Questions about ABA

oandmplus1

My almost 2 year old recently was diagnosed with ASD and we have been working with a really great OT and speech therapist. She is making great progress with therapy, but is still significantly behind in communication, speech and other areas as well. Her self stimming is definitely a barrier we are working on. Anyway, we just had an eval for ABA as well. Our speech therapist and OT seem to be on the fence about it, but the psychologist believes it will be important in her developing language and communication. My biggest concern is that for financial reasons, we both need to work full time, and so far we are struggling to fit in all the therapy appointments, doctor visits, and time working with her at home on top of two very busy careers. They told us they would probably be recommending 20 hours a week on one with the therapist at their center for ABA on top of what we are already doing. Did I mention we are expecting LO #2 soon?

 For those out there with experience with ABA, at what age did your LO start? Did you find it to be really beneficial? 

azzyberry

My DS was diagnosed with ASD at 19 months old.  We started ABA right after he turned 2.  The recommendation is 20 hours per week but there was no way we could afford that so we did what we could do.  We did 4.5 hrs per week with his ABA therapist and the therapist also did parent training with me so I could work with him during our daily lives.

My DS is doing amazing.  He had lots of behaviors when we started - stimming, head banging, repetitive behaviors, fixating, zero communication, etc.  All of these behaviors now are pretty much none existent.  Every once in a while he'll stim for a few seconds but it's pretty rare.  I saw a significant improvement with ABA with in the first 6 months.  He now only does 3 hours per week of in home ABA and attends a developmental preschool 4 days a week.  I'm scared to think of how he would be today if we didn't get him into ABA/Early Intervention as soon as we did.   

typeset

We started 28 hours a week of ABA at 2y1m. We had our three-month follow up with the neuro today. She expressed concern that if anything he has too much therapy. I asked her point blank, "Looking at him, is it too much?"

She paused to consider: "No. Huge program, huge gains. He looks amazing." 

I've found speech and OT have an extremely rocky relationship with ABA. I've had SLPs go on at length about the "evils" of ABA and our ABA provider doesn't sanction sensory integration therapy. It's absolutely been worth it for us, though, and we haven't been doing it for that long. His ABA therapist also attends social skills groups with him to help prompt, reinforce, and run initiation and interaction programs. 

mommy0411

I can't answer your questions because this is all so new to me as well. My 22 month old DS was diagnosed with PDD-NOS last week and I am also 29 weeks pregnant so I understand the stress of figuring everything out and I just wanted to offer *hugs*. 

My DS doesn't have enough language foundation for ABA yet but I do have him wait listed for pre communication / nonverbal program at a local university. They incorporate a lot of floortime among other methods to encourage joint attention and language development. It is 10 hours a week. He will hopefully start that in June.  

redtulip

My oldest son was dx with ASD at 2y3m, and we started him in ABA a month later. Before ABA, he was saying zero words. He was having ST and OT every week through ECI a few months before that. The ST never managed to get him to say 1 word during the whole 6 months of therapy. But after just 6 weeks into ABA, my son started talking.

We dropped ECI after 6 months in order to focus on getting more hours of ABA for him. We started him out slow with just 10 hrs a week and slowly moved up to 30-32 hrs. He now has 40 hrs a week, but 6 hours of that is weekly social skills group with his age group. There are 3 typical kids in their social skills class, along with 3 other kids with ASD. 

I can honestly say that ABA was the best thing we've done for him. It's amazing what they have accomplished with him so far, and he's only been getting it for just a little over a year. They were able to potty train him at 3y2m and he learned fast too, in just 1 week. We are very lucky and very blessed to have insurance to cover the therapy, though we do pay a daily co-pay. 

oandmplus1

Thank you so much for your responses. It makes me feel better knowing it has been so beneficial and it will be all worth it in the end. We will just have to make it work somehow,

krose0713

-auntie-:

Bottom line, ABA is the only research based therapy for children on spectrum. (though ESDM is catching up in this regard) If I had a child who was atypical enough to get a dx in the toddler/preschool years, I would seriously consider ABA.

This.

As a behavior analyst, I am obviously biased in my support of ABA. But as pp said, it is based on research, and is the only proven effective treatment for Autism. With that being said, there are a lot of quality ABA service providers out there, but many who aren't as well. Do your research into ABA, and have high expectations. Make sure your ABA provider is supervised by a BCBA (board certified behavior analyst).

There are many people who will downplay to use of ABA, but early intervention and starting ASAP is the best thing you can do for a child with ASD.