Positive Reinforcement is an Integral Part of ABA Therapy

One of the biggest problems that school systems have with providing a proper education for children with autism spectrum disorder is that they tend to display negative behavior patterns. These patterns can include anything from verbal disruptions to repetitive motions, self harming actions, and more. Unfortunately, too many of today's schools handle these behaviors by applying standard punishments. Instead, schools should be turning to ABA therapy, which is the most effective proven treatment for children with ASD. With ABA therapy, positive reinforcement is used to help children naturally overcome behavior issues.
When treating a child with ASD, it is important for educators and school employees to understand that their brains function differently than most. When negative behaviors are met with punishment, these children do not perceive it as a negative thing. Instead, their minds simply recognize that they exhibited a certain behavior and that they were in turn met with attention. This can feed a negative cycle of behavior that is exceptionally hard to break. It is absolutely crucial that school systems learn as quickly as possible that negative behaviors cannot be met with attention. Unless the child is in physical danger, the behavior must be ignored.
ABA therapy is an intensive form of treatment for autism. There are many aspects to the treatment that help to make it effective, and one of the biggest aspects is that of positive reinforcement. Educators trained in ABA therapy are taught to encourage positive behaviors. When a child offers an appropriate response or behavior, they are rewarded verbally or physically and are given attention. When the response or behavior is negative or disruptive, it is ignored rather than punished. Over time, this helps the child understand that negative behaviors offer no benefit at all.
While this form of treatment might not sound appealing to many educators and parents, it is crucial that you stop to understand that children with ASD operate differently. Their brains do not perceive things the same way as others. Offering positive reinforcement for the right behaviors and ignoring negative behaviors helps them learn how to act in a social setting. Over time, these processes also help them learn how to act and react in new situations. All children must be taught how to act in a social setting, and by understanding that children with autism need to be taught in a different way, you can equip them with the skills needed to interact more appropriately with their peers and their elders alike.

Garrett Butch is the father of a 6 year old with autism and the founder of Maximum Potential Group.
Maximum Potential has developed courses that train parents and school systems how to work with children with autism.
http://www.maximumpotentialkids.com & http://abatrainingcourse.com/

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Applied Behavior Analysis Therapy Breaks Life Into Smaller Steps

With ABA therapy, children are given the ability to take concepts and behaviors in smaller, easier bites. Behaviors are broken down into their most basic steps, and each step is repeated until it has been learned and can be mimicked without prompting. Over time, the steps are put together so that the child is able to perform a routine task without stress or confusion. It is important for educators to understand that autistic children are highly capable, but that they simply learn differently than most students. ABA therapy essentially helps them learn how to learn.
Another means in which ABA therapy is quite effective is in teaching students to break negative patterns of behavior. With autistic children, the attention gained from scolding or reprimanding is not seen as a negative response, but as a reward of attention, so breaking negative habits takes a different strategy. With ABA training, negative behavior is ignored entirely, while a positive response to the same trigger is rewarded with attention, a sticker, or some other small but enjoyable response. This helps to condition the child into behaving and reacting appropriately to various situations and stimuli.
If you are a parent, educator, or school administrator, encouraging your school district to integrate Applied Behavior Analysis therapy is an excellent idea. The approach can prove to be beneficial for all students, and it can truly work wonders for autistic children. These kids deserve the chance to learn while among their peers if possible, and the skills and behaviors offered by ABA help to increase these chances. ABA therapy can also give students the skills they need to function well into adulthood. With affordable DVD courses available, it is possible for any school system to provide educators with high quality ABA training that can give every student the chance to learn at the best of their ability.

Garrett Butch is the father of a 6 year old with autism and the founder of Maximum Potential Group.
Maximum Potential has developed courses that train parents and school systems how to work with children with autism.
http://www.maximumpotentialkids.com

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The Perfect ABA Classroom

ABA is bigger than Autism.
ABA is not just a reputable and empirically supported treatment method for managing the symptoms of Autism. It's much larger than that.
B.F. Skinner, the father of Operant Conditioning wrote in the book "Walden Two" about a fictional society based on everyday application of behavioral sciences. Skinner spent most of his life trying to make people understand that applying behavioral principles to everyday life could only improve society. At the time, Skinner's writings were considered odd and unrealistic. Public opinion today hasn't changed that much.
People still have the misconception that ABA is just for people with Autism. Or ABA is just about making bad kids behave.
ABA is for anyone who wants to improve, manage, or reduce behaviors, and a behavior is any observable and measurable action. ABA is defined as: applying behavioral constructs and theories to significant social problems. So by definition, ABA is bigger than Autism because it is meant to address any significant social problem.
Behavior Specialists or BCBA's arent "Autism Experts". There are some BCBA's who have never worked with anyone with Autism and have no desire to. Being an ABA professional means you study and seek to understand behavior and you have a responsibility to share behavioral knowledge with anyone who could benefit from it. That could be a business, an adult with OCD, or a school district.
ABA at its core is a way to teach. I'm not a teacher, but much of what I do involves helping individuals learn. If I am working with a 5 year old who bites his fingers whenever he feels anxious, it is my job to teach that child replacement behaviors to handle his anxiety so he will stop biting himself. All great ABA therapists are great teachers. What would really be amazing is if all great teachers were also trained in basic ABA.
If ABA wasn't viewed as just an "Autism thing", maybe schools would realize how valuable ABA knowledge would be for ANY educator.
What would classrooms look like if ABA was just seen as a standard of excellence in education?
ABA Principle Reinforcement - All children would be motivated to learn based on the specific interests of that child. Internal as well as external rewards would be used so that children would have fun learning and enjoy school. Any time a child displayed learning difficulties or showed disinterest in school, their reinforcement package would be re-evaluated for effectiveness.
ABA Principle Differentiated Instruction- Children would have modified curriculum based on how they learn best. Some children may write vocabulary words on the chalkboard, while other children might type their vocabulary words on the classroom computer. It would depend on the way each individual child learns.
ABA Principle Environment is Key to Understanding Behavior- Children displaying behavioral issues would not be viewed as stupid, bad, or stubborn. The environment, such as teaching style, reinforcement, or an over-stimulating classroom, would be closely examined to look for factors maintaining poor behaviors. The ICEL method would be used so that the student is the last option to consider when learning problems happen.
ABA Principle Analysis of Data- Ongoing data analysis would be part of all curriculum, so teachers would know when a student needed new challenges or might need simpler tasks. Children in special education would be moved into inclusion classrooms based on performance data, and not based on administration preferences, or teacher opinion. This focus on not just collecting, but actually analyzing data would lead to higher accountability for teachers, districts, and administration.
ABA Principle Prompting & Fading- Prompting would be used to move a child from not knowing a skill, to knowing a skill. Prompt levels would vary depending on how much help the child needs, and reinforcement would increase as prompts decreased to encourage the child to desire to complete the task independently. All classrooms would use various prompting tools suited to the individual child so that each student in the classroom is performing to the best of their ability. For example students performing poorly in math would be allowed to take tests with calculators, and be paired with a higher performing student during independent task time. Any implemented prompts would be faded out eventually to prevent prompt dependency.
ABA Principle Conceptually Systematic- Conceptually systematic classrooms would have interventions and curriculum rooted in science. Science and research would drive critical decisions, not opinions, political hot topics, mandated testing requirements, or teacher preferences.
ABA Principle Behavior Management- ALL teachers would be trained in behavior management techniques. This would ensure more confident teachers who are thoroughly equipped to handle mild, moderate, or severe behaviors, and would reduce the need to shuttle children with behavioral problems into special education classrooms. All teachers would know how to conduct a FBA, create a behavioral intervention, and use EO to know when a student is highly motivated to learn.
ABA Principle Generalization & Maintenance- Curriculum content would be taught in multiple environments for all children to encourage retaining of information, and so the children can apply what has been learned. PE skills would be reinforced during recess time. English skills would be reinforced on field trips. Math skills would be reinforced in Art class. Review of previously learned skills would be embedded into the school day to ensure children are not regressing and to alert teachers if old material needs to be re-visited. Students who tend to lose old information more quickly than others will have their instruction modified to include more maintenance tasks.
ABA Principle 1:1 Ratio- Children would receive much of their instruction in a 1:1 or small group format (less than 5 children). The ratio would be kept small until the child has grasped the concept and is demonstrating learning, after that point large group instruction (more than 5 children) can be introduced for generalization, and social purposes. Classrooms would be smaller, and children would be divided into small groups based on ability and performance level.
ABA is for everybody. If educators, Speech Therapists, Occupational Therapists, etc., all had even a basic understanding of ABA it would only improve upon the services they offer and increase the quality of their instruction.

http://www.iloveaba.com

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How To Write ABA Programs

The programs to be taught are the meat of any ABA program. WHAT you teach are the skills (which typically come from deficits discovered during assessment), WHO teaches is usually an ABA therapist or a parent, and HOW you teach are the actual programs. You need an ABA program if you are trying to teach a skill in a structured, intensive way.
ABA therapists aren't the only ones who need to know how to write programs. Parents also can benefit from this knowledge, especially if you are a parent providing ABA therapy to your child. I write programs for all kinds of skills: brushing teeth, greeting people, table manners, potty training, sharing, counting, reading, one step instruction, etc. I typically use the ABBLS-R assessment tool, which then guides my program writing. I will refer to the ABBLS-R in this post simply because it is the tool I use the most. Some people use other assessment tools, such as the VB-MAPP, or they just go straight into program writing without doing an assessment. If you are unfamiliar with assessment, check out my post about the ABBLS-R which gives a general overview. I have my own program writing style that has evolved over the years. It isn't unusual for 2 different professionals to take the same goal and teach it in two different ways. For every goal you can think of, there are multiple ways to take the child from not knowing the skill, to knowing the skill. Program writing is definitely a skill that takes time to learn, but understanding the basic steps makes the process much easier.
Program Writing Steps
Prioritize what to teach first: After you assess the child you are left with an inventory of their strengths and deficits. After completing the full ABBLS-R, you could have an inventory of 145 strengths and 160 deficits. This large inventory is then narrowed down into specific skills to begin teaching. This process is child specific, because it will vary depending on the child's age, level of functioning, issues most important to the family, is the child in school or not, etc. The programs I write for a nonverbal 2 year old will be very different from the programs I write for a high functioning 14 year old. How many skills you select will also vary, but typically you want to consider the child's ability to work for extended periods of time, and how many hours of therapy per week the child is receiving. If a child only gets 3 hours of ABA per week, they don't have enough time to work on 25 programs. Or if a child is 3 years old and isn't even able to sit in a chair yet, its unrealistic to write 30 programs for them. There also is somewhat of a hierarchy of needs to address. Its more critical that a child be able to communicate, than ride a bike. When in doubt, make skill deficits that impact communication or inhibit learning the most important. Be conservative when selecting programs, you can always add more later on. Consider all of these factors and narrow your skill inventory down to the programs you will start teaching first.
Write an objective for each program: Think of the objective as your long term goal, and keep it broad. The objective is what you ultimately want the child to be able to do. "Child will be able to share with peers" is an objective. "Child will allow a peer to touch an item they are holding for 3 seconds" is not an objective. Each program needs its own objective, or its own long term goal. The objective also leads directly into the specific active targets.
Each objective needs an active targets list: Now is when you think about small, specific goals. There are two types of targets: active and mastered. An active target is what you are currently working on, and includes skills the child does not know yet. A mastered target is a skill the child has been taught, or already knows at the time of assessment. If the objective is "Child will be able to share with peers", then the active targets are the small steps towards that goal. Look at the objective you created, and then think of how you can break it down into small, discrete steps. If you are using the ABBLS-R it will actually list an objective and a few active targets for each skill. There is also an appendix in the back of the ABBLS-R manual that lists sample active targets. For example, imagine you want to teach a child to know what her body parts are. There are two ways she can demonstrate "knowing", either receptively or expressively. For receptive identification of body parts, you would teach the child to point to their body parts on command. Your active target list could include: Head, Tummy, Leg, Knee, Foot, Ear, etc.
Decide on your measurement of mastery: In order to get a child to a point of mastery, you need to decide how they will demonstrate to you that they are competent in a skill. Typically, most ABA programs use the standard of "80% or higher across 3 consecutive sessions". This means that the child needs to get above a 79% out of 100% for three different ABA sessions before the target is considered mastered. However, sometimes you need to use a different measurement system. If I am teaching a child to brush his teeth using backward chaining, then I am going to measure mastery by how many prompts the child needs to perform the task. Or if I am teaching a child to play with toys appropriately, I am going to measure mastery by timing how long they interact with the toy appropriately without any prompting from me. Your objective will help you decide how to measure for mastery.
Plan for maintenance of mastered targets: It isn't enough to write a program, teach a skill, and then move on to the next program. A common characteristic of Autism is difficulty generalizing skills, which over time can cause a learned skill to be forgotten. When writing a program you need to be thinking "How will I generalize this skill to various settings, materials, people, etc?", and "How will I put this skill into maintenance, once it has been mastered?" There are many ways to plan for generalization and maintenance. A way I regularly plan for generalization is to "Teach Loosely". Teaching loosely means that I will intentionally vary where I teach, when I teach, the materials I use, and (if possible) who does the teaching. I will teach waving not just when I arrive at the child's house, but at the therapy table, during breaks, at the playground, when I visit them at school, and I will encourage the parents to work on this skill as well. All of these small changes when combined make it much easier for a child to generalize a skill. A favorite technique I like to use for maintenance is: Get a small card filing box. Take a stack of index cards and write a mastered target on each card. During each session, grab a few cards out of the box and ask the child a mastered target. If they still have the skill, move on to the next card. If they do not still have the skill, take the card out of the box as it may need to be taught again. At the end of the session put the cards you used in the back of the box so you will pull different cards the next day. The great thing about this technique is anyone can do it. I love using strategies that the whole household can implement. If the child gets a new babysitter who doesn't know how to engage them, give the babysitter the box of mastered targets and a few reinforcers. If you are taking the child to the dentist and know they will have difficulty calmly waiting for their appointment, bring along the box of mastered targets and a few reinforcers. This way you can work on maintenance of skills no matter where you are and everything in the box is mastered so it should be very easy for the child.
This may seem like a LOT of work, and it is:-)
However it isn't impossible to learn how to write programs. There are also many resources out there for parents or professionals to use that will guide program writing, or even write the programs for you. If you would like some web resources, or computer software programs that write the programs for you then I would suggest doing an internet search. Two resources I can recommend are the Catherine Maurice guide, and the webABBLS. The webABBLS is a completely online version of the ABBLS-R assessment tool, and you plug in your child's strengths and deficits and then print out pre-written programs. I know many parents who use this tool. These software and online tools can be very helpful for parents or professionals who have limited training and need to write ABA programs. However, problems can arise when using "automated" tools like these if you don't understand how to tweak or modify programs. I have clients who use software programs that allow them to print out fully completed ABA programs, but I look over their programs and realize they are teaching two hierarchical skills at the same time. Or the child is lacking the prerequisite skills to learn something, and that is why they have made no progress in 6 weeks. So in other words, don't expect shortcuts. It is fine to use software or books/manuals to help you write programs, but be aware that you still may need professional help from an ABA professional to fine tune or modify the programs...especially if the child regresses or gets stuck on a certain skill.
Here are some helpful program writing tips that I have learned over the years:
The program should be clearly written in simple language. It should be so easy to understand that someone who doesn't know your child could read the program and start teaching right away.
The objective and active targets should always be compared with same age peers. If you want to teach your 4 year old to sit and attend, your benchmark to setting goals should be other 4 year olds. Its unrealistic to try and teach a 4 year old with Autism to sit and attend for an hour, because you wouldn't expect that from a typical 4 year old. Especially with academic goals such as reading and math, I always consider what a typical child of the same age would be expected to do.
Do not underestimate the importance of maintenance. If your child has been receiving ABA therapy for 3 years, when was the last time you asked them a target that they learned 2 years ago? How about 1 year ago? It's important to continue to assess mastered targets (no matter how old), to make sure the child is retaining knowledge. Kiddos who learn skills very fast generally lose those skills very fast. So if you have a child or client who flies through their programs, be sure you are putting those mastered targets into maintenance.
For professionals, the parents should always be included in the program writing process. Think of them as another member of the team. It is normal to have differing ideas on what skills the child should learn first. When I am getting ready to write programs for a client, I ask the parents what concerns are most important to them. Then I share with them what areas of concern I see as most important. From there, it's a give and take process. Sometimes you may need to help convince the parents to see your point of view. For example the father may express to you he wants his son to play with his brother. From your assessment and observation you know your client has no toy play skills. So you could explain to the father that with no knowledge of how to engage with toys appropriately, his son's ability to interact with peers is very limited.
ABA programs have many things in common, such as making tasks step-by-step, very little distraction, focusing on one thing at a time, and repetition and verification of skills learned. For example, to teach a pre-school age child with Autism the alphabet you would make the letters uniform in font style, make the letters all only one color so there are no distractions, make the letters of the same cardboard stock, introduce each letter one at a time, and use repetition to make sure the letters are learned. Finally, use reward for all the hard work and the skills gained. "Teaching loosely" is for after the child is demonstrating competency of the skill and is making progress.

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