ABA please enlighten me

[LimboLil]

Hi I'm one for asking lots of questions lately, with my son's new diagnosis. Please tell me about ABA. I've been turning a blind eye to it til now but just having read the posts where peeps are thanking The Lord they have ABA and not standard intervention, visual aids etc (ie what my son currently gets), I need to know more.

Ah you prob saw something I wrote earlier . Please don't worry that your ds is getting poor support - in my case it's that we've done ABA for 21/2 years now so I suppose it's just become our way of parenting.

Anyway, to answer your question. It's Applied Behavioural Analysis. A method of intervention and teaching based on positive-reinforcement. The theory is that you can change a child's behaviour by the way you respond to and deal with that behaviour. The difficulties a child with autism might have with communication, interaction, and behaviour (and all the rest) can be dealt with using this approach.

Probably best you search the archives - there is loads of info here on this. Don't mean to sound like I'm brushing you off, but you can find out lots more by reading up on it here.

It's pretty much what you would want anyone educating your child to do.

Thorough assessment of strengths, weaknesses, like and dislikes.

Use strengths and likes to pull up the weaknesses and dislikes.

Know that you have been successful by being carefully planning the lessons and taking data to show daily progress.

Data is taken on academic things, behavioural things, social things, and the aim is to increase the sucesses by making adaptions to the lesson, not once a term at half-hearted IEP review, but day by day.

Any idiots guide books you could recommend?

If you punch uk sba autism into google, there is a new AbA society with a good explanation of behaviour analysis in general

Or, more autism-specific, try the Beyondautism site - what is ABA and what us VB

Hi Limbo I have been reading your posts in a non-stalkish way as I'm also beginning my journey in helping my dd. She's not been dxd yet but I am suspecting she is on the spectrum.

After reading on about ABA on MN and online (youtube etc) I feel that will help.

Questions:

How many hours are needed in a week for successful results?

Which leads me to question 2- How do people afford it??

The more hours, the faster the learning. That's all.

But a child who is behind can benefit from more rather than less hours to have a chance of catching up, and to reduce the time engaged in non-meaningful activities.

People afford it a variety of ways. Some recruit volunteers, train family members, sell their house, send of grant applications, fund raise.

I think whichever way you do it though the key thing to do it train yourself.

Many people start by getting someone to train them, then leading and delivering a programme themselves before bringing someone else on board or taking their LA to tribunal for funding.

A cheap DIY package is here www.simplestepsautism.com/

The best books I've read have been this and this. Both are slightly past complete-novice stage (and the first one, the Robert Schramm can be a bit technical) but I read them both before we started our ABA programme and sort of understood them.

We started doing 15 hours ourselves with supervision of 8 hours a month so £400 a week using savings, DLA and family contributions. We now have funded programme of 35 hours a week 48 weeks a year. I won't tell you how much it costs the LA but its alot. Not all children need 35 hours those with fewer difficulties who learn faster can do with less and may not need it at all after a year or so. Ds is moderate Asd, severe language disorder etc so he really needs a lot. But he still made progress with 15 hours much more than he did at nursery.