Help Children With Autism

When a parent gets a diagnosis of Autism or Pervasive Development Disorder (PDD) it can almost feel like a death sentence. How will your child grow up and be productive in society? What will you tell your other children or other family members? Autism, although it seems detrimental, can improve with the right kind of therapy. Over time, intensive behavioral therapy can ameliorate the signs of Autism and allow your child a meaningful life they deserve.

Applied Behavior Analysis Therapy

The only proven method to help treat children with Autism is Applied Behavior Analysis Therapy, otherwise known as ABA. ABA therapy is a form on intensive behavior therapy that relies heavily on reinforcement and behavior learning principles. This helps children with autism learn by breaking skills down into easy to learn tasks and using these tasks to build a repertoire of skills such as imitation, attention, play, social skills, self-help skills and pre-academic skills. As children with Autism learn skills that typical children gain naturally, therapy becomes more natural and focussed on getting the child ready for school and peers. The ultimate goal is to have children with Autism learn from their environment, peers and be ready for learning in a school environment.

Simple Behavioral Principles Used In ABA Therapy

When teaching this special population using ABA therapy, we use reinforcement to increase behaviors and extinction and redirection to decrease behaviors. Children soon learn that if they do something correctly, mom or dad or a therapist will clap and hug and tickle the child. Similarly, when children engage in inappropriate behavior like tantrumming, a parent or therapist will continue with the task at hand and ignore the tantrumming and redirect to appropriate behavior. Over time children with Autism enjoy therapy and learn many skills to help them play with peers and learn at school.

How Do We Teach Skills To Children With Autism?

Within an ABA program, there many ways we teach skills and one way is Discrete Trial Teaching. Discrete Trial teaching works by presenting an instruction once, waiting for a response from the child, and delivering a consequence to the response. Prompting, or assistance, is used for teaching new skills and helps the child achieve a correct response so that reinforcement can be delivered. This form of teaching, Discrete Trial Teaching, is proven to be effective in maximizing learning in children with Autism.

If you get a diagnosis of Autism, invest in researching about ABA and ABA principles. You will see improvement in time and it will help your child in the long run.