Good book for introduction to ABA for ASD

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Hi - I would like to dip my toes into ABA waters and perhaps introduce some techniques at home on my own to support DS in addition to the TEACCH based methods he is being exposed to at nursery.

I appreciate that hardcore ABA needs 40 or so hours of specialist team focus at home but am not quite in the market for that yet.

Is there a decent book that might give me an intro and some techniques to try at home ?

Many thanks

Yes, most definitely. Try 'Let Me Hear Your Voice' by Catherine Maurice. A superb, and very uplifting book that gives an excellent overview of ABA techniques and how they can be utilised by parents too.

The other book that is incredibly useful helpful (but a tad more expensive) is the embarrassingly named 'Educate Towards Recovery: Turning The Tables on Autism' by Robert Schramm. It details all the principles/ stages of ABA very clearly and thoroughly

You don't need 40 hours of ABA.

Basically, the more hours, the faster you can progress.

The hours you are NOT doing ABA however, are hours where your child can practise mistakes. That is why long hours are recommended, but actually, if you parent in an ABA syle and are always aware of the current targets you really don't need lots and lots of formal hours.

However, this does depend on your child's rate of progress. If they aren't progressing at all, you'll need to increase the hours.

This site has good free resources, introductions and training manuals

ABA doesn't really have anything to do with autism - it is just a teaching methodology - it can be used with anyone to teach anything :)

We've never run a full programme, the most hours we've ever done is 24 & we noticed a decline in ds' rate of learning, behaviour & happiness so dropped back down to 18-21 & he's doing well again. We had good progress with 6 hours a week at the beginning. But like ALittleBitConfused suggests we 'do ABA' the whole time, it's second nature now, the only real difference between session & not session ABA is that when we don't have a tutor I'm dividing my attention between three children & dealing with sibling squabbles .

Our primary targets have always been language & communication - we haven't done daily living skills & academics etc - & we're pretty much exclusively NET based.

Phlebas thanks for that post - it sort of puts ABA into context for me. We use the Hanen SALT 'methodology' at home for communication building (learnt from the ITTTTT and More than Words books and courses) and I am so used to doing it I do it the whole time without thinkning now.
Where would you suggest to go for a good introduction to ABA - did you find one particular source particularly helpful ?

and thanks for the other suggestions. Am off to follow the link through now and purchase 'let me hear...' which has been sat in my Amazon basket for two months now.

mary lynch barbera's book 'the verbal behaviour approach' is also good to read if you're thinking of doing VB

Behavioural Intervention for Young Children with Autism is a good book, somewhat like a manual. It is co-edited by Catherine Maurice among others. It used to be hard to get and was only available from a company called Taskmaster but you can probably get it on Amazon these days.

Autism Partnership "A Work in Progress" is like a curriculum textbook. AP also run workshops regularly here often only for £10 for parents.
You could also look at AP or PEACH introductory tutor workshops.

If you can afford it the best thing is actually to hire a supervisor. We did this with AP before we got tribunal funding - we had to fund an initial 3 days training which was expensive - but then just paid for supervision / training of us at £400 a month and we did 15-20 hours a week.

It depends on the child but ours moves through programmes quickly so we needed regular supervision. We used DLA etc to help fund it.

Other options are online eg Simple Steps, PEAT charity is a subscription site where they provide info over the web and you can ask questions of supervisors/other parents etc.

I didn't get on with doing it from a book. I know other parents have managed but DS was very resistant to engaging / had very poor attention / severe ASD so we really needed the specialist input. But once you have had it taught to you and demonstrated then its easier to just carry on parenting in that way.

If i could not fund a supervisor I would probably look into the online options. There was a thread on this recently and I think another site was also recommended.

I've read the Mary Lynch Barbera & Robert Schramm books. My mum bought me Let Me Hear Your Voice but I haven't read it yet - lots of people find it v. inspiring but I hate cure stories & find they up my anxiety by about 3000%.

They were interesting but not that helpful tbh ... we weren't looking to run a typical 'autism ASD programme', ds was stupendously demand avoidant & we needed a lot of support & advice about how to deal with that, a book couldn't have done it.

Most useful actually was getting a copy of the VB-MAPP, you can use it as a curriculum/guide/assessment tool or just general introduction to the sort of skills ABA can teach. Though we don't do a full programme I have found it really helpful to analyse ds' issues & difficulties, target specific behaviours, track progress & decide on short/med/long term goals. I found it much easier to cope when I knew exactly where ds' deficits were - much more specific than 'receptive language on the x centile' etc

We chose a consultant who will take on children with behavioural or developmental issues who aren't specifically diagnosed with ASD. He increasingly works with children like ds who have primarily language/communication issues (and is will to run programmes which are manageable for families - full time would never be possible for us). We have a great supervisor now too, which has made life much easier for me.

I'm with you on the cure stories!
What agnesdipesto says...... best way imo.