What are your experiences with ABA vs DIR/Floortime?

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Hello!I have a 22 month old son who was recently diagnosed in the autism spectrum. He has been followed by early intervention since birth due to birth related complications due to asphyxiation during delivery. He has had some mild right sided motor weakness since birth, but PT and OT has helped it tremendously, his right side lags a little behind his left in motor development, but looking at him with an untrained eye, he probably looks like a normal toddler. He is followed every 6 months at our local children's hospital in Philadelphia, and he gets developmentally tested at each visit. At his 18 month visit, the psychologist raised some concerns about red flags for autism based on the MCHAT and also by observing his play skills during the visit. He has been getting OT/Developmental therapy/speech therapy now for almost one year due to developmental delaysthat started since he was one. Due to the red flags on his 18 month visit, all the therapists and I worked to increase his social/play skills and increase one to one interaction as well. When we came back for the ADOS when he turned 22 months, the psychologist still felt strongly about the autism diagnosis, but felt he was in the mild range. Given that he is already getting early intervention, I

have been reading about adding other types of therapy (developmental vs behavior approach). 1. Do any parents here have any positive/negative experiences with the ABA approach (DTT or other variants such as Applied Verbal Behavior) vs doing the DIR/Floortime approach. 2. Did Early intervention cover for these extra services (or if your child was older than 3, the school district?) or did you end up having to find your own private therapists.3. If you covered you own private

therapist, did insurance pay for a portion of the costs or did you have to pay everything out of pocket? I am feeling a bit anxious about the financial burden this may cause on our family.I'm not sure what early intervention here in PA is willing to cover besides what he is getting already, but I'm meeting with my case manager this week to discuss any changes to his current IFSP.Thanks for any input with your experiences with the above.Liliane