ABA Strikes Again

This blog is mainly about clever pills and potions that may improve some people’s autism, but I do like to remind people of the power of behavioral interventions.

Monty, aged 11 with ASD, has had three behavioral consultants since we began his home ABA program when he was aged about four.  Since there are no ABA consultants in our part of the world, we have to fly them in.  We have our local therapists/assistants, who then work with some support from the foreign consultant.  The net result is a mixture of approaches, which admittedly becomes more “ABA” when the consultant comes to visit.  We now have a vast collection of ABA books, manuals and training materials.

Last week our excellent American-Greek behavioral consultant came for a two day visit and so it was a good opportunity to look at progress.

Monty went to the airport to wait for her and then we went home for some discussions and Monty showed off his piano playing.  Later everyone went out to a pizza restaurant; all went well and Monty quietly devoured his full-sized margarita pizza.

The next day the consultant went to school with Monty and his assistant, to see how things are handled there.  The last time she came, she pointed out that there was little interaction with the other kids.  Now things are much better in that area.  In class, she noted than he can now sit attentively and follow much of what the class teacher is saying/doing.

Then back home to see Monty’s afternoon home program with his other assistant.

Another school visit the next day and the visit was over.  Now we wait to find the suggested items to work on at home, as we work our way through one of the ABA bibles, which in our case is:-

Behavioral Intervention for Young Children with Autism

We have lots of other material, but we still often use this book.

Academically and socially we have moved on a fair way since the last visit.  Back home our consultant runs more intensive clinic-based ABA programs and she was wondering out loud how come we are making all this progress.

“Our other kids have six times as much intervention”; I am not sure exactly how the six figure was picked, but I do get her point.

Near the end of the visit she did ask “are you giving him any drugs?”

The answer was “yes, but not any ones you will have heard of”.  I did then give a brief explanation of my "extra-curricular" activities.

I have learnt it is best not to mix messages with different audiences.  ABA people are great, but do tend to think nothing else can help.  Equally, people convinced that the problem is candida or vaccines, have also already made up their minds.

It is, of course, not a good idea to compare one child with ASD’s performance against another, but everybody still does it.

It looks like the kind of people our consultant works with now and encountered at a leading center in the US, where she trained until 10 years ago, are generally more affected by autism than Monty.  Most of the people I read about today with “autism” (mainly from the US) are clearly much less affected than Monty.  This does rather suggest that what passes for “autism” there has really changed a lot in 10 years.  Now that Asperger’s has ceased to exist in the US, under their latest DSM, this process will continue yet further.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that ABA works great and so does the Polypill.

Hopefully, next time we go to the airport to meet our ABA consultant, or even drop by her in Athens, we will again have moved forward nicely.

For now everyone is happy.