Reddit reviews An Early Start for Your Child with Autism: Using Everyday Activities to Help Kids Connect, Communicate, and Learn

I highly, highly recommend good ABA. Good is the key part because ABA done wrong can be very damaging and abusive to the child. ABA done right can be absolutely amazing. I was afraid to start ABA when it was recommended for my 17 month old, but it's the absolute best form of therapy he's had. When therapy is done with the goal of erasing all symptoms and signs of autism, then that therapy, whether it be Floortime, RDI, ESDM, ABA, or something else, it will always have the potential to be abusive. When therapy is done with the understanding and acceptance of autism, then it will be not be abusive when applied correctly.

When my son was 17 months old, he had numerous severe delays and it helped tremendously with that so that he's now newly 3 with less severe delays. I see ABA as the therapy that's allowed my son to really shine so that autism is more of a benefit than a deficit.

In order to find good ABA, grab a copy of An Early Start For Your Child With Autism. It's the easy to understand parent guidebook for the Early Start Denver Model, which is a form of therapy developed specifically for children under 5 with a focus on under 3. The book teaches you the basics of ABA so that you can do it yourself at home. The whole form of therapy is play-based and child led, so that you both enjoy doing it. It's been amazing for my son.

In addition to that excellent book, the people behind it, from the UC Davis MIND institution, also put out this ADEPT parenting series. Part 1 focuses on how to teach skills. Part 2 focuses on behavior management. In my opinion, they put the modules in the wrong order. If you read the book and watch through the entire modules, they explain how skills can't develop properly if the connections aren't first made. If your child's sensory needs aren't met, then it's very hard for them to learn. They also explain why stimming shouldn't be discouraged, why punishment rarely works for autistic children (and what to do instead), and how to increase communication skills.

The book An Early Start has information on how to find a good ABA therapist, but I wanted to emphasize these key points:

1. Ask autistic adults about their experience and use that to shape what you work on in therapy.

After talking with the autistic adults in my son's life and online, we don't force eye contact. Instead, we do face contact. Many autistic adults have explained their extreme discomfort with eye contact and eye contact isn't necessary for a successful life. Face contact is important for a variety of reasons, but there are non-forceful ways to increase face contact. If you want your child to look at you more, then figure out ways to make your face fun and interesting. Your child should be looking at you because he or she wants to look at you, not out of need.

Similarly, stimming. Stimming used to be discouraged and children were punished for stimming. Now, the experts agree that punishing stimming is a huge mistake. In the ADEPT series, it is compared it to shivering. Punishing a person for shivering doesn't stop them from being cold, it just removes a mechanism of them dealing with the cold.

Recently, my son suddenly started stimming in his preschool classroom. His ABA therapist recognized this as a sign of discomfort. She got out a little emotional chart and asked him if he was upset. When he said he was, she asked what he was upset about. It turned out that he heard them vacuuming in a different room in the school (he hates vacuums and has super hearing). She helped him with his fear of the vacuum (asked them to wait to vacuum and showed him videos he liked on youtube to help him calm down). This had the function of stopping the stimming, but the stimming was not the problem - the vacuum was.

Her goal with stimming is not to stop the stimming, but to remove any discomfort that is cause the stimming. Stimming is the coping mechanism.

Sometimes stimming is just done for fun. My son will sometimes stim things he likes, so I'll join in with him. Sometimes he'll want to do a joint activity with me, other times he prefers to be alone. I try to follow his lead, which brings me to...

2. Follow your child's lead.

ABA should be fun. For children under 5, I recommend the Early Start Denver Model and Joint Attention Mediated Learning. Floortime and RDI are two other models designed for older children that are centered around following your child's interests in order to build connections and teach skills. You can check out Floortime and RDI now for a few suggestions for young children, although I personally found ESDM most useful when my son was under 3.

If your child is not interested in learning a certain skill, figure out how to make that skill fun and interesting for your child.

My son used to be obsessed with vehicles. We took him on trips to the fire station, car shows, and followed garbage trucks around. We taught him the parts of my car and the names of different vehicles. We counted vehicles, we sorted vehicles by colors, we built structures for our vehicles to drive on, etc. Lately he's been obsessed with vacuums, so I bought toy vacuums, got broken down vacuums which we take apart and put back together, we 'read' vacuum manuals together. By showing interest in his world, he's much more interested in doing things I suggest.

3. Play to your child's strengths.

My son is a lot like his uncle when it comes to how his autism presents. It gives him some amazing gifts. We work on his weaknesses, but also play to his strengths a lot. For my son, that's an incredible memory, super hearing and vision, and an innate understanding of complex systems.

If he's struggling with something, I'll often make up a song because he loves music and can remember songs even if I only sing them a few times. Putting on his shoes was a real struggle. Rather than just keep doing it over and over until he got it, I thought about what would make it easier for him to remember the steps in order. A song.

Similarly, I taught him how to count to 10 in Spanish through a song with the numbers. He loves it and will often sing it to himself.
All people have certain areas where they do better compared to others. Focus on these areas and figure out how you can make the skills you want to teach easy to learn.

As the behavior experts say, Hawking can communicate perfectly well despite the fact that he can't speak with his voice. On the other hand, there are adults who can speak with their voice, but are terrible communicators. What communication method allows your child to best be understood? What communication method allows you to best communicate with your child? Use that. My son is now fully verbal, but we still use picture schedules and songs with certain routines.

4. Ask yourself, "Is this important/necessary?"

My son used to elope. After seeing the amount of autistic children who die from eloping, I knew that it was vitally important that we reduce eloping. Similarly, functional communication is important and that's something we still work on.

But tying shoes? My autistic brother still struggles with tying shoes, so his wife bought him those special shoe laces that don't require tying. For my son, we use velcro. It's not important. You can be a functional adult without tying shoes.

Eye contact? The autistic adults in my life focus on lips, noses, eyebrows instead. They do fine without it.

Again, talk to the autistic adults and figure out what is necessary. A cure is not necessary. Being neurotypical is not necessary. I have zero desire to turn my autistic son into his twin.

I wrote a post with more details on how I found good ABA therapists here.

On facebook, I'm in some great evidence-based groups for autism. One is "Evidence-based autism support". Others are "Woo-free spd (and other neurological disorders", "evidence-based autism parenting support group" and I'm in a few nonreligious evidence-based groups as well.

ETA: To use an example of something ABA can help with that an OT, ST, PT, etc might miss is in establishing joint attention with other children her age. My ABA therapists recently discovered that my son is quite social and was making play invitations to his 2 year old/early 3 classmates that were being missed. I hadn't observed this myself because us adults are very good at recognizing when a child is giving a play invite and his twin brother is naturally interested in his play. His ABA therapist had observed him approaching other children with toys, but speaking near them, not to them and not making sure that they could hear when talking to them. His brother will establish joint attention as part of a play invite, even going as far as grabbing your face if he feels you aren't listening to you. My son would just give the invite, then get discouraged and walk away when the other child failed to respond.

With the help of his ABA therapists, we've been working on teaching him joint attention, and how to establish joint attention when making a request of others.

This 100x. Your child could be just slow to come out of his shell so to speak, but if you think there might be something more, get him assessed. It is too important to put off and cross your fingers. Best case scenario: you go in and the psychiatrist says your son isn't likely to be on the spectrum, worst case: you know what is going on and can start to help asap.

Early intervention is so helpful, the younger you can start a child with autism in some sort of therapy, the better. I looked up some resources in your area A to Z Pediatric Therapy looks to be somewhat near you (maybe?). Autism Speaks is a fantastic site with all sorts of useful information.

This book was recommended to me when we started going through the process with my son, and is helpful even if your child isn't actually diagnosed. It has a lot of good information and tips.

Ultimately, the best advocate for your son is you. You know him best, you know what seems right and what seems wrong. Good luck, and I hope your son blossoms into your world soon.

This book was helpful An Early Start for Your Child with Autism: Using Everyday Activities to Help Kids Connect, Communicate, and Learn https://www.amazon.ca/dp/160918470X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_tNGUCb7QDSC09