ABA TV documentary - 5 Nov, 9pm, BBC Four

[sickofsocalledexperts]

Just to let anyone interested in ABA know that there is a BBC Four documentary coming up - Tuesday 5 Nov at 9pm. It is called Autism: Challenging Behaviour.

It features partucularly Treetops school, for the at least one mumsnetter on here who I think might be considering that school.

Nb - hope I am not contravening MN rules, but I have no vested interest in the programme, except being a big ABA fan and pleased that the message is finally getting out.

lottie fully agree, I don't think it made my ds very happy when he poured water from a watering can over his head again and again and again and again... It was clear he was sociable and did want to join in with things, but just didn't know how.

zzzz gives you a bit of an idea. With DS this took weeks not minutes. Had one preferred food one non preferred and had to touch, lick, eat non preferred food to get reward of preferred food eg chocolate.
So touch new food - get chocolate. Put it to mouth - reward, Lick it, put in inside mouth and take it out, swallow it etc
You can keep a chart to see progress up this hierarchy rewarding each step so even if it takes weeks to eat something new you can see progress
No pressure if doesn't do it you just take both plates away and do something else. Come back to it few hours later. Do it just a few times a day just for few minutes.
And don't do it at mealtimes.
Can start with something very similar texture etc to what already likes eg a slightly different cereal or flavour. Also to start with just the tiniest piece.
work up hierarchy for each food you introduce.
We did it 3 times with ds before it worked.
The first few foods were really hard then it was just like a floodgates we could skip lots of steps and accepted new foods much more easily.

See, what I don't understand is why anyone coukd imply that, for example, sickof's dsd isn't now as young independent person fully at liberty to Stim all she wants.

We're not taking away things from the kids but giving them a larger repertoire to chose from. I dare say the boy who drinks milkshakes will be perfectly at liberty to drink milkshakes even when he is eating 3 solid meals daily.

Yes Star, I think my DSD will now stim if she wants to in her own room, just like I now only suck my thumb in private, with no anxiety that I can't do it at a board meeting!

Yes. When the age appropriate time comes for my dd to spend her dinner money how she likes, Jack should be free to purchase baby jars should he choose if he is at a similar stage in his development.

I don't doubt the Scottish lady has had a very difficult time growing up and conforming to social norms and expectations of others. I would argue that she could have perhaps benefitted from some carefully targeted support to help her to learn how to navigate the situations she found difficult and practice ways to deal with them without giving up her soul. IMO it is lack of identification of need and lack of effective intervention that has made her life more difficult than it perhaps needed to be.

I enjoyed watching it. my lovely babysitter who teaches in a TEACHH school (no pun intended) said of the pale child at St Christophers "oh, he'll be tube fed" even before the lady on the tv did. she says its is the norm in her school as well because they have been taught to allow the kids do whatever they want. none of the year 5s in her class she teaches kids are potty trained which i find scary.

I was uncomfortable with the arguments against ABA being an evil method that that makes kids comply with adult demands and wishes and that society makes miserable conformists of autistic people. Society probably makes miserable conformists of us all especially teenagers. I work in the secondary sector and they all protest that way when asked to dress up properly, stop slouching ,do homework.. the list is endless.

I have an autistic son (who appeared breifly in the background) and an NT son and to me they both need boundaries. I find myself asking NT son to do things he doesn't want to, make him go to bed when he'd rather watch tv, i tell him what constitutes good and safe behaviour and tell him that lots of good things in life come with hard work. I find that it makes sense to do the same as far as reasonably practical with his brother who is sometimes being a regular naughty child pushing boundaries.

it's not ok to hit/headbutt me or anyone else to express frustration, it's not ok to tear your brother's books (so we you with provide old newspapers from time to time), it's not ok to engage in poo smearing however calming and stress relieving it is and you need to find alternative strategies for relieving stress, it's not ok to grind your hips/groin against anyone as a stim, no you cannot eat food from the bins in the park or try to chomp on other peoples dogs to see if they are made of meat, or lie down on the zebra crossing because the car honked his horns and startled you, or to be attracted to electric appliance cables only when plugged in and turned on. and I would rather overlook a tantrum in order to stop help you find other ways which are not going to harm you or cause your further isolation from others. I'll take the bear hugs though.

i like the following response from Temple Grandin www.medscape.org/viewarticle/498153:

"Medscape: A recent story in The New York Times examined the conflicts that occur between some people with autism, some of whom protest any treatment, and their parents.

Dr. Grandin: I've read those things, the whole conflict about ABA -- applied behavior analysis. Those techniques are mainly for very little children, for 2 to 5 year olds, to get language started. They're not for high-functioning 8 and 9 year olds. And most people in those protests are the more mild Asperger's types. We need to be working on developing the talents those people have so they can have jobs and support themselves. I really believe there's a certain portion of high-functioning Asperger's patients who need to be going to the university and getting in with their intellectual peers, and just skipping the whole teenage mess because that's not a life skill you need anyway. And it was the worst part of my life, absolutely the worst. Interacting with teenagers is not part of my career!"

Can you imagine a school full of NT kids simply allowed to do what they want?

Lisad, some of the ABA presented in that film IS harsher than what is commonly used. The abroad bloke doesn't have the official qualification requiring in death ethical studying. Treetops showed children who had just arrived with years of being reinforced for unhelpful behaviours which takes a bit of persistence to undo.

Most programmes are started very young when the child hasn't yet developed such complex rigid behaviours.

I think the difference, moondog is that most people do the social interaction thing and then move on. I can only speak for myself, having very strong traits and being a natural loner, but I can do the social interaction thing, 95% of the time, and usually manage not to seem too gauche, though I may stay on the periphery if I can't find a way in (usually in the form of having something concrete that can be the object of the interaction, such as sharing knowledge, or having knitting on me to talk about), only afterwards, I am totally and utterly exhausted and often in physical pain.

The older clips of children doing old style ABA programs do look harsh - I believe in those days they also used physical punishments? Unfortunately a lot of people don't realise that a modern program is nothing like that anymore, even though in the early days a child may find it uncomfortable because they've never had demands put on them before. There is no way I would have wanted my dd to do ABA if I thought it was cruel or unethical - I would have hit the roof if anyone put her in the corner or shouted at her. In fact, we had a tutor in the early days who was giving her a snappy 'no' and I said I wanted this tutor removed from the program.

Finefatmama - you sound like my kind of mother, both in terms of your nickname and your eminently sensible post! Parenting is parenting, kids need boundaries - autistic kids as well as teens! I too taught secondary school for a while, which is perhaps why I am not at all afraid to tell my autistic boy "no" if he is doing something anti-social or dangerous.

And Jeez, this quote from your babysitter should be sent to government in charge of Teacch schools, it is beyond scandalous. And yet everyone wrings their hands over ABA's supposed "cruelty". Neglect is the real cruelty here, yet I bet everyone at the school below is feeling warm and fuzzy about how they are respecting the children's autism.

...my lovely babysitter who teaches in a TEACHH school (no pun intended) said of the pale child at St Christophers "oh, he'll be tube fed" even before the lady on the tv did. she says its is the norm in her school as well because they have been taught to allow the kids do whatever they want. none of the year 5s in her class she teaches kids are potty trained which i find scary.

I admit to brawling my eyes out over Jack and his eating difficulties as it was like turning back the clock 13 years and seeing my daughter. The only way i could get her to eat was to put on a video tape of 30 minutes of tv adverts and her diet was very limited.

She now has a good diet although can still be picky, doesn't like eggs or salad veg.

When he started to head butt, then i saw my 10yr old son.

Btw, that is not TEACHH is supposed to be like.

Just sayin........

Yes Star but then TEACCH model does say come on this 5 day course - go back to your special or mainstream schools and carry out what you have learnt without any assessment of the person's ability to do it, without testing they have absorbed what was taught on the course, without any supervision of how the person implements it when they get back to school, without any follow up or further assessment. Can't hope to keep the fidelity of any model with this approach. Same with SCERTS which seems to be NAS new thing. Its go on the 3 day course, person now an expert and can not only do it all themselves but train everyone else in their school or local area to do it.

That as I see it is the problem. TEACCH (or any other autism intervention) should be like teacher training. It should be an academic course, coursework, supervised placements and exams / assessments with the qualification given once the person has been assessed as reaching an appropriate standard using it back in the classroom with real children...and then ongoing supervision, refreshers, updates etc from a very experienced practitioner.

As long as the providers give the idea you can learn it in a day or so then they are diluting their own model.

'As long as the providers give the idea you can learn it in a day or so then they are diluting their own model.'

And appealing to LAs.

Gosh I have just been reading the no fewer than 115 comments on the TV prog on the NAS facebook page. Wow, I see now where all the mainstream prejudice against ABA resides! The NAS gets £88 million funding a year, and seems to really dislike ABA. Some commenting even say " I won't even bother to watch the programme because I've heard bad things about ABA" - which is the very definition of prejudice!

I was also shocked when I originally started researching support systems after we got our diagnosis and found out how anti-evidence based intervention the NAS is. I steered clear.

Yes thedudes, and the really annoying thing is that the NAS will say they are impartial, above the fray, but in fact they vote with their feet as most of their sponsored schools are Teacch/eclectic.

I didn't find the NAS at all helpful at any point. Which really is a shame. Queensmill, the school which Patience's son was at is an NAS accredited school. Around the time my dd started ABA I knew of a family who took their child out of Queensmill and went to tribunal to get ABA school and iirc it went to the high court before the family won. I think they were on the documentary too?

Sorry lost my point there which was that the NAS militates against families who are trying to get provision that works for their child when they back up schools that use TEACCH.

Hmmm. I know that the NAS have rated as 'outstanding' a large special school which uses ABA extensively, employs behaviour analyst and where ABA has the full support of the head. It's on the verge of moving into a very flash new premises too. If anyone wants to know which it is in order to challenge any official NAS line about them not endorsing ABA, then drop me a private message. :)