I have talked to some parents and Teachers who don't like the type of results that ABA give. One of the specialists at Sharlets Early Learning Centre (who has had huge success using play based therapies with Sharlet) has told me that over the years some parents have chosen ABA over attending EL in their kids early years. She said that when they do come to EL when they are transitioning into Kinder, they are really hard to teach skills that are needed in the real world. She said they are often like little robots who have speech but it's automated and often rigid and doesn't make sense, for eg Hello "child" "hello.....I'm good" even though you didn't ask how they are they answer like that because their therapist always asks how they are. She said that often it appears that the child doesn't necessarily understand a lot of what they are taught, and that teaching them the things they need at school is often hard if ABA has been the only method of intervention. She didn't say it can't be useful but she said it needs to be used in conjunction with other therapies.
I am only saying what I was told, of course I don't claim to know first hand as I haven't used it. Also from the things I have read on here I think ABA in the US might be different to what we have here. (ABA here is usually delivered 1-1)
I'm wondering what the costs of ABA therapies in the U.S are? In Australia the costs are around ,000 - ,000 (aud) per year. As Allegra has pointed out they are given as a 1:1 ratio. Any medical insurance we have doesn't cover this so it's directly an out of pocket expense here.
Mysh
Increasingly i am fed up with ABA. Its so expensive, so intrusive and really, what my therapists do, i could do myself, not to mention my consultant who thinks she is the only person in the world who knows "best" for my son.If you think you can do ABA yourself, try it. Perhaps you can. ABA is the only therapy out there that has objective evidence that it works with autism spectrum children. The earlier and more intense the therapy the better. Other methods may work, but none of them have EVIDENCE that they work, so that is why they have not become the gold standard of intervention. Nothing helps every child. Not every ASD child had ABA therapy but progressed anyway. It's just that there is a HUGE body of knowledge collected over the last 10 years with literally millions of kids that show that certain kinds of progress can occur fairly quickly with ABA. Not every sort of learning responds to ABA therapy, but most of what our kids are missing in their learning in the early years of life does.
We parents should definitely listen to our guts when it comes to choosing interventions. There is no single thing that works with all kids and there is a limit to how much each individual child eventually develops. Autism is not curable and ABA does not proport to cure it. If your child has not made progress in 2 years, then either the therapy has been delivered poorly in some way or it's not the right therapy for your individual child. Some kids make progress with NO interventions, but I am not willing to bet that my son is the one in a million who will. BTW, he never got ABA because he is 15 and it was not widely available when he was in preschool. I will always wonder if he would have gotten farther had he had access to ABA. ABA is not magic, but it IS an intense, exceedingly well-organized way to approach learning. For anybody. But it's far too expensive to use with kids who can learn just as well in some other fashion.
THAT COST IS THE SAME AS SOME PEOPLES YEARLY SALARYS. THIS WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM A PLACE TO LIVE. That cost is my yearly salary. The reason the cost is the same as some people's yearly salary is that some autistic kids get 8 hours a day, 5 days a week of one on one therapy. That means they get the equivalent of one full-time professional to themselves! Not every child gets 40 hours of therapy and the hours tend to lessen as the child gets older. Partly because the child has already formed a good, basic skills foundation. Partly because the neurological benefits of ABA training start to lessen as the brain gets older than 4 years. Partly because our kids need to add many things to their schedules as they get to school age -- like gym and music and art and the 3 R's. Those things are usually taught outside of and ABA setting. ABA is the MOST expensive way to teach a child and the schools are willing to foot that huge bill when nothing else will do. But as children age, they are typically able to learn the same things in other, cheaper ways. Some kids NEVER need the intensity of an ABA program. But some kids will always need to be taught that way. It all depends.The results I'm seeing from ABA are remarkable. I have two asd kids the eldest didn't have aba the youngest does.
Since the investment and effort is so great the results should really be WOW for it to be worthwhile. Teaching these kids to speak is like teaching a foriegn language, at first it sounds awkward but then they become fluent.
I'm all for gut instict tho. Do what you FEEL is best.
Thanks people and thanks for not being the "evangelical" types i have encountered on my ABA lists online. You are so right when you say that mommy instinct is best, mind you my instinct at the moment is clouded with my bank account rapidly entering the red zone as well as the daily grind of data, my revolving front door etc etc.Two years is a long time doing ABA IMO. I know some people do if for a lot longer but it is a big effort like you said.
I don't have a therapist I have three instructors and me, I had a therapist and i really didn't like her so i took her off the progam. I have two consultants who take turns coming every two weeks. Hopefully I will be able to keep it going till jr has gotten as much as he can from it. We're seven months down the road.
I completly hear what you are saying though, it's a pain in the #$^! Damn thing works well though. It's a toughy...
Mysh -- In the US, ABA can be delivered as part of the state's responsibility to educate kids with disabilities from at least age 3. The costs of ABA can be as high here as you mention or even higher since it's delivered one on one. Some areas of the US simply don't have enough ABA therapists. I recently read one study (sorry, I don't have it to post) that said that ABA delivered by parents works as well as ABA delivered by therapists, as long as the parents are properly trained. Of course, being a parent is hard enough without also having to be the therapist. BUt the point is that ABA is not exactly rocket science. It's just something that's practiced over and over again until it's mastered. And the skill is broken down into its tiniest component parts, building the full skill over time. It's WORK, not magic. There certainly are SOME kids who learn only rotely thru ABA, but that is because the ABA trainers neglect the generalization part. ABA is not a cure. It's a way to teach particular skills. But, as with ANYONE, a skill is only as good as the person's ability to APPLY the skill. The answer, IMHO, is not to neglect teaching the skill in the first place. IT's to make SURE the child is shown HOW to apply the skill. Most people I know who have success with ABA for their children don't have JUST ABA. There are other approaches that are used in conjuction, including the common sense idea of the parents being in the loop enough and knowing enough about how the child is being taught to be able to take the child out into the world and HELP the child apply what he or she has learned thru ABA. It is quite correct that the goal is not to develop robots with the "right" answers but the goal is to give the child enough answers so that the child has some hope of beginning to negotiate the rest of the world. Frankly, I'd rather see a child enter kindergarten as a "robot" who knows SOMETHING rather than an isolated, rocking, self-injurious human being, which is the way THOUSANDS of children entered kindergarten before ABA. In fact, most of those children never GOT to kindergarten and were segregated before they got a chance at life. There is yet to be a program other than ABA that has been shown to develop skills. But you're quite correct in thinking that developing skills is not the endall. USING those skills is, so it's vital to remember to constantly remind those who are teaching your child to also teach you how to help him apply his newfound skills.Thanks Tzoya - very interesting. In Australia ABA is not listed as as a right, although there are several state based organisations that you can go on a waiting list for. Most of these are reliant on government funding so resources are stretched forcing most parents to go ABA payments alone.
I was surfing my university website a month ago and saw an advertisement for students to be trained as ABA therapists. However, I missed out as the deadline had already passed for applications. I figured it would be good to learn the skills and get qualified whilst helping Lachlan. I had deferred from uni for the semester and could kick myself for not keeping a check on the job vacancies. Hopefully it will come up again - although it would force me into making a choice to leave my current job because I could not cope with yet another thing to do! I work part time and study part time now - not sure how i'd go trying to fit more in.
Mysh
oh...forgot to mention - the waiting lists for assesments can be as long as 12 months and access to any service can be up to 2 years.
Mysh
Mysh- Sharlets assesments were finished within 3 months of her first visit to the pedi, and she got services as soon as the pedi refered her for assesment. Obviously it's pretty good here in that way. She only gets 8-10 hrs of intervention per week though. How bout Lachlan? What are the services there like?Allegra,
WOW! They are fast where you live. Lachlans initial assesment took 10 months. I already had speech therapy & a psychologist (who used to do autism assesments) coming on a regular basis because I knew that something wasn't right. Since our initial diagnosis we have been offered NOTHING. Our first contact with the service will be in February 2007 which means we will have waited almost 12 months. We have no clear indication of what they will offer us except for a 'playgroup/aba' session once a week. They have also said that there is a parent support network we can access (but not until then!).
We are on our own which is why I have been looking at ABA in my home. The estimate of costs came in at - 40,000 per year based on 30 hours per week. Thats my entire wage plus more.
Lachlan has a health care card, but so far the only place I can use it is at the chemist. His ped doesnt accept them, nor do the speech therapist and psychologist I use. I pay per session for the speechie and 0 per session for the psychologist. I also pay 0 a week for childcare (so that I can go out and earn the money for the other things!).
I am at a loss and will probably try and learn as much about ABA as I can so I can do it myself. I feel like I am in limbo at the moment.
Mysh
I've just joined the forum and have been interested to read about ABA here and how running a program in other countries compares with here. My daughter is nearly 5 and has had a program for nearly 2 years. We started with a Lovaas style which was part of a replication study (Young Autism Project) and then recently we changed to a verbal behaviour program which seems to be suiting my daughter better now.
It is very expensive and we have had to self fund which has been difficult, but it has had a dramatic effect upon her development, where previously she made no progress at all. I do think that without ABA, my daughter's prospects in life would have been limited, but ABA has given her a chance at life.
Where I live the local authority do not support ABA at all, and will not even admit that it works. They don't even seem to understand how autism affects a child's development and it's all very frustrating. It grinds me down sometimes, as I am constantly seen as a trouble maker when I am just trying to help my daughter. It is hard but for us has been worth the struggle.
I just noticed your name -- Road to Recovery. If you have been thinking that ABA will cause your child to "recover," no wonder you are disappointed. A child can no more recover from ASD than he can recover from being born with red hair. Both are permanent genetic traits. What ABA (or any other teaching technique) hopes to do is teach an ASD child enough skills so that that child can function in the NT world, not be a different person. Whoever led you to believe that ABA would help your child recover misled you and it's understandable you'd be disappointed. But that does not change the fact that ABA helps the BEST of any techniques out there and this has been shown statistically. I'd stick with it if I were you.I AM ALSO LEARNING WHAT HE EATS EFFECTS HIS BEHAVIOR ALSO. WHAT CAN BE USED WITH A 10 YEAROLD AND 13 YEAR OLD. TRADITIONAL PUNISHMENTS HASN'T WORKED WELL WITH EITHER. ABA basically gave me my child back. When my daughter was first having problems..she learned NOTHING through Early Intervention. They pawned her off 6 months later to the DOE who put her in a sp-ed preschool. She learned nothing..they didn't even know she could say ANY words. Two months later, she was diagnosed with pdd-nos and I asked if she could be put in a class that met more than 5 hours a week. They said they didn't recognize autism as a disorder
Maybe this program isn't the best for your child. Maybe it's the therapists.
Tzoya....thanks so much. I will keep an eye out for them.
I've managed to pick a few things up off ebay which have been really good. I got the series of Bumblebee for a fraction of the cost and am always on the look out for a bargain.
Mysh
ABA has worked extremely well for my son, but you're right in that it takes a lot of time and effort to manage the process. I've hired my own consultant and two therapists. I manage their schedules monthly, pay them every two weeks, and keep the data collection books current and up-to-date. I am essentially their employer, which means I also have to take into account some of the personal dynamics that come along with being "the boss". It's truly a balancing act. However, I really do believe my son would not be where he is were it not for the amount of ABA he's received over the past 7 months.
One thing you might want to consider is a new on-line program based on ABA principals. I'm looking into it for my son once we decide to stop our in-home program (which will probably be in the next 3 months or so). It's located at:
I'm intrigued by what it has to offer, and it really does appear to do a good job of replicating 1:1 learning. The key, though, as Tzoya alluded, is to be sure the skills are being generalized. Without generalization, the benefits of the program are severely limited.
--------------------------------------------
son HFA, 5 next month
[QUOTE=Mysh]
oh...forgot to mention - the waiting lists for assesments can be as long as 12 months and access to any service can be up to 2 years.
Mysh
[/QUOTE]
Is Australia a part of Canada? Waiting times are the same!
Copyright Autism-PDD.net