ABA therapy?

Re: ABA therapy?

• typeset member

  November 2013 edited November 2013

  I have a highly verbal ASD kiddo Dx'd the day before he turned two. We just wrapped a year of 28 hours/week of ABA (today, actually). There was probably a diminishing return on our level of service, but, as our neuro put it, "huge program, huge gains."
  
  Ignore the words. Take all the language out, his, the teacher's. Focus on the behavior. She's made a demand. You've told him to stop before he runs into the street. Fast forward eighteen years and he's been pulled over while driving. He knows damn well how to touch his nose, but he can't get over himself enough to do it when the cop commands him to during a sobriety test. Or, closer to now, a teacher needs him to follow the classroom directions in order to get through the lesson. He can--but he's too busy fighting himself to stop, attend, listen, and follow through. 
  
  Watching them run compliances can be creepy (stand up, clap your hands, etc.). I can think of two distinct times I almost called a halt to a session. The first was when a secondary teacher gave him a partial verbal prompt to say "please" after he'd independently taken a moment to calm himself the fuck down and made his request in an appropriate tone with eye contact. I could have slapped her. The second was a *epic* meltdown over his refusal to fake sneeze. Sounds ridiculous, right? 
  
  It pays off. The compliances cut through the noise and garbage and get him to stop the stereotypy instantly. Then we can chain him into the next thing we want him to do to redirect. He needed external motivation to see the benefit to interacting, which is where the reinforcement comes in. How much of your son's time is spent in discrete trials versus generalizing? When we put him in a setting with other kids with his 1:1 aide, he blossomed using the foundations ABA gave him and they reinforced his success. I wouldn't have traded an hour of ABA over this past year for anything. I have confidence that he can now roll into preschool and rock it because we have a way to reach him, no matter what. 
  
  All that said, there's nothing wrong with supplementing with a play-based therapy. Others here can speak more to those programs and their kids' success with them. I hope you find a good balance that works for you and your son. 

  
  

  11/10/10 The Kid

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• greyt00 member

  November 2013 edited November 2013

  I have nothing helpful to add but I am curious about this thread because we are about to start extensive ABA therapy in January, and I don't really know much about it.  Been waiting a couple of months for a spot to open.  DS1 currently gets 2 hours per week of Floortime/DIR which we will be continuing, and I believe just that has helped significantly (though we have a VERY long way to go).  DS1 has had a few ABA type sessions through ECI which we have observed so I sort of know what the OP means, and sometimes it was a little tough to watch, but I also feel that it is necessary, at least so far.
  

  
   

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• Mendozamjw member

  November 2013

  @typeset thanks! You've given me a lot to think about. How did your son get thru 28 hours/week? My son can barely make it thru 2 hours a day! He shuts down and I can tell he's exhausted. Did you gradually increase the hours or did his schedule remain consistent?

  

  
  

  

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• typeset member

  November 2013 edited November 2013

  Mendozamjw said:

  How did your son get thru 28 hours/week? ... Did you gradually increase the hours or did his schedule remain consistent?

  He started at 28 hours/week at home, 8-12 Mondays and then 8-2 the other four. It was a lifestyle shift. We gradually moved as many hours as we could to a daycare setting with his ABA person along for support. Some of the kids in the program nap mid-day or take breaks every hour, but he always plugged straight through minus a morning snack. They even supervised lunch, which was great for food desensitization and manners.
  
  I'll add that if you want the programming to change, ask to revisit the goals he's working on. Tell them if you have a more pressing concern you'd like them to address. 
  
  I think one of the big mental pushbacks from ABA comes out of the attachment parenting wave. We don't want to deliberately make our kids upset, provoke tears, frustrate them, etc. In the case of my kid, I focused on the end game. Is it better to push him now while he's young and reinforce him when he shows flexibility ... or try in five years when he's more set in his ways and the tantrums start to become physically unmanageable?  
  
  

  
  

  11/10/10 The Kid

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• Mendozamjw member

  November 2013

  Thank you @-auntie-! I hadn't really been separating his speech from behavior... You both have helped me do that! Just curious... I see you recommending books to people a lot... Any helpful books you know of on ABA therapy and/or ASD? I get overwhelmed at the bookstore! Thanks again!

  

  
  

  

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• typeset member

  November 2013

  The basic ABA textbook the autism school gave us at parent training was Making a Difference: Behavioral Intervention for Autism, edited by Catherine Maurice, Gina Green, and Richard M. Foxx. I like it for the thorough definitions of the various terms and the simple program guidelines with levels of prompting and mastery. There's a great chapter called "Notes from the Speech Pathologist's Office" about how to carry and encourage conversations. There are others on prompts and prompt-fading, incidental teaching, peer social skills, programs to increase peer interaction, and feeding. 

  
  

  11/10/10 The Kid

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