How long for ABA therapy? Can short-term treatment work?

[Anonymous]

I'm wondering if anyone has done ABA therapy with their child for a shorter amount of time (2 months/10 hrs a week) and had success? I won't be able to switch to an insurance company that covers it until Nov., and I'm wondering if doing 2 months worth right now would be worth it (that's all I can afford right now). Opinions?

[Anonymous]

Doesn't your answer depend on how much you can invest at home with the implementation of useful strategies?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't your answer depend on how much you can invest at home with the implementation of useful strategies?

I don't know...does it?

[Anonymous]

Any amount of therapy is useful. Suggest attending the sessions and learning the techniques to work with your child yourself until you have the insurance.

[Anonymous]

It depends on your child's needs, the therapists and your family style. We could not find an ABA therapist for more than a few hours a week. We gave it a try but found it very basic and not worth it for us. We stuck with more specialized services. I can see where it would be helpful with behavioral and other issues but for speech, OT, PT issues, I found direct services better.

[Anonymous]

What do you mean by "does it work?" What is your goal?
Yes, any amount of ABA will help your child learn skills. But contrary to what people have heard, it will not "cure" your child or make them look "normal" if you do "enough" of it. But it will teach them specific skills in a systematic way, which is all to the good! Don't feel guilty about "only" being able to do it short term.
And depending on the age of your child, the school system could/should be providing ABA!

[Anonymous]

Yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you mean by "does it work?" What is your goal?
Yes, any amount of ABA will help your child learn skills. But contrary to what people have heard, it will not "cure" your child or make them look "normal" if you do "enough" of it. But it will teach them specific skills in a systematic way, which is all to the good! Don't feel guilty about "only" being able to do it short term.
And depending on the age of your child, the school system could/should be providing ABA!

This is the OP again. Sorry, to clarify, what I meant was because ABA (from what I've read) relies on a strong relationship between provider and child, I was wondering if 2 months would be worth it....or if that's just not enough time for the therapy to make a difference. It's going to be about $4800 for 2 months out of pocket, so if doing it short term doesn't make sense in terms of ABA, I was hesitant to move forward with it. DC is in speech and OT now...so this would be supplemental.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you mean by "does it work?" What is your goal?
Yes, any amount of ABA will help your child learn skills. But contrary to what people have heard, it will not "cure" your child or make them look "normal" if you do "enough" of it. But it will teach them specific skills in a systematic way, which is all to the good! Don't feel guilty about "only" being able to do it short term.
And depending on the age of your child, the school system could/should be providing ABA!

It will for a small percentage of kids, especially young ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any amount of therapy is useful. Suggest attending the sessions and learning the techniques to work with your child yourself until you have the insurance.

+1 Especially the naturalistic methods can be done by parents, you just integrate them in your day-to-day life. It has to become the new way of doing things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do you mean by "does it work?" What is your goal?
Yes, any amount of ABA will help your child learn skills. But contrary to what people have heard, it will not "cure" your child or make them look "normal" if you do "enough" of it. But it will teach them specific skills in a systematic way, which is all to the good! Don't feel guilty about "only" being able to do it short term.
And depending on the age of your child, the school system could/should be providing ABA!

This is the OP again. Sorry, to clarify, what I meant was because ABA (from what I've read) relies on a strong relationship between provider and child, I was wondering if 2 months would be worth it....or if that's just not enough time for the therapy to make a difference. It's going to be about $4800 for 2 months out of pocket, so if doing it short term doesn't make sense in terms of ABA, I was hesitant to move forward with it. DC is in speech and OT now...so this would be supplemental.

What is the specific issues. We are just in speech and OT. We do speech several times a week and OT once a week. If it is primarily a speech issue and you can handle your child behaviorally I'd put the money into more speech. The ABA therapist really tried hard and I liked her BUT her speech assistance was very simplistic vs. the actual speech therapy and we got far more out of it. If you are looking for specific behavioral issues, then ABA is the way to go. If it is just speech and we have a significant delay, I will say that as the speech is very very very slowly coming in, everything else is coming so separate out the speech related behaviors that are based off of lack of speech vs. other issues. If you have mid-moderate autism, I would absolutely do it. Otherwise, increase the speech therapy. I wouldn't pay out for ABA but I would speech.

[Anonymous]

Is ABA helpful for young children (pre-K) not on the spectrum but ADHD diagnosed (yes, very conclusive but several reputable sources and intensive evaluative processes)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is ABA helpful for young children (pre-K) not on the spectrum but ADHD diagnosed (yes, very conclusive but several reputable sources and intensive evaluative processes)?

should be "by several..."

[Anonymous]

You may do better with a behavior therapist who can help you develop a parent-led ABA program. Find someone to train you on how to train and shape your child's behavior using behavior therapy. This is what we've done with my son and it's worked wonders.

[Anonymous]

I did an ABA program for my DS for about that number of hours for 3 months and did see good gains. He had some life skills that he needed to work on and he responded really well to the ABA and made progress during that short time. So if you have some specific goals and your child responds well (and you are consistent outside of the therapy hours) it can be worth it. The tricky part is you never know how a child will respond, for some children progress is slow.