came out of it ahead of where we were left off. I stopped riding the emotional roller coaster of only doing well when my children were doing well, because we all have good days and bad days, right? And I just knew that they were never getting stuck there, and that growth continued.
And it didn’t happen at lightning speed. Yes, I felt like we were making progress every week, every month. But it was probably, you know, years into RDI when I knew that we were on the right path.
I knew it was better than anything that we’d ever, you know, done before. But it was years where I really felt like, okay, my kids are going to be okay. I mean, my oldest son, it wasn’t until he was an adult.
And he actually, I gave that to him when he was 12 or 14, 12, anyway, young adolescent. I gave that never, never, never give up plaque to him when he was a young teen. And he gave it back to me when he graduated his college program.
And so anyway, I just I’d like to share that part too, and that it’s neural integration and develop these mental processes, habits and tools, these attributes that are necessary to have a quality of life and well being. There’s no magic bullet. There’s no, you know, the quick fix.
It’s a process. But to be able to learn how to integrate that into your everyday life and seize opportunities. Some of my best stories are seized opportunities from real life experiences, honestly.
So where they’re at today, my oldest son got married last fall to a wonderful girl. I couldn’t, I think, handpicked a better wife for him. They had a wonderful destination wedding down on the beach in South Carolina.
And he’s fully gainfully employed. He’s been working in the trades for the last four years and also became a ski instructor. So that was a little gift from my husband, who was also an amazing skier.
So he, you know, that’s the beautiful thing about being an RDI parent, too, is that you get to, you know, I think that you and your own and your family, you share a lot of the same passions and interests in outdoor activities and, you know, hiking and running and things like that. I think when people think about having parents or having children, they think about passing along some of the, you know, the best parts of their life or their interests and sharing that with their children. I, as a consultant, I, you know, after families kind of, you know, are underway.
And I remember asking this one parent, I said, what did you do when you were a child? What were some of the hobbies or interests that you had? And what do you think about maybe resurrecting some of those and then sharing in that with your child?
And so, and I said, and I think I’ve seen a piano in the back of, you know, in the background in some of your videos. And don’t you know, and it was really perfect because her son wouldn’t be able to attend to a full lesson, you know, whether it was a half an hour, an hour, I just, we knew that, especially initially. So anyway, what they did was they split them.
They would sign up for one, a series of lessons, but they would go for one hour session and then mom would take over when he had had enough. But a year later, they did a recital and they each played independently. And when her son was done playing his piece, he did this very, you know, grand kind of bow and she goes, I don’t even know where he learned that.
Like it was so cool, you know, he was so proud of himself. But anyway, so my older son, he’s, and he has a landscaping business on the side as well. And he moved out, which is a big deal, especially here in Canada with housing prices, you know, and they always talking about how kids are, you know, older and living in their parents basements still because they can’t afford housing.
But anyway, so in my younger son, he’s now 25. He’s the one that was diagnosed with autism and he is a mechanical engineer and he is, I asked him the other day, I said, so how was work today? He goes, it was good.
He goes, you know, I had to run this meeting though. I had to go to this new customer and I had to run this meeting. And when I showed up on the board table and I go, oh, how did that go for you?
Because he’s always trying to improve. His first day at his job, actually, he said, you know, I created this Excel spreadsheet and I said, oh yeah, what for? And he goes, well, I called it lessons learned.
And I said, well, good for you. You know, stepping into this role and knowing I’m going to make mistakes, but I’m going to learn from them. And so, and during COVID, we walked a lot because, well, I’m sure everybody did, right?
But one time we were talking about our superpowers, you know, and he said, I think my superpower is that I’m very self-reflective. You know, he likes to like, you know, consider how situations or, you know, how things went, you know, he likes to learn from his experiences. And so I thought that that was really amazing because that’s often an area of challenge for a lot of individuals with autism.
So he’s very happy, well-adjusted, funny. He’s got a good sense of humor. He just organized a camping trip to a country music festival with 14 other people.
So he did that this year. Last year, he did a rap concert eight hours away in Montreal. So he’s got a diverse, neat, you know, area of interest.
He likes to play poker with friends. He likes to go golfing with friends. He likes to play card games with me.
And he does live in my basement, but there’s a lock on the basement door and there’s a kitchen down there. So I consider that we’re living independently, but it works for both of us.
Kat Lee: Before we go, and we knew it would be challenging to put 20 years into a podcast, but I know we’ve got parents of little ones who have listened to us today. I know we have parents of 20-somethings who’ve never been involved in a program like this. What would you say to them?
Lisa Palasti: To the ones with the little ones or the older ones?
Kat Lee: Both.
Lisa Palasti: Either or, I would say it’s not a hard-boiled egg. The brain is not a hard-boiled egg that we continue to grow and change throughout our lifespans. And there’s no window, you know, of opportunity that’s been closed, that there is still room for growth.
No matter how old or young the child is, I would say just try to see if you could support their areas of vulnerability so that they no longer prevent those opportunities for growth and give it a shot. Give it a try. Never, never give up.
Kat Lee: And thanks for joining us for Autism, A New Perspective, the podcast show where we help you understand what is going on in the mind of your child. And we encourage you that growth for your child is possible. I’m Cat Lee.
See you next time.
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