When ABA/VB isnt working

[Guest guest]

Hi

Now I have been on this list for 4 years and I know how passionate

everyone is about ABA/VB, Dr. Carbone and others. While I

personally have seen first hand great results for children in

programs that are ABA and seen parents go to workshops and see

remarkable changes in their kids from teaching strategies, I have

not. In some respects there are hints of progress but if I had to

say whether or not my son had really made progress overall the

answer would be no.

I am posting my questions/story here not for advice on adherence to

some strict protocols or ideas such as thousands of mands a day and

so forth. I am educated enough to know that typical programming and

even some other tricks have not worked.

So, can anyone help me, on list or off with advice on where to go

from here. My son is in a private ABA/VB school and has been for

over 2 years and before that had a home program. I do not feel

staffing or inconsistencies in teaching are to blame even though I

can say it is not perfect by any means. I am trying to figure out

what I can do at home to teach my child, such as how to teach

expressive lanugage to a child who has used sign then PECS and more

sign for nearly 5 years with almost no progress. He does possess a

lot of receptive language but using flashcards gets tedious and

frankly boring at home. My husband and I have both had major

illness this year so we need a way to teach that involves less

energy. My son is still so hyper and literally bounces off the

walls even though proper procedures have been used for both NET and

intensive teaching. The flash cards for everyday items also does

not work since my son will not look at them anymore. My son still

has trouble with scrolling even signs he has had for years. Yes, he

has seizures but not so many now.

I think receptive teaching is the way to go and to use items he

could mand for and already has a tact in his mind for first. So i

thought of teaching him the sign for everything he knows as a tact,

such as show him his toy guitar and say what is it, and teach guitar

sign. I want to use sign as a response form since PECS has not

helped much. My son loves also to look at family pictures on the

wall so I though instead of flash cards I could make a book of

pictures and make some of the pages rec ID pages with say two

pictures on it, a trampoline and the play guitar and say touch____

Any ideas on easy (sorry bad choice of words) ways to do my part at

home in the natural environment without feeling so frustrated. My

so by the way is doing well with tasks like " go touch TV, microwave,

etc. he has massive trouble matching object to picture and pic to

object. I had also thought of attaching large labels to common

household objects like the Television and take him to it and have

his fingers touch each letter, spelling it out. I figure since the

woman profiled in " autism is a world " was storing that info that

maybe my son is too and one day he will be able to let it all fall

out as she did.

thanks for the help in advance

leighanne

[Guest guest]

Hi, Leighanne. It's impossible to say what might be going on without having

met your son and seen his home and school programs. However, my instinct is

that there are so many variables to a good ABA program that it's much more

likely that things need to be tweaked in the areas of reinforcement,

motivation, teaching procedures, curriculum, staff implementation, materials,

environments, etc. Sometimes the flaws are many and small so that it doesn't

look

like it's the teaching when it really is. It's just hard to say that " ABA

isn't working, " since it's about individualized motivation, reinforcement, and

teaching of necessary skills, or at least it should be. I have a

Troubleshooting section on my website (it's several pages into the " What is

AVB? " section)

that might be a good starting place to narrow down what may be the

culprit(s) holding your son's progress back.

I also have the hunch that you're expecting a response like this (i.e.,

it CAN'T be that ABA isn't working!) and yet you still feel that that's

really the problem. If so, can you be more specific about what you're doing

and

what you feel isn't working? Maybe there's some info we can extract there

that'd be helpful.

Best,

_________________________________

Burk, M.A.

Consulting Behavior Analyst

_www.BurkABA.com_ (http://www.christinaburkaba.com/)

1 (866) 538-2575