Reply to ABA for HFA 4.5-year-old

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[quote=Anonymous]No one has ever suggested ABA for our HFA kid, diagnosed at 5 -- and like yours great with adults, precocious self-taught reader, etc..  Honestly his patience for the therapy he clearly needs, like OT for handwriting and PT to learn to run and catch, is limited.  And for the social stuff, his deficits are too subtle to be addressed in any one-on-one therapy with an adult, or even a highly structured social skills group.  He needs active coaching on and before the playground, in contexts he actually cares about.

My view, which I've expressed here before, is that behaviorism has its place--in the correcting of behavior.  So if your kid is hurting himself or others, do what you have to do.  But I am very skeptical that these techniques have anything really to offer a smart HFA kid, who is not acting in some intolerably dangerous way.  You cannot change someone's neurology with a reward mechanism.  You can certainly get them to display certain behaviors.  Hell, you can make a killer whale jump over a pole if you are persistent about it.  But that is not a good use of the whale's time.  And it certainly is not a good use of your time and your bright, somewhat unusual, child's time.  If you want to use rewards to encourage him to try new foods or whatever, you don't need some expensive therapist.  Just my 2 cents.[/quote]

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