5 Tips for Celebrating Thanksgiving with your Child

Read Time: 5 Minutes

The changes that come with holidays are typically a challenging time for children with and without a diagnosis. There are changes everywhere ranging from routines, people, locations, foods, etc. We have written 5 tips for you to help celebrate this Thanksgiving Holiday with your child. 

free Visual recipe idea by live love speech

1. Prepare them for the change in routine. If you are going to family or a friends home, inform your child by showing them a picture of the person and their home. You could also show them on the calendar what day you will be headed their way to prepare them for the upcoming change! We love adding a “change” to some of our daily visuals to indicate visually that a change is coming as well.

2. Bring their favorite items or activities. We can help our children feel more at ease if we incorporate some of their favorite items or activities in the new or semi-familiar environment. This is a process we call “pairing” which means we are incorporating things they love to a new environment or people to create a more positive relationship. 

3. If staying at home, involve your child in the Thanksgiving festivities. We can incorporate our children with items like setting up the dinner table, helping with decorating and even helping us in the kitchen. We LOVE this free visual created by Live Love Speech that uses pictures to show the sequence of events for creating a Turkey Cookie!

4. Reduce the Stressors in the Environment. If your child dislikes loud noises or particular foods, prepare for these ahead of time by having noise canceling headphones in close proximity, a designated space the child can go to to remove themselves from these stressors and having an array of other foods the child may be more likely to eat. 

5. Read and practice using a social story. Social stories are a great tool to introduce new concepts or activities. Reading the social story and then practicing what the experience will look like will be key. After reading the story, create a “Thanksgiving dinner table” where the child can see some of the foods they may be exposed to, practice sitting at the table and even practice walking towards their safe zone if they become flustered or frustrated. Here are 5 social stories that you can review. 

We hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday with your family! We are grateful that you have chosen to read our blog and hope these tips will help your family during this time!  

Can ABA Help My Child with ADHD?

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Can ABA help your child with ADHD?

Research shows that ABA therapy is evidence-based therapy that can help other diagnoses including ADHD. Research shows that a combination of ABA therapy and medication can make significant changes in a child’s behavior. 

Oftentimes, we’ve worked with children who engage in behaviors that may seem “impulsive”, “off-task” and “disruptive” to others in their environment. From our experience, some of these behaviors typically have a reasoning as to why they're occurring. Sometimes the learner may be engaging in these behaviors because they cannot communicate their wants and needs. Sometimes these learners cannot concentrate on their tasks because they are distracted by something in their environment. Sometimes these learners don’t realize they are being disruptive with their actions to others around them. 

Step right up Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)! What do we do in these types of situations? One of our primary goals in ABA is to provide our learners with the tools to help them advocate for themselves. We teach our learners to request for needs and wants appropriately instead of being impulsive and grabbing whatever they may need (be it materials or someone's attention).

We observe the learner in their natural environment and analyze the patterns of their behaviors. We conduct in depth analysis of their environment to determine what could be distracting them in times that they are off-task. We add tools to help them cope in environments that may be overstimulating to them. 

We provide our learners with tools to teach them recognize the behaviors they are engaging in and then help them correct this behavior (should it need to be corrected). One of our learners had a very challenging time completing tasks that involved more than 1 step (i.e. homework). We created a visual support to help with the completion of these steps. We then taught him self-management strategies to keep himself on track and complete these tasks from start to finish. An example of this program can be found below. We also taught this learner to track his “on-task” behavior using a vibrating timer at every 3 minute interval. When the timer went off, he had to evaluate his current actions and label if he was on or off task. Depending on the current action, he would either continue working OR redirect himself to the task he was supposed to be engaging in. This strategy was taken from Finn et al in 2014. 

In summary, ABA can be of immense help in helping your child with ADHD. Board Certified Behavior Analyst will evaluate your child’s current skill set, help create programs to help them develop the skills they need to communicate and teach any replacement or self-management behaviors to help them in the most challenging times of their day. Give us a call to learn more about how we can help! 

Resource: 

Finn, Lisa & Ramasamy, Rangasamy & Dukes, Charles & Scott, John. (2014). Using WatchMinder to Increase the On-Task Behavior of Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of autism and developmental disorders. 45. 10.1007/s10803-014-2300-x. 

5 Things To Do After Receiving an Autism Diagnosis

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As a parent, receiving the news that your child has been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum comes with a whirlwind of emotions and questions. Depending on the level on which your child was diagnosed, difficulties may follow. As you may have read, there is no “cure” for Autism. However, you are your child’s number 1 advocate and you will be able to fight for what your child needs. What follows are a few recommendations of things to do after your child has received an Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis: 

1. Evidence-Based Practices. Researching evidence based practices will be very important to ensure your child’s success. Evidence based practices have been heavily studied, researched and replicated. The National Autism Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorder provides a great list of evidence based practices you can see here.

2. Therapy Services. Your child may need additional support that your pediatrician/neurologist and/or psychologist may have recommended. Service providers will specialize in areas like speech development and communication, behavioral health, mental health, physical therapy and additional school services. We will be writing a blog post soon to discuss each of these service professionals and the incredible services they provide. 

3. Books. We often learn from other’s experiences. There are several books that we love and recommend to start the journey. Here are some of our favorite books: Parenting with ABA (Leanne Page, BCBA does an incredible job discussing behavioral concepts that you can implement with your child), The Verbal Behavior Approach (Dr. Mary Lynch Barbera discusses Verbal Behavior and how to implement it with your child) and last but not least the book we are currently reading Differently Wired (by Deborah Reber who discusses how to overcome the challenges in raising an neuroatypical child). 

4. Parent/Caregiver Support Groups. We have joined several support groups to help parents and caregivers. In these groups, we often see families come together and help support each other when they need advice, recommendations and support. Some of the groups in Hillsborough County include: Special Needs Community Resources of Pasco County- Florida, Southshore Special Needs Support, Families with Special Needs Kids-Tampa Bay. 

5. Additional Resources. There are several pages that provide additional resources from initial diagnosis to transitioning to adulthood. Some of our favorites are: 

   1. Autism Speaks

   2. Associations for Science in Autism Treatment

   3. First Words Project

   4. National Autism Association

Remember, this is a time where your child needs you at your best. Be open to new techniques that may be suggested by your service providers. The journey will not be easy but your child needs you in their corner to celebrate each milestone and help them reach their full potential. Teach your child that they have a voice and their voice matters regardless of their diagnosis. Your child deserves respect, dignity and deserves to receive what they need to be successful. This is not an easy feat but YOU (mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, foster parent) are here to help your child be the best they can be and we believe in you!

Teaching Your Child/Adult to Tolerate Wearing a Mask

Read time: 5 minutes

For some of our children/adults, clothing in general may present discomfort. With the pandemic we are facing today, it may be necessary for your child or adult to wear a mask while out in public. In this article we will teach you 5 steps to help your child/adult tolerate wearing a mask while out in public. 

1. Allow the child/adult to become familiar with the mask by playing with it, modeling how it is used on a favorite stuffed animal or on yourself. We want our child/adult to know that there is nothing scary about the mask! 

2. As part of the teaching process, we can use a social story if the child/adult understands the concept. We would not solely suggest this as the only method but it may be helpful if the child/adult understands the information being provided. A link to a social story about wearing masks can be found here: Wearing a Mask Social Story

3. When the child/adult has become more familiar with the mask, begin requiring that the child/adult wear the mask and time how long they are able to tolerate it. This will be our starting point! If the child/adult takes it off after 1 minute, we may need to start at 45 seconds and provide praise and lots of reinforcement once you hit 45 seconds when you practice. 

4. We will then start increasing the time required to wear the mask. If we had 3 successful times of tolerating the mask at 45 seconds, we can then move onto 1 minute, then 3 minutes, then 5 minutes, then 10 minutes and so on while doing other things at the same time (i.e. reading a book, playing with blocks, going for a walk). Our mission is to increase the time gradually and successfully while making the process for the child/adult less aversive. This is a procedure we call shaping. Think of it as creating the shape of a clay bowl: we must work on the small steps over and over again until we can achieve our biggest goal.  

5. The next step will be to test in the natural environment. Take your child/adult to a place where a mask may be required (i.e. grocery store). Remind the child/adult of the expectations before arriving and remind them of what was practiced at home. If the child/adult does not tolerate the mask in a public place, we may need to take a few steps back and test again to see where we need to work on and try again. 

Additional COVID-19 social stories: Autism Little Learners

We hope these steps are useful to you in these times! If you have any questions, please email me at amarilys@amabehavioralconsulting.com

Top 10 Questions to ask your ABA Provider…. ANSWERED!!

1. What kind of oversight will the direct staff have? All direct care staff (RBT’s, BCaBA’s and BCBA’s) will be overseen on a weekly basis to ensure treatment fidelity of programming and continued learner success.

2. Do you have team meetings? Yes, we have monthly team meetings in which we review our learners successes and difficulties, learn new concepts/review research in the field and work on team building activities! 

3. How is data collected and graphed? Our data is collected and graphed on a daily basis via our online platform: Central Reach. The lead analyst reviews this data on a weekly basis to ensure that our learners do not need additional modifications and continue to make significant progress. 

4. What kind of parent support is offered? What will this look like? Parent support is an extremely important portion of our therapy! We believe that all skills worked on should be generalized to the natural environment and with the caregivers involved with our learners. Parent support is offered with the lead analyst and usually follows the behavior skills training model: Instructions are presented, the analyst performs the skill, the analyst and caregiver rehearse the skill and then the caregiver receives feedback implementing the skill. Instructions are modified per family structure. We will always make accommodations on what works best for your family! 

5. Can we do community outings? ABSOLUTELY! We go where you may need us the most. Community outings lets us put the skills we are working on to the test in the natural environment. 

6. Do you coordinate with other service providers (e.g., school, OT, speech)? Collaboration is KEY! We love to collaborate with other service providers to incorporate whatever skills they want us to incorporate and vice versa. 

7. What kind of teaching will be involved in my child’s program? We incorporate both Discrete Trial Instruction and Natural Environment Teaching. Click on the links for additional information. 

8. How are the goals developed? Goals are developed using various methods. We will conduct an initial assessment to test the learner’s skillset, observe them in the natural environment and conduct a series of interviews with caregivers. Based on these results, we will develop goals for our learners to meet in the next 6 months. We will review with caregivers to ensure they are in accordance with these goals. 

9. What will be in my child’s behavior intervention plan? We will include antecedent manipulations, consequences and replacement behaviors for maladaptive behaviors. 

10. What services are available to my child? We offer one-on-one direct intervention, parent support services, school consultation, behavior based feeding therapy, and toilet training. 

11. Ok so there was 11: Do you have social skills groups? At the moment, we do not. BUT stay tuned for future planning!