Like every parent, you want the world for your child, except, unlike many parents, you’re facing more of a challenge thanks to a developmental disorder in your child.
Whether your child falls on the autism spectrum (1 in 31 kids in the United States do) or they have another issue that affects how they interact with the world around them, there are solutions.
The presence of a developmental disorder can certainly affect how your child grows up. Still, the team at Celebrations Speech Group can improve and ease this journey through applied behavioral analysis (ABA). Here’s a look at what you might expect during your child’s first and subsequent ABA therapy sessions.
From a broader perspective, ABA is a form of therapy that, as the name suggests, focuses on behavior. A person’s behavior is how they respond and communicate with those around them and to their environment, and it’s incredibly important to how a person integrates themselves into society.
Kids with developmental disorders can struggle with what’s considered appropriate behaviors and social cues, and ABA aims to improve that by:
By focusing on these skills, our goal through ABA is to lay the groundwork for greater independence and to enable your child to thrive in a world that they may not fully understand as well as others.
In fact, studies show that early intervention through ABA for kids with autism can deliver substantial results. One study on the benefits of ABA concluded that even “Children with the lowest adaptive level at baseline made clinically and statistically significant adaptive behavior gains.”
The most important thing to know about ABA is that there’s no structured format, as each child is unique and has their own set of challenges and strengths. During your child’s first ABA session with us, you can expect it to be an information-gathering session on both sides.
For our team’s part, we’ll observe your child and their behaviors to note which areas could use a little improvement. For example, if we notice that your child doesn’t understand the concept of waiting for their turn, we might focus our ABA efforts on this area. This is just one example of many, but we wanted to give you an idea about what we’re looking out for.
We also spend time talking with you and gathering information about how your child behaves at home, as well as where you’d like to see some improvements.
For your part, we want you to use this first session to ask as many questions as you’d like. We must work together as a team throughout your child’s ABA therapy, as you’ll be asked to reinforce what they learn here at our practice.
Once we have a better idea of where to start, we can begin with individual and group ABA sessions. These sessions will focus on teaching your child how to adapt their behaviors to their environment by reinforcing positive behaviors and gently steering them away from challenging ones.
If you have more questions about ABA for your child or would like to schedule their first ABA session, please contact one of our offices in Brentwood, Stockton, or Elk Grove, California, to arrange a consultation.
