Many guides, once starting the RDI program, find themselves on a learning journey that maybe they hadn’t envisioned as carrying as much importance to that of helping their child make new discoveries and enhance development.
Guides quickly move through the learning steps of unconscious incompetence (unaware that they can make changes to support their child’s development) to conscious incompetence (aware of what can and will help their child but may not yet have the skills and confidence to achieve it). It is vitally important to understand what we are doing and why, as a guide, so that we can find and create opportunities for growth easily. For many guides this part seems the easier of the steps.
It is movement through the next two stages of learning that are often the most challenging yet at the same time most rewarding for guides to grow through.
This is where we move from conscious incompetence to conscious competence, and that naturally feels a nicer place to be. When we begin to put our theory and knowledge into practice, initially it may feel like a lot of effort to make the changes, because it is new or different to what we would typically do.
Yet once we have exposed ourselves to enough practice at putting the theory into action, it seems easier, our competence grows and the learning continues. We strive for our next step of the learning journey; unconscious competence and this is where we are aiming for our actions to become second nature to us; part of everyday life; and doesn’t require quite so much effort to achieve. When we reach this point we may wonder why it was so hard to get here in the first place!
It is each of these steps of the learning journey (unconscious incompetence -> conscious incompetence -> conscious competence -> unconscious competence) that help us attain that level of effective guiding successfully.
We then repeat these stages of learning for each new aspect that we are aiming to embed into our parenting style on a daily basis. Bit – by – bit we implement wonderful changes to our guiding relationship and watch children develop and grow and at the same time feel more and more competent in our approach, on this learning journey. What a bonus to a program you began to help your child!
If you would like to learn more about working with Elisa to develop your guiding skills please contact elisa@thinkautism.co.uk or request a Discovery Session to discuss your best options.