my daughter has really improved she's 2 years old now. she is with EI and some outside services which have helped. her one speech therapist doesnt do much work with her actually just talks to us during my daughters sessions so he isn't much help and i am not sure if he is doing his job. The one speech therapist got my daughter to say the word "more" she has been making more sounds and we are working at it as best we can. she is going back soon to see the dev pedi and he thinks it now is moderate to severe she is on the spectrum they just dont know where or if it is cognitive problem. Ok at first he said ABA therapy wasnt for her now he gave me a paper on wraparound services and i found this great place that will do ABA and the psycologist will evaluate my daughter and we will discuss how many hrs she will need. I wanted to know what they do with ABA if anyone has their child in an ABA program and what do we expect what kind of things do they do and how effective is it since i heard it was the best thing for kids that may have autism. he dismisses all her behaviors mostly saying she does flapping spinning etc cause she's behind and she doesnt know what else to do and says if you go for ABA they will probably diagnose her autistic but it may be cognitive and that's what is gonna help her in the long run he says and he says they wont look at that. we are going back soon and 2 pedi's are looking over her at once also and we will see what they say it's the dev pedi she sees now and another dev pedi that works with him i guess. My daughter has made progress but still has autistic behaviors and cant talk. I am so proud of all she has done though she has come a long way. i am worried am i doing enough with her i try to work with her as much as i can and i feel like if she goes backwards it's my fault. i just want to know about ABA though if someone can help me and explain.

my son went to dev pedi for sensory issues and he has motor problems that my daughters therapist noticed not the dev pedi :rolleyes: he is gonna recieve therapy i got a refeal for that and i am looking into a second opinion he is scared of some noise and screams and wont put his legs down to walk he's over 11 months he isnt pulling up on furniture (which i know some babies do things at different paces) he wont self feed and he has a hard time eating that's what we are going to therapy for. his tongue is "asleep" as the therapist my daughter has said for my son, he doesnt know what to do with the food when it goes in his mouth. he has frequent tantrums hates being changed he get's extremely angry and i am trying to get him into another doctor to get a 2nd opinion. i worry it is sensory. anyway thanks for listening to my story but i basically wanted to know mostly about ABA and how it will help my daughter if she get's 40hrs will it be too overwheming and what kind of things do they do and all that stuff etc. TIA! :)

I do not think your developmental pediatrician knows anything about ABA. Why in the world would he say if she has a cognitive problem that ABA will not be what your daughter needs? ABA breaks things down into small steps so children with autism can learn.

ABA is not a cookie cutter program. It is specifically designed to be tailored to your childs EXACT NEEDS. For example most ABA programs start with imitation. When my son was diagnosed at 29 months his imitation skills were at a 29 month level. Obviously our ABA program did not have any imitation programs.

My son's main problem was language so my ABA program was made up of about 85% language programs. We also did self help skills like putting on your jacket and zipping it up, potty training, buttoning and things like that. When we started my son's imaginary play could be improved on so we just worked on expanding it. Children who are two learn a lot through play including sharing and language.

I do agree with him that your daughter has certain behaviors because she does not know what to do. ABA provides structure so your child always has something to do. Any behavior that bothers you, you can have addressed in your ABA program.

Our ABA program (plus speech therapy) was the miracle we needed. My son is currently in a regular kindergarten with no assistance. He is indistinguishable from his peers.

I never had the chance to do ABA with my son. Where I live it is only offered privately and the initial training weekend cost £1000 (not sure what that is in dollars) then you have to train the therapists yourself (more money) a therapist charges £7.00 per hour so for 20 hrs per week it cost around £140 so it is very expensive and not only that because it's private you aren't guarenteed the people who are doing it, are carrying it out to an acceptable standard.
If I were you I would fight for as much therapy as possible, if it doesn't suit your daughter then you can give it up. if it works then great. ABA doesn't suit all autistic children. I know of a speech therapist who writes a column in a Glasgow newspaper she has two autistic children and put both on an ABA programme on of her sons loved it and got on well. While the other child became upset and very anxious and it done him no good, even thou she kept it going for some time.
So I would always say test and try. It won't do her any harm.
Good luck

Kathleen,

Great news about your son!