Is ABA the Right Approach For School Systems Teaching Autistic Children?

Children are very diverse. If you walk into any classroom and ask students to tell you what they most enjoy doing, you are going to get a very wide range of responses. What most of these children will have in common, however, is the ability to easily learn concepts taught by their educators. For children with autism spectrum disorder, even this basic ability is hampered by the fact that their brains simply work differently. In order to learn in a classroom, they must first work on learning how to learn. ABA therapy is a proven method of doing just that.

The brain of a child with autism spectrum disorder works very differently than the brain of most children. Essentially the neural pathways that help children make connections between behaviors and consequences are simply not there. One thing that science has taught us, however, is that the brains of these children are not simply stuck in this state. With proper ABA therapy, these connections can be developed and these students can often learn to perform as well as or possibly even better than their peers in a classroom setting.

So, why ABA therapy? There are a number of different therapies available for students with autism, after all. The difference, however, is that ABA is proven to work on many levels. Not only does it teach the fundamentals of learning, but it can help to condition behavior, teaching these students how to act in a social setting and what to do in a certain scenario. These are skills that will have a lifelong impact on your child. With ABA therapy, your child can learn how to react to other students, what to do if they ever get lost, and even how to form social bonds with new people.

Applied Behavior Analysis has been around for a few decades and is considered to be the most effective form of treatment for autism. While other methods show success in some areas, studies show that children taught using ABA therapy at a young age exhibit greatly improved social and educational skills well into their adult lives. In other words, ABA is about permanently teaching children with autism spectrum disorder. While many methods offer temporary solutions, teaching ABA in schools can equip students for a lifetime of learning. The use of DVD training programs and classroom materials can be a highly effective way for any school system to provide educators with the tools necessary to give these students a head start on the rest of their lives.

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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Teaching Autistic Children - Guidelines For Effectively Teaching Autistic Children

Teaching autistic children in the most effective and beneficial manner is so important, it can't be emphasized enough that all kids with autism are different from one another and may respond in a different way to different teaching techniques, methods, tools and treatment approaches. Below are just some of the strategies that have been proven to be effective in many cases of kids with autism:

An Educational Team Approach to Teaching Autistic Children

Teaching autistic children is a task that no one teacher must face alone, whether that teacher is the loving mother or father, a devoted caregiver, a dedicated teacher, a knowledgeable therapist, a child psychiatrist or a friendly peer. These individuals must come together formally in Individualized Education Program (IEP) sessions and informally when they decide to just get together, to give their share of support and experiences. Since the disorder varies widely from on child to the other, the communication between the individuals that provides care is vital in creating a specific treatment process for the kid with autism.

Signing Words

A vast majority find it difficult to communicate through speech. A very effective strategy for teaching autistic children how to talk is to always speak words with the corresponding sign language action. Learn basic sign language and make use of it while you speak with your child using everyday words. By doing this, you can more effectively help your child in learning and memorizing words and phrases.

A Structured Physical Learning Environment

Children with the disorder finds it difficult to adjust to changes in their environment and would find it difficult to learn if their work in a room that is in a state of chaos, where it is messy, a lot of stuff are scattered on the floor, and where areas are areas are not properly structured. A classroom that is well structured and has defined areas different activities and toys, for example, can help in making a child more comfortable to their learning environment.

Easily Understood Visual Schedules

A great strategy for helping children with autism know what to expect next is to give them a clear idea as to what their schedule in the classroom. A child with autism gets frustrated when he/she is uncertain as to what they will do next and that can lead to bad behavior. Making them have a clear visual indication of their schedule can help ease a great deal of the pressure that they are feeling and their frustration. A large analog clock that is easily visible inside the classroom, with a sequence of pictures and symbols for daily activities next to the clock dial showing what time every activity is will occur, can give them a clear idea as to where they are in the day, what have they accomplished so far, what they are currently doing and what they need to do next.

A Flexible Learning Style

Children with the disorder are fully capable of learning and when best learning method for them has been discovered and utilized, some of them even learn better than those children without the disorder. Give them freedom to figure out the best learning method that works well for them, support them by observing the things that appears to be working, and always allow them to do those things. Remember that everyone has their own learning method that makes them learn better and faster at the same time, including children with autism.

Proper Social Behavior Models

The autism spectrum disorder triggers social interaction impairment, making an autistic child fail to notice subtle social emotional cues that would lead to communication failure - Others would perceive it being uncaring and rude. If it is left unaddressed, the improper social behavior leads to the seclusion from social interactions and get in the way of the development and learning, negatively impacting an autistic child's life. Using stories and providing examples of proper social behavior models are effective means to instinctively making a child with autism learn appropriate social skills.

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Incidental Teaching For Students With High Functioning Autism

"Incidental Teaching" is an interaction between an adult and child that occurs in a natural situation or setting which can be used to give the child an opportunity to practice a skill. Many practitioners of Applied Behavior Analysis believe that Incidental Teaching can be used as a primary teaching approach for children with autism instead of Discrete Trial teaching when discrete trials are not successful or not challenging.Some students are more successful when incidental teaching techniques are used.

The advantages of using the Incidental Teaching method:

* Skills may be learned faster because they have meaning to the learner (function and purpose).

* The learner is exposed to varied prompting methods and reinforcers

* Teaching is implemented in a natural setting and no additional materials are needed.

* Using this technique helps teachers sharpen their skills and "think on their feet".

The disadvantages of using the Incidental Teaching method are:

* The teacher may not have the skills to recognize a "teachable moment" or have the ability to capture and manipulate the learner's motivation to create a teachable moment.

* The teacher must have full knowledge of the learner's current abilities

* The learner must have prerequisite skills to benefit from Incidental Teaching (including attention skills and ability to accept different types of prompting).

The procedures used in the Incidental Teaching method are important. A natural environment must be arranged to attract the learner to the desired material (contriving an opportunity).

Depending on the learner, the arrangement of the environment may be minimal or extensive. The learner guides the session by his/her own interests or motivation in a topic, object or activity. At this point, the teacher uses whatever the learner has shown an interest in to teach or elaborate on an already known skill. For example, if a young child shows an interest in pushing a toy car back and forth, the teacher could teach the child to elaborate on this skill by showing the child a ramp and how to push the car up and over the ramp.

There are several prerequisite skills for learners that are needed for Incidental Teaching:

* Attention

* Ability to follow basic instructions

* Ability to respond to many different prompting methods

* Well-developed imitation skills

* Adequate frustration tolerance and acceptance of delayed gratification

* Interest in many different environmental stimuli

Incidental Teaching may be used to teach functional communication skills. Here are some tips and suggestions to facilitate communication:

Tips for teaching commenting skills:

* Pretend to call or mildly hurt yourself (Say "owww")

* Say something that is incorrect and prompt the correction. For example, eat a cookie and say "This is a good apple".

* Illicit a compliment: Say "I just got a new haircut" or "This is a new shirt".

* Illicit inquiries: Say "I feel sick today" or "I have a new toy in my bag".

* Have many people make comments about an activity you are all playing or a meal you are all eating (modeling).

Tips for teaching appropriate escape/avoidance from an undesirable activity:

* Put an unwanted or undesirable item in front of or with the learner.

* Offer unwanted or undesirable food to the learner.

Tips for teaching requests for information:

* Present the learner with partial information he/she needs in order to complete a task or gain access to a reinforcer/desired object

* Present important information in a very low voice so the learner can barely hear you and needs you to repeat the information

With creativity and flexibility, educators can incorporate Incidental Teaching into a successful, nurturing learning environment.

Learn more about Private Schools on Long Island.

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Teaching Children With Autism - Know Your Options

Teaching children with autism can be very challenging, but very rewarding. It definitely takes a different skill set to teach children with autism, and a supportive school system to do it well. While many public schools have excellent special education schools, many do not. This is why there are also many great private schools that exist to fill the needs of autistic children in search of a personalized education.

Traditional Classrooms May Not be the Best Way to Teach a Child with Autism

A lot of kids with special needs, including autism, have real problems succeeding in a traditional classroom. Very often, they will need one-on-one instruction to be able to learn. Kids with autism often are distracted by sensory issues and many other things in a traditional classroom. Frequently, they are the target of bullying, which can create self-esteem issues and, of course, greatly affect the child's concentration and learning.

Individualized Education Programs for Kids with Autism

Many autistic kids require individualized learning programs that public schools often are not able to give. Parents usually try to make public schools work for their kids before looking somewhere else, but sometimes there is no choice. Hence, the rising number of private special education schools for kids with autism.

These schools make teaching children with autism into a whole different kind of journey. They have different theories, smaller classes, and more individualized programs. There is usually a 1:1 or 1:2 student to teacher ratio. There are several kinds of special education schools, from day schools and boarding schools, autism only schools and schools that accept kids with a wide range of disabilities.

Choose a Teaching Style that Fits Your Child with Autism

Teachers in some schools will analyze a child's learning style, behaviors, strengths and weaknesses to create a teaching style that works well with that child. Other schools have a more one-size-fits-all approach, using theories of behaviorism or applied behavior analysis (ABA) for all kids, without much variation in manner in which they are used.

Specialized Autism Schools

Specialized autism schools usually include the various therapies that they offer in the price and curriculum. Such therapies can include speech, occupational and physical therapies. These therapies, as well as the individualized attention for the kids come with a hefty price tag, however. Schools can often be up to $50-$75,000 a year. However, parents can sometimes get special schools paid by their local school districts as long as they can prove that their local school is not able to meet their child's needs.

To find these schools, you may want to do an Internet search for them, or ask your local autism society. Most of the time, public schools do an excellent job teaching children with autism but it is important also to know of the other options that are out there.

Parents can often learn which schools are good and which are not from other parents. Let's face it, information from other parents can help in all areas of raising your child with autism. And a great site that has tips and suggestions for helping to raise your autistic child is the AmericanAutismSociety.org. There you can sign up for their FREE newsletter with tips and info on autism.

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Teaching Autistic Children to Be Independent

Not all autistic children will become independent when they grow up. However, if you as a parent or teacher do not help them achieve that independence than you will never know and your autistic child will never attain his or her full potential.

By itself, teaching children is a difficult task. Now teaching autistic children is a lot difficult than teaching normal children. You need to understand that autism is a learning disability! Of course, teaching them is not impossible, but just rather a different kind of challenge. You need to change your perspective in how they learn when teaching them. Learning disability in the case of an autistic child does not mean that they can not and will never learn, but rather it means that they just think differently.

So your goal as a parent or teacher is to help your autistic child find the right balance between learning and routine for them to live an independent and normal life. Lets face it! Life is unpredictable and anything can happen to you.

So teaching autistic children you need to find out what methods of learning best help them. You should also know the habits of your autistic child and use that to your advantage. As you might figure out, they tend to repeat things and have certain daily routines. Use those routines and repetitive behavior as part of your learning method. Learning is repetition! The challenge with teaching autistic children is to incorporate new material in to their repetitive nature to eventual make that new material part of their daily lives.

Please keep in mind that forcing anything to an autistic child will result to unwanted behavior and could be violent in nature. Even though,you will be introducing new material for the good intention of helping your child become more independent, please do introduce those material when the child is in a positive and good mood. This will insure that your autistic child will be more receptive to the lesson.

Should also realize that it will require a lot of patience teaching autistic children, since you will surely need to repeat a lot of things before your autistic child will be able to learn. Also keep in mind that they are mostly visual learners and that pictures and symbols are good for them. But please keep the learning environment, clean from visual distractions. If you remember your days in grade school with all those fancy illustrations, well please avoid that for your autistic child. Since this fancy learning tools are easy distractions for them and a pretty big source of stress for you. So keeping the room where you will be teaching autistic children is key to get their attention and focus.

The writer wishes to provide assistance to those parents and educators involved with children who has autism. Teaching Autistic Children

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Teaching Autistic Children - Schedules, Symbols, and Cards You Can Make to Help Your Child Learn

Increasing an autistic child's comprehension of activities and daily tasks that need to be performed daily or even occasionally is one of the most essential needs to build skills such as organization, self help tasks, how to follow directions, and build correct social behavior. As a result this method of autistic teaching of skills helps the child become more independent and increases his or her self confidence. Many of the strategies are simple and straightforward. Here are a few "low tech" support strategies you can use to help your child comprehend and build such skills.

Schedules

It is very helpful to provide your child with a daily, visual schedule. This will help organization skills and develop independence and confidence. A schedule can be made with a 3-ring binder type layout, a clipboard, a whiteboard, or even a poster board that you create together. It should detail what is happening and when and what is next in the schedule. Pictures and words combined make the best schedule so that your child can learn to correlate the words and images to form a connection between the whole word and the picture of the activity.

Picture Communication Symbols

Picture Communication Symbols consist of over 10,000 simple line drawings designed to represent words and short phrases to support children and adults with communication challenges. PCS, which was developed by Mayer-Johnson and is available on their website, is used to improve comprehension skills and encouraged appropriate behavior in autistic teaching of children. You can find them for sale on their site but you can also find some free printable versions on the internet too. If you print out the symbols be sure to use a color printer or color them yourself and laminate for durability.

International "No" Symbol

The international "No" symbol is the red circle with a line drawn through it. It is a very abstract concept of "no" for an autistic child. You can use the "No" symbol to convey several visual behavior management cards. For example, you can use the symbol as a card to place on a door that the child should not go out of. You can also place it over an activity on the child's schedule to convey that the activity is not occurring that day or you can keep a "No" symbol card handy to display to your child whenever he or she begins to behave or act inappropriately.

Steps Directions

Certain tasks require a number of steps to be completed. For example, washing hands, getting ready for bed, getting ready for school, cleaning up after play, and brushing teeth. Using the task of "washing hands" as an example you can create a card that has images and words for:

Turn water on

Put soap in hand

Rub soap all over hands

Rinse hands

Turn off water

Dry hands

Make images with text for each of these and paste these on a card. Laminate it for durability.

There are many simple yet effective strategies you can use to help your child develop comprehension skills and improve behavior.

Learn to help your autistic child embrace the world with his or her own special abilities and challenges. For more information, resources, and ideas for teaching autistic children visit [http://autistic-teaching.com]

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Teaching Autistic Children - Using Art to Break Down the Barriers

It seems there is a new angle to teaching autistic children. The idea comes from autistic children themselves. The parents of autistic children only want the best and any latest findings that may work for them; they should be made aware of it.

For those children with Autism Spectrum Disorder there is a new safe and intelligent way to give them a voice which has been silent. It gives them a bridge to the outside world and lets them speak. Teaching Autistic Children through Art actually invites you into their world. Their need to draw to visualize their non verbal expressions gives them that voice.

Many autistic children from the ages 12 and up have come forward and given an inspirational testimonial which is amazing in itself. But the autistic community is actually listening like never before. And there is something to listen to, and consider because it is actually working.

By Teaching Autistic Children through Art, it demonstrates its effectiveness by changing your child's behavior. This therapy is a clinically-sound and safe treatment option with so many benefits, such as an increase in self awareness, developing problem solving strategies, the feeling of a safe environment and the accomplishment of their own creative thinking and self accomplishment. The development of social skill in a group or with parents is good feeling for all that participate.

Teaching Autistic Children through Art is a therapy that both parents and therapists can have a goal as they both want the child to succeed. In groups the therapists can offer many social skills and interaction with others through art techniques for certain autistic needs. The self accomplishment to create an art product would be a safe forum for emotion and self-expression. For non verbal autistic children this way of communicating is an awareness to express so many feelings which otherwise you would not "hear".

The art visual activity provides the social skills with group integration giving a strong feeling of peer support and can be a lot of fun. Of course the social skills benefit, as they are related with recreation and leisure which are developed through the interaction.

Of course safety is an absolute when working with any art supplies. Depending on the age and comprehension of the child, the use of pencil, clay, paint, collage or even glue should be closely watched. With the building of trust you can reap great rewards and encourage communication which in the long run makes for a happier child. There may be many goals reached, so depending on the age of the child and what they are interested in see what rewards you can gather.

If you have a child with autism then you no doubt realize there are many challenges facing you as the child grows up. One of these such challenges facing parents and care givers alike is teaching autistic children.

Our site is dedicated to providing you with the information that will help you face these challenges now and in the future. Visit our site at http://www.all-about-autism.com to find out more.

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Some Ideas For Teaching Autistic Children

Teaching children is a difficult enough endeavor on its own. Throw in an autistic child with learning disabilities, and the task can seem overwhelming. However, the task is not impossible. By following some simple guidelines, you may be able to see a marked improvement. Whether you're a parent home schooling your child or a teacher with an autistic student in your class, these tips should prove helpful.

The first thing you may want to keep in mind is that autistic children are generally very dependent upon routine. Rather than fighting this, it is a good idea to incorporate it into the learning process. In a classroom setting, routine is already well established, but it can be more difficult in a home setting. The key, though, is to stick to a schedule, and to not deviate based on convenience or other factors whenever possible.

It can also be beneficial for an autistic child to learn in an environment that is as simple and uncomplicated as possible. Autistic children are easily over-stimulated, too many decorations or visual aides can serve to be a major distraction from the lesson being taught. An area free from distractions, loud noises and bright lights is what you should be aiming for.

Another interesting idea is to incorporate multiple methods of delivery into your teaching lessons. While many children respond differently to different mediums, this difference is much more distinctive in autistic children. They may respond best to visual images, so incorporating simple illustrations or symbols that represent learning concepts can be a valuable teaching tactic. Experiment to find the method of delivery that is easiest for them to learn from.

Offering an autistic child a choice is another great way to get them involved in the learning process. Rather than presenting a child with an answer and asking him or her to figure out if it is correct or incorrect, present a series of options and let the child choose the option that seems best to him or her. This is a great way to create an interactive teaching environment, and to stimulate thought and cognitive response from a child. It is also a good way for them to feel more in control, lessening the chance of a frustration outburst or negative associations with a particular lesson or idea.

A key point to remember is autistic children are extremely resistant to changes in their environment. Because of this, you should meet their expectations whenever you can. Introduce new ideas gradually. Introduce new learning methods when the child is having a good day or is in a positive mood. Adhere to routine as much as possible, as this is what your child expects and desires, and what will facilitate the most effective learning environment.

It's true that teaching an autistic child can be difficult. But it is not impossible. It takes a little hard work, a little patience, and significant understanding of the needs of the child and the teaching methods and strategies that will be most beneficial to them. If you follow these simple guidelines, you'll have a great start on teaching autistic children effectively.

By Rachel Evans. Sign up for a free newsletter for more information on autism. In the newsletter you'll find more information on teaching autistic chidlren.

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