Parent BCBA's

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

Here is an article that was in the NY times Education section yesterday. I

have published on autism mothers who become Behavior Analysts

(_http://verbalbehaviorapproach.com/mom_bcba.pdf_

(http://verbalbehaviorapproach.com/mom_bcba.pdf) ) and am pursuing this line of

research in my doctoral program. Please

contact me privately if you are a parent of a child with autism who is a

BCBA (or BCaBA) or if you are a parent and currently pursuing ABA

education/certification.

______________________

Lynch Barbera, RN, MSN, BCBA

_www.vbapproach.com_ (http://www.vbapproach.com)

April 20, 2008

Continuing Education

A Master’s in Self-Help

By JANE GROSS

LAURIE DUDDY thought she was on top of things when her toddlers, Tommy

and , were diagnosed with severe autism. She knew that early,

intensive therapy was the twins’ best hope of learning simple skills,

acquiring language and mastering out-of-control behavior.

So at great financial sacrifice, she hired certified therapists to work

with them privately for 40 hours a week using applied behavioral

analysis (A.B.A.), the therapy of choice for the growing ranks of

children with autism. She moved from district to district, seeking the

best educational services when they reached school age, and eventually

joined a group of parents in starting a private school of their own

that would offer state-of-the-art behavioral treatments.

Then, more by coincidence than design, she met Sharon Reeve, a

consultant for New Jersey school districts who also supervised home

programs for families. Dr. Reeve was gearing up to pitch a graduate

program in A.B.A. to Caldwell College, and she welcomed an invitation

from Ms. Duddy to evaluate her two boys’ therapy.

“When she left, I was devastated,†Ms. Duddy said. The twins were not

being taught play or social skills, Dr. Reeve had told her; nor was

“the science being practiced the way it should be practiced.â€

Ms. Duddy was recounting her frustration from the student lounge at

Caldwell College, where she is working toward an advanced degree in

A.B.A. — to “steer the ship better†for her children, now 8.

Of the 100 students in Dr. Reeve’s three-year-old program, 17 are

parents of children with autism or related disorders. Like Ms. Duddy,

they have decided that completing a master’s degree — and investing

some $25,500 in tuition — is worth it to help their children. Along the

way, most have been inspired to begin new careers. Ms. Duddy hopes to

train therapists once her own education is complete.

In most states, a generic special education degree is sufficient to

treat children with autism and to use the particular techniques of

A.B.A., the only therapy for the disorder with proven results in

peer-reviewed research. But many colleges and universities now offer

specialized degrees in A.B.A. Graduate programs are offered at

Northeastern University in Boston, Florida State University in

Tallahassee, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, the

University of land in Baltimore County and California State

University in Los Angeles, to name a few. Administrators at several of

the programs say they, too, have parents of autistic children among

their students.

Caldwell’s graduate program is the only one of its kind in New Jersey,

a state known for pioneering autism education and advocacy. New Jersey

is home to the Princeton Child Development Institute and its many

offspring, including a host of small private schools founded by parents

committed to A.B.A. techniques. The state is thus a magnet for families

from out of state looking for the best services for their children.

Because of this migration, New Jersey has the highest incidence of

autism in the United States: 1 in 94 children versus 1 in 150

nationwide, according to federal studies. The supply of behavioral

therapists has not kept up with demand, leading to waiting lists at

private schools, an insufficient number of public school programs and

desperate families outbidding one another for private instructors.

The Caldwell parents, all but one of them mothers, have firsthand

experience advocating for services, battling recalcitrant school

districts, monitoring what goes on at school and managing home programs

to supplement classroom instruction.

Many have seen their marriages crumble under the stress; moved multiple

times to find a district that can educate their child or pay for an

out-of-district placement; and run up staggering debts paying for

private school, in-home therapists and lawyers versed in the rights of

disabled children to a free and appropriate education.

In the classrooms at Caldwell, students study the principles of

behavioral learning: to break tasks into their component parts, to

reinforce success with tangible rewards like pretzels and intangible

ones like praise, to meticulously chart progress, to make course

corrections that foster what works and to generalize skills mastered in

a controlled classroom for the messier circumstances of everyday life.

They study language and social deficits — the hallmarks of autism

spectrum disorder — as well as challenging behaviors common to autistic

children, like hand flapping, tantrums or self-injury. They also do the

equivalent of student teaching in New Jersey’s private schools and in

dedicated public-school programs for autistic children.

At Garden Academy in West Orange, 8 of 15 therapists and aides are

Caldwell students. Among them is Rader, a 29-year-old single

mother who left the Air Force and took a high-paying job with a defense

contractor to pay the legal bills incurred in getting her autistic

11-year-old son the services he needed.

Now, with the legal battles resolved, she is making another career

change. Ms. Rader works at Garden Academy during the week, runs home

programs for private clients over the weekend, goes to school at night

and does her homework when her son is sleeping. It is an exhausting

enterprise.

As her son gets older, she hopes to shift her personal and professional

focus to adolescents and adults with autism.

The Garden Academy, which opened in 2006, has 17 students 3 to 8 years

old. They also have a waiting list of 80 — but not enough therapists to

expand, says Sidener, the school’s director. Mr. Sidener’s goal

is 24 students. “It’s a seller’s market for A.B.A. therapists,†he

says.

Sixteen other Caldwell students, including Ms. Duddy, work in the

Bernards Township public school district.

Carole Deitchman, a former advertising art director and the mother of a

20-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome, teaches social skills to children

like her son, who have boundless academic ability but no understanding

of interpersonal niceties.

One recent afternoon, she instructed a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old,

both in mainstream classrooms for the first time, on the rudiments of

conversation.

Look at the other person when you speak, Ms. Deitchman urged. Then ask

a question, wait for an answer, ask another question and say something

at the end.

The boys’ chitchat, while stiff and halting, fit the formula:

“Hi, how are you?â€

“Fine, how are you?â€

“What did you do today?â€

“I played a game.â€

“What game?â€

“It’s called Candy Land.â€

“I don’t have Candy Land yet.â€

Perfect. Ms. Deitchman beamed and rewarded the boys with high fives and

green smiley-face stickers.

Most of the parents studying at Caldwell have areas of professional

interest related to their own particular tribulations and fears.

e Torriero, who has a 15-year-old son, hopes to run recreational

and cultural programs for autistic teenagers. Delia O’Mahony, whose son

is now 22, is interested in adult services, since children like hers

“fall off a cliff†when they are past school age. , who used

all her skills as a lawyer to get her two sons properly diagnosed and

treated — each has a different variation of autism spectrum disorder —

does private consulting for families and schools as she works toward

her master’s degree. She hopes Caldwell will add a doctoral program,

too.

Once a liberal-arts school for “Catholic women of modest means,â€

Caldwell is now a coeducational institution with 1,032 undergraduates

and 625 graduate students, mostly from New Jersey. The college focuses

on career preparation, especially in medical and educational

specialties.

Sharon Reeve, an associate professor of education, started the graduate

program with her husband, , who is now chairman of the

psychology department. They met as doctoral candidates at Queens

College, where both were doing basic research in behavioral analysis;

she was studying pigeons in a laboratory. One day, a colleague dragged

her to a school for autistic children. She knew at once, she says, that

the classroom application of applied behavioral analysis was far more

compelling than the research she was doing with her pigeons.

As final exams approached last semester, a class taught by

Reeve reviewed how to evaluate treatments based on data, not anecdote.

He frequently turned to Ms. to share her personal experiences.

By her own account, Ms. has tried just about everything, from

A.B.A., which many families find harsh and robotic, to kinder and

gentler programs with little data to support effectiveness, to special

diets and detoxification. Each consumes time and money, Ms. said,

telling her fellow students, as she does the parents she works with,

that trying a little bit of everything is tempting but not necessarily

wise.

“It’s not what looks good, it’s what works,†Ms. said. “And

every

hour spent doing X is time lost for Y.â€

She also laments the imperfect choices available when moving from a

home program, usually reserved for toddlers, to a school setting as

children get older. Over the years, Ms. said, she tried a public

school classroom for the handicapped, an integrated private school, a

mainstream parochial school with a “shadow†for her sons and a school

for children with learning disabilities.

“Could it be better?†she asked. “Absolutely. Could it be worse?

Absolutely. I did a lot of things right and many wrong. I know what was

missing for us. And what I’d like to do for other people is help plug

the holes.â€

Jane Gross is a national reporter for The Times

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