Dr Ron Leaf - Free ABA Introduction in London

[StarlightMcKenzie]

www.autismpartnership.co.uk/uk_workshops.php

disclaimer: I have never bought services from Autism Partnership and do not work for them. This is purely for information for those that might be interested to find out more about ABA for free.

My 'personal' opinion is that this geezer is worth listening to having read some of his stuff.

I think there's a time and a place for all these "aides" iyswim. I see aides mostly as part of a means to an independent end, rather than the caring carrot plonk em in a sensory room and say "there, there dear". Thing is all this therapy to sort out a child's sensory integration/motor skills is more time intensive and expensive than aides, so I can see why LA's favour the caring carrot sensory room "there, there" approach That approach drives me NUTS!

For a long time DS would only voluntarily write about stuff that interested him for fun on his A2 whiteboard, where pencil and paper was just distressing to watch. The whiteboard was an aide, but one that I felt was helping to gain a skill iyswim. (It was probably cheaper than a years worth of stickers anyway )

As we oh so slowly worked through write from the start & he moved up and off the P levels, so he became more interested in writing for his own interest on paper. At one point I thought he'd never be able to write. Now we use fancy smancy pencils, but I've noticed he's holding a "normal" pencil correctly for longer and longer periods. I envisage him using Tesco Value to do his homework next academic year.

Left to the "system" he'd have left school at 18 on the P levels for writing, as it is I'm stuck doing daily OT/RRT/VT excercises with him till he leaves primary that will hopefully enable him to achieve his potential, whatever that may be. I suspect though he'll have perfect "prescription" handwriting rather than cursive at the end of it though lol!

Thanks Boch that's very helpful to know.

Thanks moondog, we are very pleased with his progress and want to keep the momentum going, hence I asked about the SALT. He is already under the care of an NHS SALT. she means well but we kind of keep going in circles with her advice. I will try London children's clinic for an assessment and see what they suggest next.

The thing is, 'good' special needs equipment rapidly goes mainstream, because high quality, ergonomic, sensible design is what everyone wants, and it just so happens to be what children/adults with more-than-average difficulty tend to need.

The new MNSN mascot

loving the mascot I want one for my Xmas stocking

DS uses an old fashioned wooden school writing desk at home with a slope (& an inkwell). Funny thing is that my teacher Mum grabbed it during a classroom clearance back in the 1970's for me to use at home cos my handwriting was crap & I was disorganised. It has a 20 degree slope - just the same as the acrylic one he's been given to go on his flat table at school. Write from the start is based on the bog standard pedagogy for handwriting that's been used by every child in Romania for as long as anyone can remember.

Yes DS has real fine motor issues but is the above really "special needs" stuff or just a return to the time-tested common sense that would benefit every child, rather than relying on fads?

I think the same about many aspects of what I understand ABA to be - analysing what motivates a child to learn, breaking tasks down in to small chunks, going over a skill until it's really mastered in a systematic fashion. For me it's raw, hard core good teaching, at it's most effective. I see so many aspects of what I've read about ABA that would benefit NT children in regular classrooms if only the politicians and caring carrots would get out the way.

I agree Bochead.
So much educational input is appallingly designed and delivered thus worthless. ABA is about good design and maximising returns of input/investment. I spend a lot of time talking with friends in business and industry and what interests me is how much effort they put into effective strategies asnd design and how little education doesa.
Then, when the child starts to struggle, it all gets blamed on him or here.

Dev I don't think you are PECS users but I would recommend you look at their courses and trainers as PECS is of course ABA based and PECS use always promotes use of speech. One of their trainers, Julia Biere, is an s/lt (American) and when I last spoke to her, she was going for BCBA certification (board certified behaviour analysis)-proboably the only one in the UK. (I hope to be the nxt having just applied to take the exam!)

She would totally get all your s/lt aims as well as your ABA ones.

Here's there website

The PECS folk are beacons of sanity, intelligence and real action in the hysteria of the SN industry. Going on a PECS course changed the trejectory of my life and career.

I'm going to get that mascot so I can verbally (and on occasion physically) abuse it!!!

their

Ooh I was trained by an American Julia when I did the introductory PECS course.

She was excellent - humorous but also slightly scary so am not surprised to hear she is going for BCBA certification

ditto re PECs changing our trajectory

trajectory

LOL, looks like I was stealth correcting there, but I didn't notice honest

I'll believe you.

Ours too, but I'm not going to even attempt the word.....

To be fair, it was MN too. But MN signposted me to PECS. I mean, our SALTS were trying to get ds to use PECS but it MADE NO SENSE so I wrote it off on here as the most bollocksy thing from the planet Bollockso, and then got told to go on the PECS training myself to see what the SALTs were 'supposed' to be doing with ds.

Which I did. And it changed everything, - EVEN though my ds was already verbal.

In fact, it is all coming back to me now as baby ds is now at the age that dd was when I did the PECS course and we had to go down to Brighton as a family with my DH taking the kids but not too far away as every break dd had to be brought in to be breastfed.

It all got very panicky on the Sunday when it was suggested that they skip the final break to finish earlier.........

That's interesting Star, I was told that PECS can make kids lazy so they don't attempt to vocalise. Can I ask how did it benefit you if your ds was verbal. We had our workshop today and we are giving two weeks to carry on with signing and vocalisation before we get back to using PECS. We tried earlier but it never did work out so we moved on to signing which sadly also didn't work out, so we are going back to PECS again. To be fair, our heart wasn't in it so we never did try hard enough earlier, but this time we are going to do it properly.
I am booked on the course in November but still interested to hear about your experience.

Dev, if I may interject, the point of using PECS is to stretch the child the more it is used.
Thus one will start accepting delivery of the picture-no eye contact or even body orientation expected. Just delivery of the reinforcer within a 1/2 second
Over time (and as the child proceeds through the stages) you learn to shape the child's behaviour.
No longer will mere delivery of picture be enough. It will move to delivery plus eye contact

Then delivery plus eye contact plus some sort of verbalisation.

Then delivery plus eye contact plus approximation of word.

Thus at every stage, child is pushed to do more but lawys within context of accessing reinforcer.

It is nonsense that it makes kids lazy with verbalisation.
Who told you that?
I am not happy with the way that most s/lts and indeed most behaviour analysts pass judgement on PECS without knowing the slightest thing about it.
It riles me no end and so many children who could really make a go of meanignful communication end up either messing about in sensory rooms or mindlessly echoing words which have no meaning to them at all as they have not been learnt in a meaningful or useful context.

Andy Bondy and Lori Frost are bloody amazing people (and I ran after the latter with a broken shoes and appalling hangover in Phoenix airport once to tell her she had changed my life.)

Basically, it is the best ABA training I have come across. It is all that is good about ABA and any programme or intervention that you attempt to implement subsequently can be with PECS in mind for rigour, broken-down steps, ethics, reinforcement and just general good practice.

The first half a day I was sitting in the room learning the background and purpose of PECS, which was interesting and gave a good foundation for what we were to learn. The second half a day had me going 'aha! I KNEW PECS wasn't appropriate for ds, and certainly the stupid version that ds's salts were trying to implement, - oh well I've paid for this, may as well stick it out (and enjoy the attention from the other professional delegates who told me they wished I was 'their' mum.

Then the second morning everything clicked and it was 'hang on a minute, - this is powerful stuff, bloody hell, the world's my oyster etc........'

Perhaps if you already know about ABA and understand the principles to some extent your learning potential will be less, but this was my introduction into the ABA world.

I went back and told the salts they were doing it wrong and that it was ABA and they starting harking on about ABA being rubbish and pecs were visual supports, - not ABA.

I think if you start banding pictures around without method or a plan then no child is going to start communicating unless they can figure it out for themselves. Brand the child lazy by all means, but I'd call it poor teaching.

Thus one will start accepting delivery of the picture-no eye contact or even body orientation expected. Just delivery of the reinforcer within a 1/2 second over time (and as the child proceeds through the stages) you learn to shape the child's behaviour.
No longer will mere delivery of picture be enough. It will move to delivery plus eye contact

Then delivery plus eye contact plus some sort of verbalisation.

Then delivery plus eye contact plus approximation of word.

Thus at every stage, child is pushed to do more but lawys within context of accessing reinforcer.

Thanks moondog This is exactly what we have been trying to achieve but replace pictures with signs, without much success I should add so we are going to try and go back to pictures. I agree it was poor advice and the more I think about it, the more angry it makes me with myself as well as the person who gave me this advice because we could potentially have had an effective communication system set up by now reducing a lot of ds1 frustrations.

Thanks for sharing that star, right now I am being treated to a rendition of 'heh shosho tee toh toh' (head shoulders knees and toes) so I know he can say the words but I think it is more important now that he has a means of communication than my desire for him to speak.

when we did PECS, we did follow the steps as you have listed moondog, When I say halfheartedly I meant perhaps we should have stuck it out a bit longer.

'I know he can say the words but I think it is more important now that he has a means of communication than my desire for him to speak.'

That, my friend, is the crux to it all.
If he is going to speak it will come along anyway.
If he doesn't, he still has a good means of communication and can make his needs and wants known.

The danger will pinning all your hopes on speech (I know you aren't but many do) is that if it doesn't happen the child has nothing.

I have seen many children transition from PECS to speech.
I am working with one child at present.
At 5 he was practically non verbal, with severe challenging behaviour.
Used PECS.
Now at 11 he has finished Headsprout, reads and writes (for pleasure) and is zooming through Language for Thinking.

Described a camera to me the other day as 'a sort of square with a hole you look through and a button you press'

The lesson is that when people tell you something is good or bad, ask for the evidence.
If they don't have it, the chances are that they are spouting ill informed tripe.

Thanks again moondog for the positive story, needed it today. I shall remember your advice and as always its been a pleasure talking to you.

That's not to say Dev that it's not important to work on speech, either with or without speech. It is and the problem is that most s/lts have neither the time nor expertise to work on this with the intensity and sophisticated design this sort of intervention calls for.

However you can work on speech and PECS/signs at the same time.
Choosing one does not mean you have to forego the other.
The MSc I have just co-supervised examined this in depth-the frequency of PECS use in several different classes that also used standard behavioural methods to elicit speech from small children with ASD as well as the nature and frequency of sounds/words used by the same children.

My reference to the boy who progressed from PECS to LFT is an amazing success story and not everyone will make as much progress. the point is however that many children can and do and that child was in a bog standard special school with no bells and whistles interventions.

{smile]

We also

'either with or without PECS' I meant to say.
Apologies, it's been a long day.

Oh I agree about working on both things together, I have copied and pasted some of my notes from the workshop today to give you an example of what we are trying to do.

"Manding:

Prompt prompt prompt!
Model signs when *** is giving full engagement - but not doing Hand-over-Hand
Flood the vocals, give a couple of secs pause to see if he tries communicating, if not repeat the vocal and give object. We are really hoping the flooding will provide the tool to communicate."