banging my head against the nearest wall

[WhizzBangPhlebas]

(whinge)

How long do you give a tutor before you decide they are not up to the job? Anyone managed to get a disintegrating ABA programme back on course?

We've had the most horrendous time finding tutors - our lead tutor has had to cut down their hours, fabulous tutor left, sacked her replacement who was a disaster, now we have two newbies one with potential the other not so much.

ds is sick of it all - I think he's just had it with ABA. He's made good progress & we were all expecting it to be wrapped up before the end of this academic year but the last two months have been rubbish - he's great outside sessions & really doing well at nursery but the ABA just isn't working.

I don't know what to do - consultant is coming up again tomorrow. I'm thinking of cutting his hours down to 10/12 a week & adding in more SALT & OT. Academically he's fine (starting to read & simple maths etc), speech is catching up, socially he's improving as are his play skills but he's still non compliant & avoidant. I foresee so many problems with his future learning if we can't get through that ... the stuff that ABA should deal with

Is it worth changing consultant or is it just that the tutors have been no good? Or is it the natural end to the programme? DD2 has just finished her ABA programme and is now at school. I think that, even though we had two great tutors, tbh that she had got everything she was going to get out of it and it was a natural time to stop. She is now in school and although there are issues it is generally going well and she is happy. We try to ensure that she is maintaining what she has learnt by doing some ABA style sessions at school with her 1:1 and this seems to be working well. Is there any chance you could train up the better tutor to do less hours maintaining his skills and maybe shadowing him at nursery? You could then see how integrating him more would work before you totally stop the ABA? FWIW I found it difficult to decide to end the ABA programme for dd2. It has been so good for her that it is kind of hard to hand her over so to speak to the education system.

Just a thought where are you? We had a fabulous very experienced and energetic tutor for dd2!

Thanks cansu (we're in Berkshire btw) - I'm still happy with the consultant, his programmes really suit ds & they suit our situation too iykwim. It's the tutors, they are such a huge stress - we've spent so much money training recently only to be let down & messed around :( DS is not classically ASD-ish (lots of PDA features) even the experienced tutors we've had (probably moreso actually) have trouble being flexible & imaginative enough to keep him motivated. It's so frustrating when I see them failing to get stuff out of him that I, & even is nursery workers, can.

I think we're definitely heading towards a less intense programme - ds wants to be doing more typical 4 year old stuff. He hates drills & DTT, even when we're doing mostly NET & it's fun he wants to play with his sisters & their friends (which I regard as fabulous) rather than us all the time. He's learning without over teaching, he's asking questions all the time but he isn't age appropriate (mid level 3 for most things in VB-MAPP he's 49 months now) & we still have big compliance issues that I'm worried will become more problematic as he gets older

I think part of it is our fault, we had this finished completely by next spring goal waved at us & increased his hours to full time which is where it all went wrong - I'd be much happier with a longer lasting less intensive programme with the right tutor(s). Will see what the consultant thinks tomorrow.

Can't help with tutor then as we're in suffolk. We did about 18 hours with dd2 and although I know this is well short of what is recommended I think it was more than enough for her tbh. She also needed time to chill out and do other stuff too. I hope it works out for you and your ds.