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What to Do When Difficult Behaviors Happen During ABA Therapy
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Imagine your child is thirty minutes into an ABA therapy session. You are in the kitchen making dinner while the therapist practices turn-taking with your child in the other room. All of a sudden, you hear it: the tell-tale, high-pitched whine that precedes a meltdown. Your grip on the spoon in your hand tightens, and…
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Why Does My Child Need So Many Hours of ABA Therapy?
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When parents first hear the recommended number of hours of Applied Behavior Analysis therapy, they are often quite taken aback. Hearing that your young child needs 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week feels overwhelming. For many families, just squeezing four or five hours out of their schedule per week seems impossible. Parents may…
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What Should Parents Do While ABA Therapy is Happening?
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The world of applied behavior analysis can be a strange one if you are new to it- and I say that as a practitioner of applied behavior analysis. Your child gets a new diagnosis, maybe autism or ADHD, and suddenly a healthcare professional is telling you they need 15 hours of therapy a week, and…
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Why Does ABA Therapy Feel So Repetitive? The Purpose Behind the Routine
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Unless you already have personal or professional experience in pediatric therapy, an Applied Behavior Analysis session can be a peculiar experience. Depending on the client, their specific program, and the skill being addressed, sessions may seem- well, boring, to be blunt. Parents and caregivers watching home sessions can feel like the therapist is stuck on…
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How to Help Your Autistic Child Brush Their Teeth Without the Struggle
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As a professional in Applied Behavior Analysis, I often think about the seemingly small tasks and habits we take for granted. Opening a drawer, squeezing toothpaste onto a toothbrush, standing at the sink, and brushing for two minutes may seem simple enough. For many children on the autism spectrum, however, toothbrushing can feel like a…
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Choosing the Right School Placement for an Autistic Child
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For families and children affected by an autism diagnosis, the start of a new school year often brings an additional layer of stress and new levels of anxiety. Some parents may wonder if their child will succeed in a new educational placement, while others may be coming to terms with their child remaining in the…
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Why Isn’t My Child Progressing? Beating a Plateau in ABA
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The process of Applied Behavior Analysis relies on the last word of the term: analysis. While perhaps not the most riveting topic for most people (unless you’re a scientist or a behavior analyst), the analysis of data is the cornerstone for effective behavior therapy. ABA practitioners collect and analyze data so that the decisions we…
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ABA Therapy “Dosage”: How Many Hours Does Your Child Need?
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Families who receive news of an autism diagnosis suddenly face a world in which everything feels unfamiliar: the terminology, the recommendations, and the “What if?” questions can be overwhelming. Then, on top of a life-changing diagnosis, many parents are told their child will likely need 40 hours of therapy a week. Immediately, the overwhelm multiplies…
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Is ABA Therapy Ethical? Assent, Agency, and Modern Practice
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Whether you are a parent looking into therapy options after your child has received an autism diagnosis, an advocate for neurodiversity, or a prospective practitioner of Applied Behavior Analysis, you will come across articles and research on the ethics of ABA. A quick search will surface passionate arguments on all sides, some praising ABA as…
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Discriminative Stimulus (SD): A Key to ABA Therapy Success
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We spend our days noticing, processing, and then responding to countless cues and signals in our environments. We pick up a vibrating phone to answer whoever is on the other end, press our foot on the brake when the light is red at an intersection, and open the front door when the doorbell rings. All…
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How to Talk to Your Child About Their Autism Diagnosis
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Any sort of diagnosis can be life-changing, especially when it’s your child receiving it. It’s easy to get caught up in the unknown and wonder about all the potential negative consequences that come with the diagnosis. These are completely normal, valid reactions that occur because we’re human! It is a natural response to worry about…
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Can Children with Nonverbal Autism Learn to Speak?
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It’s hard to imagine the questions that immediately swirl around a parent’s head when a child receives an autism diagnosis. Every child’s diagnosis is as unique as their fingerprints and brings its own set of challenges. One of the most nerve-wracking questions a parent may ask themselves or their support team is, “Can my child…
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How to Help a Child with Autism Calm Down
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When any child is having a difficult time, parents often feel helpless or overwhelmed. We think to ourselves, “Did I miss something? What am I doing wrong?” We try anything we can to help and when those attempts don’t work, we often have our own emotional reactions to the situation. When a child with autism…
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Play-Based ABA Therapy: How Play Builds Real-Life Skills
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Have you ever watched a toddler interact with something they haven’t seen before? Last week, I dropped a roll of tape on the ground, and my 15-month-old picked it up. She held it in both hands, gently turning it around, picking at the loose end, looking through the center of it. Soon, she was sliding…
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How Does School-Based ABA Therapy Work?
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Applied Behavior Analysis, or ABA, is an evidence-based approach to understanding and changing human behavior. It can be used in a home, clinic, school, and community settings. School-based ABA focuses on applying these principles in a student’s educational environment. When a student struggles to succeed at school, the family or school team may bring in…
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Token Economy in ABA: How Rewards Motivate Progress
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A token economy is a structured system in which a learner earns tangible “tokens” when they perform a specific behavior. One of the first well-documented uses of a token economy occurred in a classroom in the early 1800s. In the early 1800s, educator Joseph Lancaster used a token economy to motivate large groups of students…
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Schedules of Reinforcement in ABA Therapy Explained
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The building blocks of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) are the environmental events surrounding an individual’s behavior. Antecedents, or the events that occur immediately before an individual’s response, and consequences, or the events that occur immediately after an individual’s response, set the stage for behavior to be modified. A schedule of reinforcement is a set of…
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How Effective Is ABA Therapy? Success Rates Explained
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ABA therapy is one of the most evidence-based treatments for autism, with decades of research showing strong success rates when therapy is consistent and individualized to each child’s needs. ABA can also be used to address a variety of other unique needs: developmental disabilities, behavioral challenges, mental health conditions, etc. In this article, we’ll explore…
