ABA therapy in school and home programs

[Guest guest]

I was curious to know what folks' experiences have been with ABA therapy for

their children. My son, , initially received a few hours a week of ABA last

yr. (at 3 yrs. old) at the private school he attends. It's a full day

program-most of the students have Down Syndrome, only and another boy

(who is 8 yrs. old) are dually diagnosed. receives OT,PT, and speech

through the therapists at school, as well as sensory integration sessions, and

exposure to all of the activities that go on in a pre-school, hence the reason

why he is in school from 9am to 3 pm every day. The ABA component is provided by

our school district. has a full-time one-on-one aide who is ABA trained

and administers his discrete trials. She is supervised by the district's

behavioral consultant(who comes to school every week for 1-2 hours) to oversee

how 's trials/programs are being run. is up to 3 trials per day, plus

the aide reinforces the behavioral strategies throughout the day. Overall,

is making good progress with the ABA program-there are trials that he has

successfully completed and others that require a lot more time.

I recently met with the behavioral consultant and she suggested we may want to

consider more therapy for , like directed play therapy or additional ABA

at home.

I feel that already has 30 hours of school/therapy per week and at 4 years

old this is a full schedule, however, I certainly don't want to hold him back

from getting more of what he could benefit from. During the week would be

difficult, because by the time he gets off the bus from school and has a snack

it's after 4PM- a long day and he is tired- so maybe Saturdays would be an

option. What do you think? So much of what I have read applies to children with

autism only and those home-based programs run anywhere from 40 to 60 hours per

week. I'm not aware of any literature that discusses ABA therapy in the dual

diagnosis population.

In all honesty, could probably benefit from more SP,OT,and PT too, as he

is very delayed in these areas, but there is only so much time, energy, and

maybe developmentally, he is just not ready.

I struggle so much with ( as I'm sure many of you do too) with creating the

right balance of therapy/education or whatever else would be of benefit, with

just having some time off to relax and do fun things!

Your experience and input is so valuable. Thank you for listening to me ramble.

Sometimes our childrens' needs can be very overwhelming to manage- it has been

one of those weeks. I especially feel it because is our only child and my

husband, as much as he loves , doesn't seem to fully understand the big

picture and thinks I worry to much.

Humph- easy for him to say when he works approx. 60 hours per week and basically

sees only on the weekends.

Best,

Mom to , 4yrs. old

DS/PDD-NOS