After the panic wears off of the diagnosis and the realization of the future sets in, the natural next step is how to educate our little ones. We have all heard of ABA and its potential effectiveness for kiddos on the Autism Spectrum. After many years and many therapies…. We think we have it! Well, it’s probably a crude representation but it is ABA none-the-less. An important part of the program we have developed requires data to be collected based on an order of operations. Therefore, we cannot guarantee that it will be 100% successful for everyone. But, what I do know is how effective it has been for my kiddo!
So, let’s start small. My son is 5 years old and Autistic. I firmly believe he can be classified as Moderate or High Functioning, however no one has given us that label yet. He has little expressive language… yet reads at a 1st grade level! Anyways, we started with basic conversation questions. And, after 3 weeks he can now answer the following questions: What is your name? Last name? Mom’s name? Your Dad’s name? What grade are you in? How old are you? What is your brothers name?
In ABA it is all about statistics. So we put together a small worksheet to track progress. We walked through all of the questions in intervals of 10, until he answered each one with an 80% percent success rate. We stuck to the same set of questions and didn’t move on to the next until he was able to get all of the questions in the set, 8 of 10 times (80%). Additionally we would switch up the order in which we asked the same questions so he couldn’t simply memorize the order. Many autistic kiddos have very very good memories and can easily memorize the sequence. He needed to listen to the question before he could answer it.
So far so good! So far I am happy that after pre-school I take time to work on JUST ABA! It is nice to have a defined system to work on after the school is out. Something short and sweet with measurable results. It keeps the frustration level down in both of us. Next we are moving on to Categories, sequencing and addition! Wish us luck!
** Coming Soon! I will put up some example sheets of ABA work so you can look at it and use them at your discretion**
0 Comments.