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. 

Teaching Your Child/Adult to Tolerate Wearing a Mask

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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

Preparing for a Visit to the Dentist

Read time: 5 minutes

Who likes going to dentist? The dentist for me up is not my favorite place to be. When one of our parents asked for tips on how to make this process a bit easier for our learner, I immediately jumped into action. Here are some of the things we did to get ready for our big trip:

1. Created a social story on the steps that would take place for our visit. I contacted the dentist office and asked about each step and the expectations of the child. I took pictures from their page and created a social story with visuals of what the office and equipment the child would come in contact with would look like.  See the video of our social story below!

2. Practice! During our sessions we practiced by playing with similar items so that the child could become familiar with some of the steps. We used Play-Doh dentist set as well as took our own set of X-Rays using the X-Ray Scanner Teeth App to portray the steps that needed to be taken in a visit. 

3. Last but not least, during our one on one direct therapy sessions, we practiced different instructions like “Open your mouth” “Stick your tongue out” and even “Stand as still as a soldier” to prepare the child with some of the instructions they may hear as well as the expected behaviors. If the child did not know what behavior was expected, I showed him how to do it and we practiced together! 

4. During these steps, our learner was provided with lots of praise and positive experiences so that the transition to the actual office would be as flawless as possible. 

Playdoh Dentist Set

Although our learner had difficulty with some of the steps in the actual office visit, he was able to complete the cleaning and we are calling it a success! The visual schedule truly helped with the process of knowing what was coming next and he was able to see the tools we played with in real life. I would love to thank the staff at Happy Family Dental Group in Brandon, Florida for their patience, understanding and their willingness to provide materials and information before our visit! 

Tips for a Visit to the Eye Doctor

Going to visit a "doctor" of any type, can result in a series of behaviors even for us as adults. Today's blog will review tips on how to best prepare your child for a visit to the eye doctor.

1. Prepare your child for what they will encounter: Showing your child what they are likely to experience before the visit will assist your child in becoming more familiar with the visit (i.e. showing pictures of the doctor's office, the doctor, the tools they may use, etc.). Some offices now have virtual tours so they can view exactly what they will see on the visit!
2. Practice what the doctor will ask of them: The doctor may ask your child to cover one eye and then ask to cover the other. As a parent, we can show our child what this looks like (modeling) and then have the child practice while providing positive feedback.
3. Practice labeling items/compare and contrast: Usually, the doctor will ask that the child label items, letters or numbers. They will also ask the child to compare and contrast when looking through the lens. Using the steps in #2, we can practice doing so with these items. If your child cannot label things such as numbers and letters, inform the doctor as they have various tools to help! 
4. Relax: Sometimes as parents, we are more worried about our child's reaction than they are. Remember to not scare the child by saying everything that can go wrong but by explaining to them why it's important to visit the eye doctor and how fun it will be!

Thanks to Dr. Knighton at Bright Eyes Kids and Dr. Laura Vizzari at Vision Source for your suggestions!