ABA in elementary school?

[Anonymous]

My DC was recently diagnosed with level 1 autism. The psychologist stated ABA would be good to pursue. ABA clinics are telling me (before evaluating DC) the sessions are 3-5 days/wk, 2.5-4 hours each session. How do you make that work with school, homework, activities? DC is already in reading tutoring 2x/week and speech 2x/week. I get something will have to give but I still don’t understand how this works. This seems like a lot for a 8 year old. Heck, it seems like a lot for an adult. How do you make it work?

[Anonymous]

Why did the psychologist think ABA is needed? Generally the companies try to get you to commit to a lot of hours but it isn’t always appropriate. Not all kids need ABA especially the higher functioning ones. What is more important is to keep tabs on life skills that they need to learn (ordering in stores, taking transit, cooking, etc) and making sure they learn. ABA can help with that but more like 1-3 hrs/week.

[Anonymous]

(and the answer is, that is too much ABA. I don’t know any parents with older HFA kids who do that many hours.)

[Anonymous]

Thank you. This is helpful. DC’s main concerns are tantrums at home, trouble with transitions, and making friends (well liked at school but no real friends). I am so new to this diagnosis and I want to help DC as much as possible-I’m just not seeing why DC needs 15 hours/wk of ABA. I want to ensure I’m not missing something.

[Anonymous]

ABA is bad

[Anonymous]

You don't. ABA is not bad with the right provider but what is the goal of ABA. You could also try a therapist to work with you to work with him on transition and tantrums, and a social skills class for friends. If he's well liked in school I wouldn't worry about it. Speech and tutoring are far more important. Activities help with social.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you. This is helpful. DC’s main concerns are tantrums at home, trouble with transitions, and making friends (well liked at school but no real friends). I am so new to this diagnosis and I want to help DC as much as possible-I’m just not seeing why DC needs 15 hours/wk of ABA. I want to ensure I’m not missing something.

I’d try PCIT for tantrums first.

[Anonymous]

I am dealing with this now and my child is in preschool. We were told DC has 25 treatment hours and given a schedule for after school sessions at home for several hours each day. How is a child supposed to go to school all day and come home and do several hours of ABA??? We’re not doing it and I’m looking for other ways to do ABA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am dealing with this now and my child is in preschool. We were told DC has 25 treatment hours and given a schedule for after school sessions at home for several hours each day. How is a child supposed to go to school all day and come home and do several hours of ABA??? We’re not doing it and I’m looking for other ways to do ABA.

What other ways did you have in mind?

[Anonymous]

Yeah, OP, that many hours is bananas for a high functioning autistic child. ABA providers do this because it's an absolute cash cow--in most states insurance companies are LEGALLY REQUIRED to cover services for autism, and ABA companies absolutely take advantage.

Trust your gut. Push back and only do the number of hours that works for your family.

We do just one hour of ABA-type therapy every other week, but do some other things (pragmatic speech, a bit of OT) weekly.

Experimentation is the name of the game.

[Anonymous]

My son was recommended ABA 15 -20 hours/week at year 3, and I DID NOT understand why he needs so many hours. I could have sent ABA to daycare center, but I didn't think he needed that. They told me that we could do ABA on weekends, and I did not want to spend family time on therapy. My son was in daycare 8am to 5:30pm at daycare with 1x OT & 1x ST back then. At the end, I did not use ABA service.

If they let me use them for 1-2 hours per week, I would definitely have used ABA services. They said at minimum 10 hours or something per week.

[Anonymous]

Is there an alternate “therapy” we could use? Is ABA the gold standard? One place told me DC is late to start it, at age 8. I guess what I’m saying is DC’s autism has somewhat flown under the radar this whole time so it can’t be severe.. While I totally agree with the diagnosis, I also tend to think DC doesn’t need as much support as the ABA clinics are suggesting. Are there other routes/programs we could pursue? 15 hours/week of ABA just won’t work for the family…and especially for DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there an alternate “therapy” we could use? Is ABA the gold standard? One place told me DC is late to start it, at age 8. I guess what I’m saying is DC’s autism has somewhat flown under the radar this whole time so it can’t be severe.. While I totally agree with the diagnosis, I also tend to think DC doesn’t need as much support as the ABA clinics are suggesting. Are there other routes/programs we could pursue? 15 hours/week of ABA just won’t work for the family…and especially for DC.

From your OP it sounds like he already has a busy schedule with the tutoring and speech, so it might be tough to add more. But alternatives to ABA are OT, speech therapy focusing on pragmatic language, and social skills classes.

We have a 5 yo with ASD1 and we do one hour weekly of OT with a therapist with a lot of experience with autism. We also do a weekly social skills class led by SLPs that uses the Social Thinking curricula (you may want to look into Superheroes Social Skills as well, I think it has a stronger parent component which might make it more effective - we are looking at this for the future).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there an alternate “therapy” we could use? Is ABA the gold standard? One place told me DC is late to start it, at age 8. I guess what I’m saying is DC’s autism has somewhat flown under the radar this whole time so it can’t be severe.. While I totally agree with the diagnosis, I also tend to think DC doesn’t need as much support as the ABA clinics are suggesting. Are there other routes/programs we could pursue? 15 hours/week of ABA just won’t work for the family…and especially for DC.

If you’re on the fence about it then I would encourage you to purse an ABA assessment. This will not take more than a few hours and will give you more information to make a well-informed decision for your child and family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, OP, that many hours is bananas for a high functioning autistic child. ABA providers do this because it's an absolute cash cow--in most states insurance companies are LEGALLY REQUIRED to cover services for autism, and ABA companies absolutely take advantage.

Trust your gut. Push back and only do the number of hours that works for your family.

We do just one hour of ABA-type therapy every other week, but do some other things (pragmatic speech, a bit of OT) weekly.

Experimentation is the name of the game.

Agree. And it’s unfortunate because an ABA type approach for higher functioning kids could be really helpful to teach life skills. But forcing an 8 yr old to do 3 hrs of ABA after school is inappropriate and basically a type of overly restrictive environment.