Good description of ABA - useful

[sickofsocalledexperts]

For all those who need a good, bona fide description of what ABA is and why it helps young and older children with autism, see the excellent piece below from Professor Richard Hastings. Perhaps his clear explanation and his credentials might help convince some of our sceptical friends in the LAs!

profhastings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/autism-evidence-3-what-is-aba-for.html

Excellent stuff. A clear, concise explanation like thus is way, way overdue

Richard Hastings is amazing.

Of course.

I met him in a foyer once. I didn't know who he was but he politely listened to my inane rant about ABA politics (too much prejudice/crap ABA etc) or 30 mins before telling me politely, that parents are the only ones that can change anything.

That is very good.

Star, how did the Ron Leaf thing go? I spoke to Autism Partnership about trying to set something up for DS and the figures they quoted me added up to around 3.5k for a year just for supervision and consultation. We have no one to deliver it effectively in school either.

Indeed, we ended up having a chat in the week at school as teacher and TA wanted to know what sanctions they should use as DS was drawing on his white board and not listening in lessons. Sanctions! They did listen to me and agreed to try and explain expected behaviour and reward it but the default position is negative - punish the behaviour you don't want to see.

However, no one seems very interested in taking on a nearly 10 year old Aspie who doesn't want to look different.

Ds' school have introduced a type of home-school book. They call it a positive behaviour book.

In it there are to be written (for each lesson) two things Ds has done well in the front of the book, and one thing he could work on/do better next lesson. There are no sanctions from the school for anything that goes in the book. The recording and evaluating and later self-evaluating is the purpose. Sanctions then are MY remit. So I can talk to him about the behaviours if I think they need to be discussed and I can work with Ds to reduce the recording of any repeated behaviours.

It sounds quite good to me but we've not done it yet. He has about 4 lessons a day. I.e literacy, numeracy, PE and geography and some change of teacher.

Do you think this might work?

Teacher has to be prepared to give a minute or two at the end of each lesson to complete with Ds.

Sorry, the thing he coukd try and do better next time goes in the back.

I sent DH to see Ron Leaf. He liked him and thought for an inspiring enthusiastic American sales bloke he understood the British tolerance levels for such things pretty well and came across as a sensible and genuinely nice guy.

DH took DS to meet him too and gave a mini-assessment followed by advice which was helpful.

I think one of the differences between AP and others is that they think that providers are so scared of being accused of giving out punishments for bad behaviour they ignore it rather than give feedback. This is fine in principle for me but I'm not sure that the dodgy practitioner might misinterpret especially in the UK where accountability of consultants and therapists is fairly low.

Star, was your dh the person talking to dev and blueshark?

Ie - I found Ron leaf very interesting. Also, have you tried aba-uk about consultant/supervisor? There are some interesting posts now but mainly about who not to hire.

lol, I don't know as I wasn't there, but it is possible yes as he knows blueshark and said it was nice to have met dev.

Think he might have been the very quiet man I sat next to then. Only spoke to him right at the end and he said he had a boy at a communication school?

Yes. He is very quiet. He has 3 children and me to contend with after all.

Brave man.