ABA and Asperger's

[appropriatelyemployed]

Anyone on an ABA programme for a child with AS?

Just going down this route after many years of banging my head against a brick wall with useless interventions.

appropriatelyemployed
following on from PipinJo you might find this USA IDEA pdf download useful

AE, DS is said to have Aspergers (as well as HFA) depending on who you talk to. I will never give up ABA despite him being in an altogether different educational setting.

Basically, if I ever want him to learn anything, I try and figure out the ABA way of teaching it. That is simply to find the most efficient, cheap, progressive and importantly motivating way of teaching it and having DS DEMONSTRATE that he has learned AND generalised whatever it is.

Are you coming to Moondogs training thing?

Star - yes. Are you? Need to get my cheque sent off!

Leningrad - have instructed a very experienced ABA consultant to come in and see DS. Just wondering what people's experiences were at this end of the spectrum.

Basically, I was hoping for help with communicating needs (SLT have failed us dismally on this), managing behaviour (he's ended up under the table at school many times this week - hiding from stress), social skills, anxiety, learning etc....

Not much to ask for!

I think the problem with ABA at this end of spectrum is not that it doesn't work but that the expertise isn't out there.

Curriculums have been written but they only go up to 5yrs-ish.

Mainstream social interaction skills curriculum development is only really getting started and hard to research due to the hostility in general to behavioural approaches. There does exist some good books and research however but ABA for under 5's has 50 years of research and THAT is still being treated as snake oil.

ABA tutors are variable in quality (as are Consultants) and there is enough demand at the easier under 5's work to mean that not many develop the skills beyond. (ms social skills are difficult to practice because you are trying to shape the behaviour of more than one child at once iyswim, and NT children won't always respond predicably or in a way that reinforces skills for your child).

I suppose for me, the issue is really to do with access to the right resources I.e supportive peers and someone with language expertise to tell me what needs to be worked on.

we have used ABA for dd2. not officially dx'd with anything, but not quite NT, and has some very strong traits.

we used our consultant (since we were on a home programme anyway) for general advice - dd2's issues are all around emotional regulation, control and social stuff. so completely the opposite of what we were used to doing on our programme, since that had always centred on dd1's immediate SALT and academic needs (with social thrown in, obv, but not the whole focus, as dd1 is social anyway, she just doesn't have the skills she needs)

we also went to see Growing Minds last year. this was mostly to deal with dd2 and her hold on the family overall - again, her controlling nature, coupled with soem big emotional regulation issues, was making daily life very difficult for us all.

we didn't get given a programme as such - dd2 was then in pre-school, and dd1 at ABA school, but we did get a lot of info on how to handle her needs (which, if left unchecked, we had strong feelings would start to become a real problem once EYFS was over, and the child-led play (so often mishandled, and was in her case too) came to an end...).

GM an expensive exercise, though - don't think they have any conferences coming up over here, so it would be a trip to Florida... helped us enormously, and dd2 nicely on track for now (with ongoing input and support for social/emotional needs)