I am an ABA/PRT flunkie

[happycc]

My son has been using ABA/PRT through Behavior Support Partnership and they have a parent consultation component where the parents have a bunch of goals such as taking daily data,filling out ABC charts, tested for using start directives, reading chapters and answering written test questions on it, and a bunch of other stuff I have no idea what they mean. I don;t see how I can do all this on top of homeschooling. I am unable to sit with a clipboard and solely just collect data on the behaviors of my one son while teaching Algebra to my other kids.

I think what would help if things were modeled like in a video. Which it is not -it is done by just reading or having someone tell me it and I don;t learn that way. My husband says he is totally unable to read the ABC chart that they made up for us. He says it has too many things to read. He is not a reader.

 

 

Well basically I have flunked all of my goals but my son is doing really well.

 

Does anyone else's ABA program---have this parent training consultation part?

Edited February 21, 2012 by happycc

[Heathermomster]

I have never even heard of what you are talking about; however, DH and I have to reorganize ourselves in order to assist our son, and we both find that very difficult.

 

Checking boxes, following directions, remembering to make observations...This makes me appreciate my child's difficulties so much more and the challenges he faces. If it's difficult to keep up on the parent end, imagine the obstacles the kids face? Am I making sense?

[MamaSheep]

I think it's great that they're doing parent training. I think it works a lot better with the parents on board. It does sound like they're making it a lot more complicated than it really is, though. Have you talked to the instructor about the difficulties you're having? Maybe they could come up with a simplified way for you to collect data? In a nutshell, all the ABC stuff means is that you write down everything you can think of that happened before the behavior (A=Antecedent), describe the behavior you saw (B=Behavior), and then write down what happened after the behavior (C=Consequence). Write down everything you can think of for all three parts, because sometimes you'll start to see patterns you would never have thought of or recognized. Seeing patterns in the ABC's can help you make plans for how to alter the behavior. You don't really have much control over the behavior, only the child does; but you have quite a bit of control over the antecedents and the consequences and it's amazing how much both can influence the behavior, even in subtle ways. For example, you might realize that something all the places your child flipped out in have in common is flourescent lighting. Or his behavior is particularly bad if he's had a certain food an hour or two before the problem behavior. Knowing things like that can help you prevent the problems in the first place. Or maybe you're inadvertently doing something that "rewards" the bad behavior. Ds was in public school through third grade, and I remember one discussion with his first grade teacher where she explained to me that she was frustrated because she kept having to keep him in from recess due to bad behavior. I explained to her that he probably doesn't LIKE recess because of all the noise and chaotic movement. If he experiences staying in from recess as a pleasant thing, it doesn't make a very good negative consequence for him.

 

Anyway, I think you'll find it really is worth the time and effort you have to put in to learn it all in the beginning. With ds the behavior was so disruptive that I couldn't do something else at the same time anyway, so I might as well be collecting data. And then over time collecting data helped fix the problems, which just ignoring the behavior or punishing him for it would not have done.

 

Also, I would say that from my experience with the parent support group I help out with, the kids that do best over the long haul are the ones whose parents take the time to figure stuff like this out. They're the ones that come in and report progress, and whose kids seem to go on to bigger and better things. The ones that refuse to figure it out are the ones that spend the next 10 years coming in and wringing their hands and looking for a shoulder to cry on.

 

I'm sure you have your hands full, though, and I wouldn't recommend beating yourself up over any of this. Just go at your own pace, learn what you can, and apply it. Then go learn something else. It's not a contest, it's not a race, and the instructor of this class is not the final arbiter of whether you're a success or failure with your child. Just keep going. The more you know about helping your child the better progress you'll both make. And you'll probably find that a lot of what you learn works on your other kiddos too.

Edited February 22, 2012 by MamaSheep

[AmyinMD]

Our ABA program does not have us take data like that. I really wish they would though because it would be easier to track if it is even helping. My son only does 4 hours a week because we have to pay out of pocket for it so there aren't many hours there to take data on. We do get parent meetings every 6 weeks but I usually push them to 8 weeks because it is $150/hr between paying the coordinator and the trainer for the meetings. We have one this Friday and I need to push to see if we can get more date because otherwise I'm looking at dropping it. I'm more interested in trying Floortime but they really discouraged that. I feel like that will give us as parents more tools to work with ds which I don't feel like we are getting with the ABA. The Floortime would also cost less because they would train us to do it and we wouldn't have to pay for the tech hours. Of course then I'd have to try to find more time to work with ds one on one if we cut his 4 hours a week with the ABA trainer (really 3 hours because she claims to need 30 minutes out of a 2 hour session to take notes- it doesn't include any data collection though)