autism daily

Seriation Lessons Help ABA Therapy Become More Effective

ABA therapy is widely recognized as the premiere treatment for children with autism spectrum disorder.  Designed to break tasks, concepts, and ideas into their most basic elements and steps, ABA helps to literally rewire the brain so that it can understand things in a different way.  There are many different tools and tactics used in teaching ABA.  There are also a number of different types of supplemental materials that help to make it easier.  One supplement that has proven exceptionally beneficial is seriation cards. Seriation cards are designed to help kids with autism spectrum disorder understand concepts and sequences of events.  Take, for example, the rising and setting of the sun throughout the day.  While most children slowly learn to understand this concept simply from looking out the window at various times, the mind of an autistic child is not capable of making these broad intuitive leaps.  Seriation cards are designed to offer a step by step sequence of events.  Children are taught the proper sequence of events, and the lesson is repeated over and over until they are able to put the cards in order for themselves. While seriation cards are looked at by outsiders as simple memorization tools, they are much more than this.  Studies show that learning to piece together processes and sequences through ABA helps children to understand the underlying concept of processes.  In other words, by memorizing different patterns, the brain will form new neurons that make it easier to identify these types of patterns naturally in the future.  The human brain is quite incredible, and the ability of simple ABA methods to literally help it rewire itself is certainly something spectacular.  Seriation cards are excellent tools in helping to make this happen. There is little doubt that ABA therapy is highly effective when properly taught.  Students with autism spectrum disorder need to learn in a specific way, and ABA helps to break things down into easily repeatable processes that make learning much easier.  Supplemental materials are an integral part of Applied Behavior Analysis, and seriation cards can prove to be remarkable teaching tools. When combined with rigorous data collection, discrete trial teaching, positive reinforcement and other crucial elements, these cards can help kids essentially learn how to learn.  Every child deserves the chance to learn as much and as well as possible, and ABA therapy makes it easier to enable just that.

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.

Is Your School System Offering ABA Therapy?

If you are an educator, guidance counselor, or other school faculty member, then you understand the commitment you have made to providing every student that steps into your hallways with the best education possible.  With that in mind, what treatments does your school system offer for children with autism spectrum disorders?  Are they herded into classrooms for students with special needs?  Are they frequently punished for behaving in ways outside of the norm?  Sadly, these are the most common treatments in today’s schools, despite the fact that offering ABA therapy could make a real difference in behavior and learning. ABA therapy is more than just a bunch of memorization and mimicking.  While these are certainly integral aspects of the therapy, they are designed to help the brains of autistic children form new neural pathways and to literally develop the ability to understand larger concepts.  Intensive ABA therapy is shown to help kids learn not only acceptable behavior patterns and specifically taught concepts, but the ability to learn new things in much the same manner as their peers.  This is certainly remarkable, and with thirty years of evidence to support the treatment, the real question is why more schools don’t offer ABA. One of the biggest hindrances to offering ABA in school systems is that training is largely cost prohibitive.  Sending every educator within a school system to special classes or seminars is unaffordable for most school systems, and educating only one teacher will prove largely inefficient.  Many schools see this as a sign that they simply cannot offer ABA therapy, but this is not the case.  Through the use of a well designed and well implemented DVD course, it is possible for entire school districts to learn how to provide ABA therapy for autistic children. While the notion of a DVD course might be surprising at first, it actually makes sense.  A well designed course will come with all of the materials needed for both learning and providing ABA therapy.  It will also include information on how to contact someone with questions or to get clarification on different aspects of the therapy.  One of the best things about a DVD course, however, is that it doesn’t just offer one-time training.  It can be used time and again to ensure that new teachers are also taught this method.  Ensuring that everyone in your school system knows how to handle autistic children is the key to proper educating, and a DVD course in ABA therapy can make that goal attainable.

Early Intervention by Parents and Schools Can Make ABA Therapy More Successful

For parents with autistic children, dealing with school systems can often be a nightmare.  Simply put, many of today’s schools are underfunded, and as a result, many teachers and guidance counselors are undereducated when it comes to understanding how to treat children with autism spectrum disorder.  No matter where the cycle begins, however, placing blame on schools offers little benefit.  Instead, it is up to parents and schools to work together to provide ABA therapy for students who have been diagnosed with ASD.  Studies show that the earlier the treatment is started, the more successful it will be. Treating autism spectrum disorder using ABA therapy is shown to be the most effective method possible.  There are more than three decades of studies that have been done on ABA, both through the government and through independent researchers.  The one thing the studies have in common is that they show that ABA, especially when introduced early, can greatly improve a child’s ability to learn, react, and thrive within a social or classroom setting.  Better still, the skills learned through ABA will stay with the child for the rest of their life. For schools that cannot afford to send all of their educators and guidance counselors off for special training, there are still options.  In fact, a well designed DVD course can provide teachers with all that they need to properly administer ABA therapy.  The courses, when offered along with necessary materials such as data sheets, picture cards, and other items, can help teachers learn the most important parts of providing ABA therapy as well as how to integrate it into their teaching style.  So often, children with autism are forced to simply sit in the back of a special needs classroom when they are capable of so much more. A DVD course that helps educators learn to provide ABA therapy can be an integral part of learning for children with ASD.  These courses enable teachers to begin providing therapy as soon as the child enters the school system.  Repeated studies show that ABA is more successful in younger children, and that early intervention provides the most successful outcome rate.  With this in mind, and with the availability of well designed, professional DVD courses known, the only question is why you haven’t talked to your school system about using these classes to help teach your child or other children with autism spectrum disorder.

ABA Should Be Offered In Every School

Applied Behavior Analysis is a technique that virtually every parent of a child with autism has heard of.  Unfortunately, it is a technique that not all school systems and educators are familiar with.  As one of the only treatments for autism generally covered by insurance companies, it is well known as the best treatment available, yet many schools do not offer it in the classroom.  ABA courses can provide many benefits to students with autism spectrum disorder, and should certainly be on offer in all school districts. Why ABA?  The simple fact is that it works.  While many people take only a quick glance at the treatment and then dismiss it as nothing more than rote memorization, the truth is that it is much, much more than that.  ABA therapy is a series of different techniques that are designed to help children with autism learn how to think and understand things in a different manner.  While these children are born without the ability to process certain ideas and concepts, ABA helps to create new neural pathways that can change that fact.  In essence, it can literally help teach children how to learn. ABA therapy is an important part of educating children with autism, and it is one that school systems can afford if they know where to look.  Rather than turning to college courses or expensive seminars that pay per educator, it can be much more beneficial for school districts to instead turn to DVD courses.  These courses are remarkably comprehensive and detailed, and they offer schools the ability to provide training to as many educators as they like for only one price.  The DVDs can provide training for years, and can be easily reviewed whenever a teacher needs a refresher or has a question. In truth, ABA therapy should be offered in all school districts.  School systems make a pledge to provide every student with the best education possible, yet so many students with autism spectrum disorder fall through the cracks every year.  Why are these children being left behind or pushed aside when there are better options out there.  ABA therapy offers educators the ability to truly help these children learn. This is certainly the obligation that schools have towards every child, so how are they able to get by without doing so?  Cost may once have been a good reason why schools could not provide ABA therapy, but with quality DVD courses now available, this is no longer the case.

What Is Applied Behavior Analysis?

If you are a school administrator or the parent of a child with autism, you have likely heard of ABA therapy.  This is widely proven to be the most effective means of teaching behavior and learning skills to children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, yet few people truly understand the concept.  In the next few paragraphs, we will take a look at Applied Behavior Analysis, explaining the overall concept as well as how it works to help teach autistic children to learn and interact in a manner similar to their peers. Before delving into exactly how ABA works, it is important to take a look at the overall concept.  ABA therapy is designed to break down the behavior of a child or student and to literally analyze it.  Large concepts are broken down into steps and children are taught to perform each step individually.  Initially, prompts are given to provoke the right response or behavior, but over time the behavior is performed with decreasing prompts until it becomes automatic.  This is an excellent tool for teaching both large and small concepts and can prove highly beneficial in helping students integrate into a classroom setting. To take a closer look, it is best to use an example.  We will use tooth brushing as an example.  While many children can be shown to remove the cap from the tube, squeeze the paste onto a brush, run water onto it, and brush their teeth, the mind of an autistic child works differently.  Because of this, each of these steps would be a separate lesson, with each behavior being taught individually until the child is able to put them together into a chain of action.  The process is similar for teaching most concepts, but It is also highly effective. As a school administrator or school board member, integrating ABA therapy into your training methods is highly valuable.  Studies show that most autistic children are capable of learning alongside their peers in a classroom setting with proper skills and behavior training.  While large conferences and training clinics can be costly, there are training courses that utilize DVDs and other affordable materials to offer system wide training.  This gives school systems an affordable means of providing their teachers with the educational skills and methods required for teaching children with autism spectrum disorder and can help these educators provide students with a significantly higher quality of education.

Picture Cards Make ABA Therapy More Effective

Applied Behavior Analysis is the most common and most highly recommended form of treatment for children with autism spectrum disorder.  The treatment is done largely through repetition, prompting, and data collection and is used to teach a very wide variety of skills.  From academic and cognitive learning skills to social skills and even the ability to perform basic tasks needed for day to day life, ABA can equip children with vital abilities.  DVD courses offer school systems an excellent way to train educators in ABA, and picture cards provide them with remarkable teaching tools. Picture cards are often an integral part of Applied Behavior Analysis.  For children with autism spectrum disorder, large concepts and the idea of cause and effect are not immediately recognizable.  Instead, concepts must be broken down into individual steps or tasks.  This is true for such acts as tying shoes or brushing teeth and is also true for concepts such as the movement of the sun during the day or rain falling from the clouds.  Picture cards help to break down these tasks and concepts into images that represent each step. By utilizing picture cards, educators can help students recognize the individual elements of a task or concept.  Through repeated testing and teaching, children learn to recognize the pattern required for these tasks until they are able to recognize the entire pattern.  For many children, learning in this manner can help the brain to develop new neural pathways.  These new neurons and brain signals allow the child to naturally learn to see cause and effect and can enable them to learn to recognize larger concepts and patterns.  This is an essential skill for daily life, and ABA enables children to develop this skill and retain it throughout the rest of their lives. There is a great deal of evidence out there to support the fact that ABA is the most appropriate treatment for autism spectrum disorder, especially in small children.  DVD courses are highly effective and offer school systems an affordable way to provide educators with the necessary skills to teach ABA.  Whenever integrating ABA into a classroom environment, educators will find that picture cards may well be the best tools to have at their disposal.  With cards that teach sequences of events, error recognition, and ongoing actions, learning can become much easier for these students.  ABA simply works, making it an ideal treatment for students faced with learning with autism spectrum disorder.

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.

Encouraging ABA Therapy within Schools Can Help Many Children

If you are the parent of a child who has been diagnosed with autism, knowing what to do in regards to their education can be difficult.  For children with moderate to severe cases of autism, the ability to function and perform well in a classroom can certainly be hindered.  Many schools, however, offer no treatment for autism.  Instead, the place children in a classroom with other developmentally disabled children to essentially wait out the school day.  If you find that your child is in this situation, one of the best things that you can do is to encourage the school to offer ABA therapy. ABA, or Applied Behavior Analysis, is a therapy designed to teach kids the very basics of behavior and learning.  A quality ABA program will offer teachers a comprehensive set of tools for understanding autism as well as for teaching children who have been diagnosed with it.  The therapy revolves around a number of principles, all of which have been repeatedly proven by science to be effective.  Of all known autism treatments, ABA is still the only treatment most insurers will cover because it is largely known to be the most beneficial to children. While there is not yet a cure for autism, ABA training can make a significant difference in classroom function and learning ability.  ABA breaks down complex behaviors into smaller chains, teaching them one step at a time so that they can be more easily understood.  Few educators seem to understand that autistic children are highly capable of learning and adapting and that it is only the way that they process information that is truly different.  Studies show that with proper ABA therapy, many kids can learn at equivalent rates to their peers, especially if treatment is started early. If your school does not offer ABA therapy, it is certainly an excellent idea to encourage them to start teaching it.  Schools can find an excellent course that uses DVDs and paper materials to provide all of the information and skills required to teach ABA within the school system.  A single course can be used to train an entire school district, and the costs are designed to be affordable for these educators.  Every child deserves the absolute best opportunity to learn and grow with their peers, and Applied Behavior Analysis therapy is certainly the most effective way to offer them this opportunity.

DVD Training Courses Offer Schools Affordable ABA Training

As a school board administrator, employee, or educator, you likely understand the commitment that a school system makes to provide every student with the best opportunities for education possible.  Unfortunately, however, most school systems find that their levels of funding do not allow them to offer the levels of training required to properly teach students with autism spectrum disorders.  With the number of diagnoses of these disorders rising, however, it is becoming clear that something must be done to improve education for these students.  DVD training courses that teach Applied Behavior Analysis therapy can be an excellent choice. With DVD ABA training courses, you can easily train as many of your staff members as you like in this successful teaching method.  ABA is proven to be the most successful method of teaching children with an autism spectrum disorder.  It makes use of a number of proven techniques such as repetition, prompting, and data analysis to track and teach behaviors and concepts that are impossible for the minds of many autistic children to learn without extra help.  While paying for seminars or personal training for each employee can be expensive, DVD training is a very cost effective solution. When you invest in a high quality DVD training course for your school system, you will find that you get more than a couple of simple how-to videos.  A quality program will offer numerous step-by-step lessons that teach the fundamentals of Applied Behavior Analysis as well as how to implement these techniques properly.  You will also have access to data collection sheets, picture cards, and other important tools used in providing ABA therapy to students with autism spectrum disorder.  These programs are affordable for virtually all school districts and offer many students the best chance at a better education. Students with autism are typically very bright and are capable of learning in a classroom setting surrounded by their peers.  Before they can do this, however, ABA therapy is often needed to help them learn how to take in basic concepts and how to behave properly in a social setting.  Students with autism need to learn differently than other students, and a DVD ABA course is an excellent way to equip your staff members with the skills and expertise needed to ensure that these students are given that opportunity.  With the right training, your staff members can certainly meet the challenge of ensuring that students with autism are able to reach their maximum potential.