Verbal Behavioral Therapy Works and Just Because A Child Is Nonverbal Doesn’t Mean There Is No Hope.

Verbal Behavior (VB) therapy is a branch of Applied Behavioral Analyses therapy (ABA); it helps non-verbal children to become vocal and use words with meaning. Having a child who is non-verbal is scary, for both the child and the parents involved, but there is hope even if your child is severely delayed. Recently a study showed that children, who cannot speak by the age of four, can learn how to speak – something that was deemed unlikely. The study can be found here.

B.F. Skinner was a famous psychologist who wrote a book on verbal behavior and developed many of the theories that ABA is based on. B.F. Skinner said that language comes in types:

Mand – To ask for something, such as juice

Tact – A label of an object, such as circle, when something is round

Intraverbal – A way to answer a question, such as where do you live?

Echoic – When your child repeats what is said

Because of these different types of speech, your therapist looks at what is the most basic and works their way up. In this case, a Mand would be most basic, which is why a child will learn to ask for juice by saying ‘juice’, and not ‘I’m thirsty’ when they begin.

VB therapists today also work on play skills, self-help skills, social skills and complying with instructions. They do this using discrete trial training, natural environment teaching and manding to name a few.

Just like ABA, VB doesn’t let the child feel they got the answer wrong. Autistic children receive little positive feedback as they don’t engage in the world in the same way other children do. To achieve a positive learning environment, the child is re-directed and lavished in praise to solidify the positive re-enforcement process – that will ultimately help your child learn in the real world.

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Find Out How Natural Environment Training Works And Be Applied Every Day

Natural Environment Training (NET) is part of Applied Behavioral Analyses therapy (ABA). NET works with the natural environment around the child and moves learning from a desk to the real world; something that ABA promotes. This is fantastic for generalization and promoting skills that have already been taught. NET also works with natural motivators; these are toys and objects around the home (or therapy office) that the child would like to play with or use. This technique isn’t about the traditional sit-down and learn, it focuses on the child’s ability to learn whilst they play.

NET is a great thing to implement in the home because it uses your environment to teach your child the skills they learned in therapy. For example, if your child is working on how to say goodbye and hello, you can help them wave to people who come to visit, or when you take them to daycare, or anywhere else you can think of. To do this, you model the desired behavior for the child and make a big, fun, parade out of saying hello or goodbye everywhere you go.

ABA is all about collecting data and using structure, and reward, to help a child learn certain skills. But when you switch to using NET techniques the therapy becomes louder, with plenty of speech and exciting play. NET can get spontaneous and uses your child’s desires to help teach them. The therapist may set up a color matching game for the child to play, as they could be learning colors, but then have to switch to manding as the child asks for different objects.

If you’re wondering as a parent what this would look like, the therapist should be talking a lot about everything they are doing. They should model behaviors (showing the child how to correctly do things), they should ask questions, and use the world around the child to engage in what they want to engage in. This shouldn’t be a forced, stiff point in the therapy. It should look much like when you talk to a very young child about the world around them, commenting on everything you are doing.

NET is a thrilling part of ABA for an Autistic child. Children on the spectrum can’t often play appropriately, and so don’t learn through play as well as other children would. This is precisely what NET helps to promote, play, joy, and learning, all rolled into one.

10 Facts You Must Know About Applied Behavioral Analyses

Applied Behavioral Analyses therapy (ABA) is a fantastic therapy for Autistic children, to help them keep up with peers, learn life skills and develop into happier adults.

Here are ten remarkable facts you might not know about ABA.

1.     ABA continues to be researched and practiced, for more than 35 years. The original name of the therapy was Behavioral Modification, which goes back even further to the early 1900’s.

2.     ABA therapy is supported by the Association for Science in Autism Research, the Surgeon General and the National Institute of Health.

3.     This therapy can be performed at any age, but works best on younger children.

4.     It works anywhere, from school to home and work life. Fostering generalization across all areas of life ensures your Autistic child can live life to the fullest anywhere.

5.     90% of Autistic individuals who underwent ABA, at 40 hours a week, substantially improved. (Lovaas, 1987, study of intensive behavioral treatment)

6.     45% of therapies develop long-lasting and observable results – according to the Surgeon General Autism treatment report. ABA is one of these.

7.     ABA is not all table work; a child learns in the real world too!

8.     Corporate punishment is not a part of this therapy.

9.     ABA is used to quit smoking, help personality disorders, air those with OCD and counsel relationships. It is also used in the workplace, and with athletes.

10.  No two ABA programs are the same. By its, nature ABA is tailored towards the child so that every ABA therapy will look different.

11.  Since ABA is personalized, it is also a data driven therapy. Lots of information and facts are written down and recorded about your child to help them progress.

12.  Bribes are not used during ABA, re-enforcements are. This means a child is not told they will get something if they do something; the positive behavior is praised after the child has performed the needed action or behavior.

Is Your Child Sync with ABA Therapy and School? If Not Here Are Some Tools You Can Use to Get ABA Therapy and School Aligned.

Applied Behavioral Analyses therapy (ABA) helps to change behaviors that hinder your child’s development – when they have a diagnosis of Autism and other similar issues. But this therapy alone will not push your child to the heights of their learning abilities. It’s important that all areas of the child’s life are in sync – which is why it’s great to have an ABA therapist willing to be in contact and work with schools.

All Therapists Should be in Sync with ABA

Some schools provide OT, speech and other services that help improve your child’s quality of life, but they have the luxury of syncing these lessons together. If your ABA therapist is on the outside of this team, they can’t work as a whole. This is why, as a parent and ABA therapist, it’s important to be on top of the lessons the child is learning in all areas of their lives.

But what if your child is struggling in school and not progressing with peers? Or the school is not providing any therapy at all?

Some Autistic Children Do Not Cope in School

A child who absolutely cannot function in a social, verbal learning environment due to sensory issues will often exhibit strong sensory pre-occupation; they may seem inattentive, or exhibit bad or repetitive behavior. This is typical for a lower functioning Autistic child. It can be so distracting for your child and sometimes even painful, it’s almost impossible for them to learn in a school environment.

If this sounds like your child, ABA and homeschooling/shorter days should be thought about. Postponing regular schooling to correct sensory/learning problems doesn’t make you a bad parent. If a child cannot concentrate in a group setting, they won’t be gaining anything out of it anyway.

However, some schools simply aren’t trying hard enough. Hiring your ABA therapist to go in and investigate the school environment should be step one. They can identify the issues in the classroom and report back what isn’t working for your child and work with your child’s teacher who likely hasn’t been trained correctly. Using this method you can fight for better resources – and sometimes, unfortunately, it will be a fight.

Is ABA More Important than School?

ABA can help a child learn to learn, help a child overcome sensory issues and engage in the world outside of themselves. If your child can’t participate in a school setting, perhaps thinking about intense ABA therapy before school would be the best way to go. As a parent it’s best not to feel guilty about this; a child learning how to live in the world is more important than the skill of counting which can be taught at any age. With that said…

A child is not required to enter school until they are 6 years of age on or before September 1^st of the year they will enter school. But if pushing back school entirely makes you uncomfortable, you can also consider shorter school days in order to add extra ABA therapy or even home school entirely.

ABA therapy should be a compliment to your child’s schooling and should always come first if a child is struggling greatly. As a parent, it’s important to communicate with schools and our children’s therapist to know what course of action needs to be taken.

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The Benefits of Getting Your Autistic Child ABA Services Before the Age of Three.

If you’re a parent of a child who has recently received a diagnosis of Autism under the age of 2, you will consider what therapies can help them. After all, they may not be verbal right now, they may have little comprehension of the world around them – you may wonder how on earth anyone could teach them socialization and if therapy is even worth it. I know I had many of those thoughts myself; especially since many parents spend countless hours trying to teach my Autistic sons skills with little progress.

One of the first therapies you will likely hear about is Applied Behavioral Analyses (ABA). That sounds like a formidable name by itself, but ABA is simple teaching your Autistic child skills they can use in the world, be it social, verbal, play or correct behaviors.  You may also visualize this as your one-year-old sitting attentively at a desk and ask yourself “how will that work?”

Actually, you’d be surprised what little things a one-year-old with Autism needs to learn that will heavily impact them later on – and a lot of it doesn’t involve desks at all. Like the ability to point, the ability to engage for short amounts of time, and most importantly, the ability to play. Teaching a child these simple age appropriate skills will help them build up to more intense things later on. If a child can point to something, they can communicate better and reduce frustration as they grow. If a child can engage for a short amount of time, then your relationship will grow and you will bond. If a child is taught to play with toys appropriately, then they can learn from these toys (as children learn through play).

According to a study performed by researchers at the New England Center for Children 90% of children under the age of 2 made significant social and communication skill gains within a year, when enrolled in an early intervention program. 90% is a big deal, and this drops to 30% if a child begins after the age of 2 and a half. So ABA is almost guaranteed to help your child, and should definitely be a therapy you look into.

ABA is always aimed at a child as an individual; it isn’t a step-by-step program that can be followed out of a book. This is a complex therapy that takes therapists years of study to master, so you can rest assured your little one won’t be put under any learning regiment they are not ready for.

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Find Out How Rote Learning Allows Children to Comprehend Without Boring or Upsetting Them

Often Analytical Behavioral Therapy (ABA) uses tools every child needs to learn and intensifies them for the Autistic child. This can look strange when you watch a session, but when you understand the underlying reasons it makes total sense. There are many different ways this can be seen, but one way is with Rote learning.

Many children learn through the process of Rote learning; Rote learning is the act of memorizing. Sometimes with Analytical Behavioral Therapy (ABA) things are repeated to our child many times, over and over again in the first stage of learning to facilitate Rote learning. It may seem alien to watch a therapist repetitively teach something to your child, but we as parents do this too. We repeat numbers, songs, objects and request many times a day.

One example of this is to repeat numbers often. Once a child learns the basics of counting, they can apply that in an abstract way perhaps to objects; how many marbles are in a bag? For example, the same process is intensified in ABA therapy so your child can quickly learn concepts on a basic and then advanced level.

The reason an ABA model does this is because conceptual learning is often confusing for an Autistic child. Once they learn one rule, they will think it’s a ‘hard and fast’ rule and have a hard time applying extra rules to it; at least until that rule is solid in their mind. For example, a tree can be big or small. But what if you taught your child the trees were big, and they didn’t have time to memorize this concretely before you told them some trees are short?  Autistic minds, being very literal, may think that now all trees are short. This is why it is important for a concept to be burned into their minds before they are able to understand new concepts.

However, this doesn’t mean your therapist should be repeating concepts such as this is blue, until your child is bored or even upset. This won’t give your child a positive experience or allow them to learn anything at all. Often you will see things repeated depending on the child, this could be four times or eight times or more. ABA is always a very individualized therapy that should be just challenging enough to teach your child but not too challenging or boring to upset them.

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Why New Skills Using ABA Are Taught in Different Scenarios

When a child has Autism they often have difficulty generalizing behaviors. This means they can act a certain way in a certain situation, but not in others. This could mean that if a routine is not followed the child cannot demonstrate a specific skill, which is not helpful in real-life situations that are often random.

Most children with Autism cannot learn a skill and automatically generalize; this is normal and should not concern you right away. That is why new skills in Applied Behavioral Analyses therapy are taught in many situations, with varied tones of voice, and multiple materials, as well as multiple correct responses. This is called adding ‘discrimination’ components and why ABA therapy is so great for Autistic children.

The wrong way to teach with ABA is to give a child a specific thing they must say whenever something is asked. For example, when somebody asks ‘did you have fun’, the child always responds with, ‘yes thank you’. This is not generalizing and causes issues. What if the child didn’t have fun, and the adult doesn’t know they were taught a specific way to respond? This is why it is so important as a parent and therapy team to carry out skills across different platforms. If your child is taught to say goodbye to their therapist, then this should be encouraged in other scenarios, like when a family member leaves for work.

When a new skill will be taught to your child, ask about generalization. As a Therapist any goal that is taught to the child will first be thought about in ‘the bigger picture’. For example, if a child needs to sit still during lessons, where else will this need to be applied? How can we transition it to other scenarios? This should always be looked at first before the lesson begins, so the therapist knows how to expand on the lesson to give your child the best success. And this is something you can help your therapist with, to ultimately help your child.

ABA is not meant to teach robotic responses to situations, it is not meant to teach your child how to act appropriately only within limited situations. It is meant to help a child blend in with their peers, achieve the goals their classmates will and have a happier healthier life as an adult.