Has anyone NOT benefitted from ABA? | Autism PDD

All we needed for his ABA at home was a small table and chair. The therapists bring their own materials to work with. They also worked with my son in his room, so no extra space is required, just quiet space

Definitely give ABA a try - I wish we got more hours -I love the FT and RDI approaches as well - but here you pretty much have to do that yourself as there are NO therapists

The ABA that R gets is very directed towards Positive reinforcement( rather than candy ) as a reward which I also think is good

R is a smart kid but he does tend to get distracted and he definitely needs to learn to pay attention to things which ABA is great for

Hi all

Thanks for all your valuable input. The consensus seems to be "give ABA
a try"- which is what I'll probably go for. My other question is-- the ABA
we get would most likely have to be home based. Does your house have
to have some sort of specific setup for therapy? I ask because we live in a
2BR apartment in Brooklyn, which is large by NYC standards but still not
big enough to free up a "room" just for therapy.
I notice that when we have ST and OT in our living room, ds sometimes
gets distracted.

We have never done any ABA with Adam, and he is my little shooting star!!! We started at around fifteen months with forty hours a week of floor time done by me and three hours week of speech. I considered ABA, but could not afford it. Adam, like your son, is high functioning (at this point in time, and most would say right now very high functioning). He didn't start talking until two and a half, although he was communicating through signs up until then (he had over seventy signs). His receptive language skills are advanced, he is not echolalic, doesn't script....... we are just starting to get some beginning questions (Where's Mommy?) and he's starting to figure out those pesky pronouns that stump our kids. He's putting together eight to nine word sentences. His eye contact is fabulous.... and I truly mean that. Did I mention that he just turned three? Our main concerns for Adam are his speech (he is definitely apraxic and possibly has phonological issues also) and of course, social. He is a very social little guy, just doesn't quite seem to know how to do it...although he's getting there. He has a best friend at his afternoon camp this summer and they are soooo cute together.

Right now he is getting thirty hours of "group" therapies/therapeutic preschool a week, two hours of speech and an hour of OT. And he is doing better than I ever, ever imagined that he would.

Besides not being able to afford ABA, another reason I didn't think Adam needed it is because he is such a quick learner and he always has been. My understanding of ABA at that time was that it taught children with autism how to learn...basically teaching the child everything by breaking it down for them one step at a time. My child simply didnt' need that type of therapy. If I knew then what I know now about VBA and some other aspects of ABA, I probably would have taken out a home equity loan and done 10-15 hours a week to supplement what we were already doing. But, they say that hindsight is 20/20, right? And at this point I wouldn't change a thing. I guess somebody up there decided to cut me some slack

I think if I were in your shoes I would go ahead and do 10-15 hours a week in addition to the non ABA preschools you looked at. If you figure out down the road that you truly don't need the ABA then you can quit....but if your son did need it and needs even more, then you already have a program in place.

Take the 1:1 ABA. Your son may progress at a faster rate through his
programs. I would also see if an ABA shadow aide can be made available for
your son at this new preschool. There are a lot of things an aide can do to
facilitate play and social interaction/ help him with transitions/ help him
stay on task/work through the non compliance. You can always fade the
shadow out later.My son is 3 and making amazing progress with an in home AVB/ABA program. He has about 30 hours a week, including a couple hours each day on the weekend. We also do Floortime, speech and social skills class. This fall he is attending a regular preschool with one of our ABA tutors as a shadow/aid. He has handled the hours well. It really gives him stucture to the day and he enjoys it. I could go on and on, but I think the 1:1 he gets in the ABA is helping so much. Hi

I live in NY, and here, ABA therapy is the method that is currently "in
vogue" for ASD kids, for lack of a better term.
My ds's psyche evaluator who gave him the PDD-NOS diagnosis
recommended intense ABA. His OT, ST recommend ABA.
Because it's already July and ABA based pre-schools are so much in
demand, there are no openings for this Fall, so we are on many waiting
lists.

The fact of the matter is, my son is fairly high functioning, he has speech
(albeit very echolalic and scripted and still does not asks questions), likes
being around other kids, and his issues are mostly in focusing/
transitioning/sequence planning/following direction/compliance. Most
importantly, he lacks social skills (never been in daycare).

So we have visited 2 schools with 12:1:2 class ratio openings but NOT
ABA based. Both school directors observed that he would benefit from
being in a less restrictive environment.

We do have the option of supplementing pre-school with ABA after school
hours-- but with 5 hours of school a day, does more therapy seem like
too much for a 3 yr old?

Am I making a huge mistake by not starting ABA right away?

I'm a little torn and would appreciate feedback from all perspectives

Thanks Take the afternoon ABA....It is a long day for your son, but ABA is really one of the only scientifically studied programs that shows positive outcomes for kids with autism.

Do you have the option of a half day preschool program (2.5 hours), where he would receive ST and OT, and then have the ABA at home? I am in NY, too, and the preschools here (rockland county) provide either half or full days, and then you can hire an agency to come to the house for 2 hours a day for ABA. It works for lots of parents, and they have seen real results. I would look into that.

Best of luck
We did exclusively ABA with our dd and speech in home because our state does not fund ABA or have it in their schools..our dd was not very verbal or had any interest in kids. ABA taught her to attend and learn skills and tasks from simple to complex. By time she was done with program 3 years later she was totally mainstreamed for kindergarten with no supports. I am not sure of what advice to tell you since your little seems more social and may benefit greatly being with other kids..We supplemented our program by putting Sarah in a reg. kinderkids class with 8 kids and 2 teachers and our ABA therapist to shadow her. She did very well with small structured classroom and really didnt need our therapist to shadow her..it was more for my comfort:) YOU could try the school and just do 2 hours a day of ABA or a mix of ABA and speech would be nice for him and see how it goes. The idea is 30-40 hours of ABA 1:1 a week but if your son is real high functioning you could probably do much less..ABA tracks their progress daily and rewrites their programs constantly along with maintaining mastered skills...not sure if the schools can take the type of data the ABA does or change the programs as often as ABA? I would do both and try to get on list for the ABA school:) Good luck! For our 4.5 year old (autism diagnosis) we have currently been doing an inclusive preschool (with aide) in the morning and ABA in the afternoon. He is able to handle it but we have to keep a close watch to make sure he's not overtired.

The ABA sessions are at our house and are 1:1 and they work on school skills that are not social. They have been going out into the community on walks but his opportunities for social interactions are limited. Hence the preschool w/aide. We suspect that he is outgrowing ABA since his issues are now more social ones, and he needs NT peers to learn that. But he did need ABA before, and seems to still be benefiting from it. One reason ABA is in vogue is that it has been seen to work.

I'd tend towards following the advice of the psyche evaluation and do the intense ABA for now. Maybe when he's a bit older, when social issues become important enough to justify it, add the preschool setting.
Dad2Luke&Alan39289.5765740741

We didn't do ABA. We looked into it, but based on all the research we did we determined a DIR/Floortime approach was the best fit for us and we have had tremendous success with that method.

That being said, take the ABA! If it doesn't work out for you, you can always stop it.

C started EI preschool at age 3 and he was picked up on the bus at 7:30 and returned home at 2:30. We were originally concerned about the long day, but it was not an issue. We also did private speech and OT after school 2 days / week.