ABA'ers and others, can you tell me your top reinforcers please.

[dev9aug]

DS1(3) is a very passive child, not much gets him excited very much. I have tried all sorts of toys, puzzles, DVDs etc but still no luck with getting him too excited about it. He would play with the object, but as soon as a demand is placed on him, however suble I might add, he will just leave it. The stuff he likes so far.

1. IPAD (only certain videos though)
2. Swing (massive reinforcer for him)
3. Cause and effect toys (he does stray into stimming with them so we have to be careful to limit his time with them)
4. Lining up things, cups rings, balls etc.
5. Physical play (rough and tumble, tickles etc but hard to incorporate into work)

I have listed out the stuff he does like so far and we are using all the above as reinforcers but would like to add to the list so I would like to knew what worked for you.
TIA

I cannot add as have got a copy of your ds!! Everything you listed and not much more will work...

We found food worked best at first - mainly crisps broken into very small pieces. There are disadvantages though - it was difficult to keep momentum going, especially in fast trial work, when we had to wait for him to finish chewing ( he was distracted otherwise).

I feel your pain babiki.

Lirael u dream of the day when we can use food as the reinforcer, he used to like biscuits and raisins, as soon as he sussed it out we were using it to get to him. He gave then up just like that. Now he won't even go near them even if we offer then for free.

He was never obsessed with anything, funnily enough he started lining up things a few weeks ago and this is what we have been using to get him to do some work with him, otherwise we would have nothing.

We always struggled with reinforcers. Food would work, and a bit of rough and tumble, occasionally jumping off things. It's one of the reasons we stopped table top work tbh.

DD is 4 and for her works:

• food
• videos
• marble runs
• balloons / waterballoons
• playing with balls
• rough and tumble play
• playdough
• listening to music (there are a couple of CDs she is very fond of)
• singing

DS was similar at 3. He has a wider range of things now.
He liked those books with the musical buttons down the side (cause and effect I guess)
He absolutely loved this. Although its a baby toy even the older children love it as the balls pop right out the top, its fast and DS would run around collecting them.
marble runs
jigsaws - especially ones which made a noise when you put the piece in e.g. melissa and doug do them and often on sale in TKMAXX - ABA staff had to do quite a bit of work on jigsaws before he got into them.
He quite liked button boards like this and this
Spinning tops that lit up and things like this
What about one of those small trampolines with a handle?
He liked it when we videoed him and the ABA staff singing and put it on his iPad he thought that was very funny.
He also loved flash cards - he would often choose 'work things' in reinforcement.

Spinners like the one Agnes posted.

DS also liked those curly things that go down the stairs (can't remember their name and they get stupidly tangled).

Building up block towers for ds to knock down (he could get an extra brick stacked each time for each response first).

Better than one hula hoop was 'half' a hula hoop that became named as a 'moon' crisp. One Christmas we bought the entire local tesco supply of 'star hula hoops'. So shaped crisps were good.

But to be honest, ds quickly moved on to being motivated by being allowed to have a go at his most recently mastered skill. Once he had 'got' it, it was his best most favourite thing, so reinforcers became maintanence tasks iyswim.

i.e. working towards being allowed to count up to 20 etc etc.

bubbles
rhymes with actions (row the boat/ring a roses/sleeping bunnies etc)
mini aeroplanes on strings being 'flown' in circles with him choosing fast/slow
fuzzy felt characters to add to a scene (peppa pig)

What are the videos he likes on youtube? DS loves 'sets' so if he is into a video of 10 fat sausages he is extremely excited to be allowed to make 10 playdoh sausages and 'cook' them in a real pan

Thanks everyone... I think I have about 50% of the stuff bought and now hidden in a corner somewhere..., but there is some good stuff mentioned up thread so I will definitely give it all a go. I mean the more the merrier heh..

FauxFox what did you mean by 'sets'. I have just youtube'd the Fat sausages song and I think he will like it. He is currently into numtums so anything with counting will work I think.

zzzz yup, have that stupid elefun thingy here as well, will definitely try the marble run, looks promising.

perception & Pipinjo good point about putting the reinforcers away, we do try to get the stuff away, but do leave some for him to play, maybe need to be more careful with what he is using to make sure the motivation stays high.

Chocjunkie I will try the water balloons. He used to like balloons until the last lot of tutors used it to grab his attention at times when he really did not want to engage and was anxious and now he won't go near the balloons, but I know he does like playing with them so will try again.

Agnes I think I have about 50% of the toys on your list. We have a toy shop in our town which sells all Melisa and Doug toys and I think I have most of their collection already I do like the idea about filming ourselves on the ipad and showing it to him. Funnily enough, DS wouldn?t lay eyes on us if he didn?t want anything from us, but very happy to look at us and wave at us when we use Facetime on the iphone/Ipad.

Torchlight We have the slinkys and I will get the spinners. I did read somewhere you mentioning about the current activity they are doing being the most reinforcing and we have adapted that for our work, for eg. He can line up things if he did something we asked of him.

Yes, sometimes you can interupt something that he is currently doing/enjoying by just placing your hand over it, making a quick, simple demand of him and then removing your hands immediately.

The key is that the fastest way for him to resume his activity is to just do as he is asked rather than argue/get cross about it.

And yes to puting reinforcers away. It isn't mean. It means that he will look forward to working with you because you're the fun person with all his favourite things. I think that can be hard for a parent-tutor, especially as the reinforcer can sometimes buy you time for a shower/phonecall/peace etc.

By 'sets' I mean a video/song + a toy + a picture etc.

Today he is liking the Balamory coloured house song and is carrying around a picture i drew with him yesterday of the houses and a square and triangle yellow wooden block he has decided represents the yellow house. If we were ABAing today I would be offering to build a small row of appropriately coloured houses out of lego as reinforcement.

He likes the DVD/book sets like Bear hunt and Ravenous beast so he can look at the book and the TV at the same time.

The freebies on the front of CBeebies magazine are normally a hit because they 'match' the videos and games he likes on the website.

He loves props to act out his favourite rhymes etc like the sausages example and also the three bears story (bears/3 sized bowls/put them to bed etc)

We are quite lucky that DS tends to have fads that fade in and out and is not obsessed with any one thing for longer than a week or two.

Also do you use token economy yet? I can't remember how old DS was when we introduced that 4 I think and it helped alot as he could 'earn' 5 velcro tokens then get a video or short game instead of needing such frequent rewards.

Ds at 3yo also always loved watching clips on computer and songs on youtube (Abba has always been popular, the Wiggles, and Sesame Street were v popular when he was younger). Currently it's the olympics, esp Usain Bolt or anyone very fast (obsessed with running fast).

He also loved dancing cartoon/pixar characters, and loved copying the moves. There's a good series of very simple black & white cartoon-type songs on youtube if you search Super Simple Songs or Are You Hungry. Ds loved these.

Ime things like puzzles, 'normal' toys and even films are too much for 3yos, as they require too much anticipating and sequencing, as well as imagination. Probably why cause & effect toys are so much more popular.

I also agree with pp, a good tutor should also be able to slip something intrinsically reinforcing into whatever activity is being done. With our best tutors, ds has no idea any teaching is going on, espeically as pretty much all ABA programmes now are Natural Environment Teaching rather than table-top or DTT.

Things like tickling, swinging, rough & tumble etc can definitely be used! When ds was younger (and smaller and lighter!) his tutors would be constantly throwing him up in the air and onto sofas!

Torchlight do you mean Slinky?

At present, the very top reinforcers are:

Shredding garden waste
Cutting things down from the garden
Picking blackberries.

Read so many pages and I'll go out and cut branches etc for 5 mins. Finished 5 short books today. Wishe I could say the garden looks better but that would be a lie.

Dd also quite liked squidgey stuff from Hawkins bazaar as quite sensory. Also things like light up fish etc.

Thanks to everyone again. saintly I was against table work initially by he actually seem to like it there. He knows when he s on there he will get a reinforcer, getting him to do anything or it s a different matter.

Thanks Bialy, at the moment theme tunes for cbeebies are his favourite things, films are just not interesting enough.

trying I just can't imagine how that came about to be a reinforcer.

Cansu a trip to Hawkins is duly planned...

DS1's currency has only ever been cold, hard cash! He's never responded well to reinforcers/bribes - they tend to make him mistrustful - but when we got him out of daytime nappies, last year, he was rewarded with a lego fund for each little step towards cleanness and dryness.