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 with ABA Therapy Teaches Positive Behaviors

While there is no doubt that ABA therapy is the most widely accepted and recommended form of treatment for children with autism spectrum disorder, there are varying reports from parents as to how effective it really is.  Scientific studies from leading government and independent agencies show that it is the most effective form of treatment, yet many parents have trouble.  So what is the discrepancy?  Often it is the form of reinforcement used in conjunction with the therapy. In order to understand the importance of reinforcement, it is necessary to understand that the brain of a child with autism does not differentiate between positive and negative attention.  In other words, if you respond to a negative behavior with scolding or other punishment, all your child will really know is that their behavior was rewarded with attention.  This will only serve to facilitate a further pattern of negative behavior.  Negative reinforcement is only seen as negative to the person offering it.  That is why so many school systems get no result when sending autistic students in for disciplinary action. Instead of feeling punished, they have received the attention they were looking for. On the other hand, positive reinforcement can be an excellent teaching tool for kids with ASD.  Positive reinforcement is an important part of proper administration of ABA therapy.  Using this form of reinforcement, children who provide an appropriate response or behavior are met with praise, a comforting touch, or some other form or reward.  Rather than punishment, negative or inappropriate responses are met with no reaction at all.  The key is to help the child understand that negative behaviors will go entirely unnoticed and will offer no chance of reward.  Unless the child is in danger, it is important not to react to negative behaviors. Positive reinforcement is an excellent tool and a recommended part of ABA therapy.  When you undergo training to provide your child or your students with ABA therapy, you want them to be able to get the most benefit possible.  This means working to not only help them understand concepts and ideas, but behaviors as well.  Positive reinforcement is an integral part of behavioral training for children with autism spectrum disorder and it can help ensure that other aspects of ABA therapy are more effective as well.  When properly utilized, you will find that positive reinforcement leads to natural patterns of positive behavior as well.

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.

Picture Cards Make ABA Therapy More Effective

ABA therapy is largely recognized as the most effective and beneficial form of treatment for children who suffer from autism spectrum disorder.  The treatment is shown to help teach a variety of skills, from motor skills to social and academic skills.  More importantly, research shows that these skills are carried with these children for the rest of their lives, helping them not only in school, but as they transition and make their way into the real world as adults.  One of the best tools used in ABA therapy is picture cards. One of the most basic elements of Applied Behavior Analysis therapy is the understanding that the minds of autistic children process information differently.  Ideas, sequences, and concepts are not as easy for these children to understand.  While most kids can watch a series of events unfold and put together cause and effect, it does not work the same way for kids with autism spectrum disorders.  Instead, they must be able to see the process step by step and to learn specifically what happens.  Over time, however, this repeated learning helps them develop the ability to recognize sequences and concepts. Picture cards can be a major factor in teaching these elements to autistic children.  These cards can show a series of events that must be put into order, a standard image with a single detail that is out of place, or even a concept.  The cards help the children make a visual connection to different ideas and concepts.  Picture cards can also be used to help teach language and expression.  Cards with varied scenes and images can be used in a variety of ways, including enabling educators to ask general questions to help the child understand what is happening in the picture. There is no doubt that ABA therapy is effective, and there is also no doubt that picture cards can help it work even better.  When utilized with proper discrete teaching trials and as part of a standard ABA curriculum, these cards can offer teachers a much better way to help students understand ideas and concepts.  Learning can be a very attainable goal for students with autism spectrum disorder, and offering the tools and supplements needed to make it easier can greatly improve the results.  ABA has been proven to help many kids learn to function in a standard classroom, and for many of them, picture cards have helped to pave the way.

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.

Picture Cards and Flash Cards Make ABA Therapy More Effective

  As many parents of autistic children know, ABA Therapy is the only treatment that is proven effective for the treatment of ASD.  The only treatment covered by most insurers and offered by most schools, ABA Training works to rewire the neurons in a childís brain, helping them to create pathways that are present in the brains of most children and allowing them the ability to communicate and learn in much the same manner as their peers, and things such as pictures help to make this more effective.   Autistic children are remarkably bright.  One of the things that make them different, however, is that they do not possess the same ability to express themselves as many people.  They also learn differently, needing to be shown things that other children simply pick up by observing their peers.  ABA Therapy works to teach children these fundamentals of behavior and learning, and pictures are an excellent tool in helping to achieve this goal.   While most children quickly pick up on concepts by observing them, children with ASD need to understand things a bit more clearly.  For example, while most children inherently understand thunderstorms in their most basic form, a child with ASD will need to be taught about the sky and water and clouds and rain before the concept of a thunderstorm can be understood.  ABA Therapy utilizes pictures and flash cards to help teach children basic concepts.   There are many applications of picture cards in ABA Therapy.  In addition to helping to teach familiar concepts, they can be used to help teach children to identify details that are wrong or out of place, such as shoes on a cat or a tree in the sky.  Flash cards can teach ideas such as a sunset by showing the sun in each phase, showing the progression from beginning to end and giving the child an understanding of how the process works.   In all, flash cards are a valuable part of ABA Training.  While ABA Therapy as a whole is the most successful method of treating ASD, it is through the utilization of visual aids such as flash cards that many children see the most benefit.  Flash cards teach children with ASD concepts that many people take for granted.  It is through the use of these methods that ABA is able to offer these children the hope of a bright future, free from many of the symptoms of ASD.

Christy Butch is the Mother of a 6 year old with autism and the founder of Maximum Potential Group.http://www.maximumpotentialkids.com  &  http://www.abatrainingcourse.com

 

Imitation through ABA Therapy Teaches Children to Learn

For most parents, the idea of teaching a child to learn is ridiculous.  Parents who have never had a child with an autism spectrum disorder often assume that all children are born capable of learning from the world around them with ease.  The truth is that ABA Therapy is a vital part of the learning process for children with autism, who are born without the ability to imitate and learn from all that they see.   Many of the fundamental parts of child developed are learned innately for most children.  As they see their peers and other people doing certain things, they simply learn and adopt these principles and behaviors.  Children with autism do not know how to imitate and thus how to infer and learn from the behaviors of others.  ABA Therapy uses specialized techniques to teach children to imitate behaviors and actions.  By using a system of repetitions and reinforcements, children are literally taught how to learn.   The way ABA Therapy works is by rewiring the parts of the brain responsible for learning.  These neural highways are often underdeveloped or developed differently in children with autism spectrum disorders.  Due to the remarkable adaptability of the human brain, however, ABA Therapy is able to literally alter these pathways, creating new neurons and pathways that allow these children to learn and infer much like their peers.   Whoever coined the saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery certainly captured the feeling of any parents who have an autistic child.  While many parents do not even notice when their child picks up a new character trait from the outside world, these parents celebrate it as a milestone.  For these parents, imitation is a wonderful feeling, something to truly be cherished.   ABA Therapy is not a cure for autism, and no known cure exists.  What ABA does offer, however, is a chance for recovery.  Many children with autism spectrum disorders have used ABA Therapy to help them lead completely typical lives, virtually indistinguishable from their peers.  Studies show that these skills follow the children well into adulthood and their working lives.  ABA Therapy has been the most popular and common treatment for autism for decades and the simple principle of teaching imitation has created thousands of success stories by truly teaching children how to learn.  With a track record like that it is easy to see why ABA is still the most commonly recommended treatment by doctors, parents, and school systems alike.

Christy Butch is the Mother of a 6 year old with autism and the founder of Maximum Potential Group. http://www.maximumpotentialkids.com  &  http://www.abatrainingcourse.com

How ABA Therapy Doesn ' t Stop When School Starts

  As many parents of a child with an Autism Spectrum Disorder know, ABA Therapy, when started early, has a primary goal of readying children for school by the time they are the appropriate age for kindergarten.  Early intervention therapy is designed to help prepare children with the learning and behavior skills they need to interact in a classroom of their peers.  This is a shared goal between both clinical and home ABA Training courses.  What many parents do not know, however, is that ABA does not stop when their child enters school.   ABA Therapy is ongoing.  While a child may not always need forty or more hours a week or more of intensive ABA Training, a routine is typically necessary even after enrollment in school.  For this reason, it is important for parents and school teachers and counselors to be in contact before school begins and to maintain close communication.  With good communication, parents and schools can synchronize curriculums and goals and work to help provide children the best education possible.  By working together to create a cohesive team, they can also make the transition into a new learning environment less stressful and traumatic and more exciting.   ABA Therapy at home should be synchronized with what the child is dealing with at school.  Lessons between school ABA Training providers and parents should run parallel, helping to keep the child focused and to help them learn quickly.  Well administered ABA Therapy can truly help children excel in school, not only keeping them on par with their peers but in many instances helping them to excel.   ABA Training is not solely designed to prepare a child for school.  The behaviors and learning methods learned through ABA Therapy are designed to carry a child throughout their lifetime.  This will help the child to not only excel in school, but to thrive in social situations and to prepare them for life in the working world when school is finished.  Studies have followed early participants in ABA Therapy into adulthood and have found that results of the training carry fully into these later years.  This helps to reaffirm the knowledge that it is the most successful treatment known for autism.   In short, ABA Therapy is an ongoing process.  While much of ABA Training occurs before school age in many children, the methods and teaching continue well after this period.  With proper training and effective teaching methods, ABA can truly help children prepare for life and to succeed not just academically, but in social and emotional settings as well.

Christy Butch is the Mother of a 6 year old with autism and the founder of Maximum Potential Group.http://www.maximumpotentialkids.com  &  http://www.abatrainingcourse.com

 

Home ABA Therapy Can Work for Your Child

Many parents of autistic children feel torn in their approach to treating their child.  Often a lack of insurance coverage prevents them from being able to hire an ABA Training provider.  While home ABA Therapy is an option, many parents feel unqualified and worry that they may not be well suited to teach their children.  While not all parents are able to teach their children using ABA Training methods, the truth is that a great many parents can use this method effectively.  It requires no degree or special certification, only a willingness to stick to a curriculum and a devotion to providing your child the best possible hope for recovery.   ABA Training at home doesnít require a special degree, but it does require dedication.  Many parents purchase an ABA Training program, but when faced with questions find themselves stuck with no one to talk to.  That is why it is important for people who offer quality ABA Therapy programs to offer parents a way to take to specialized behaviorists and ABA providers.  When it comes to ABA and teaching children, having all the right information is very important.  With access to specialists who can help you develop a curriculum without the need to pay an ongoing fee for their services, parents find themselves in a position to finally provide their children with the quality of ABA Training that they deserve.   Another way that many parents find to make home ABA Therapy work is to seek training methods that are very well developed and scientifically sound rather than simply looking for an inexpensive alternative.  It is possible to find an affordable ABA program that is in-depth and truly designed to help your children reach their maximum potential.  Such programs are quite comprehensive and cover everything from behavioral reactions and data collection to fundamentals such as prompting, reinforcement, and discrete trial teaching.  These programs also cover all aspects of teaching, from helping children to understand common ongoing actions to helping them develop the ability to look at a picture and easily determine things that are out of place.  All of this serves to help them learn vital critical thinking skills.   In short, home ABA Therapy can be as successful as ABA Training in a therapistís office or other setting.  What is most important is what is being taught and that the teaching methods follow protocol.  When these things are happening, a home environment may actually prove more comfortable for a child and help to facilitate the childís transition into teaching with greater ease.  Home ABA Therapy enables all parents a chance to equip their children with the skill necessary for school and the outside world, and with the right course parents truly have the ability to give their children the lives they always wished for them.

Christy Butch is the Mother of a 6 year old with autism and the founder of Maximum Potential Group. http://www.maximumpotentialkids.com  &  http://www.abatrainingcourse.com

Home ABA Therapy Can Be Inexpensive and Effective

  Many parents of a child with ASD find themselves caught in a struggle between finances and what they would like to do for their child.  While some parents find that their insurance will cover intensive ABA Therapy, a growing number of parents find themselves underinsured or uninsured.  For these parents, finding treatment for their child at an early and formative age can be exceptionally difficult.  For parents struggling with this, or even simply for parents looking for a more hands on approach to their childís treatment, home ABA Training may offer a solution.   Parents should know that ABA Training is an intensive process, requiring 40 or more hours a week of training.  They should also know that in the beginning, many children do not wish a sudden change in routine, which can cause crying, screaming, or even self injurious behavior.  It is important to follow ABA protocol and to not recognize these behaviors unless the child is in danger, as the training will stop these behaviors but only if they are not rewarded with attention.  This fact can be hard for many parents, and the inability to maintain this aspect of therapy can reduce success rates for home treatment, but with proper training and technique, home ABA Training can be as successful as training sought anywhere else.   While stressful for any child at first, ABA Therapy at home can also be comforting.  Familiar faces, voices, and surroundings often help children to settle into the process sooner.  This means a shorter period of unease for your child and more time to actually teach.   Home ABA Therapy requires as much devotion as therapy in a professional setting.  Proper training is required, but can be purchased for far less than professional ABA Therapy and will ongoing support from teachers and other parents.  Home ABA Therapy is designed to provide an alternative not only for parents who could not afford standard ABA Training, but for those who were dissatisfied with other providers or who simply want to help their children learn in a comfortable environment.   Home ABA Training is an excellent option.  Many parents and children alike find that it helps to better facilitate the learning process by providing a comforting and familiar environment.  While parents should understand that the process may be uncomfortable at first, it often transitions quickly into a positive learning environment.  With home ABA Therapy, you can help prepare your child for school while experiencing the joy of witnessing so many landmark events in your childís life as you watch them grow from quiet and introverted children into kids that want nothing more than to smile, laugh, play, and just be children.

Christy Butch is the Mother of a 6 year old with autism and the founder of Maximum Potential Group.http://www.maximumpotentialkids.com  &  http://www.abatrainingcourse.com