Will ABA therapy help with violence?

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Here's the post I was looking for on violence and rigidity! http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt224282.html

Hallowpointpaws - if people are doing ABA right, they should be trying to look at things from your perspective - problem is, an awful lot of people confuse ABA with operant conditioning. The point of ABA is to use antecedents and consequences to UNDERSTAND the behavior, and to try to provide an appropriate response to it - whether that be solving a problem like bullying, or teaching someone a more appropriate or effective way to communicate.

My mom used to tell me I was "making theater." She rarely looked at things from my point of view, and I was horribly bullied in school as well (and, yes, when I told her I was afraid of a male relative, she told me I was "getting ideas from watching too much TV." Things pretty much went the way one might imagine.)

That being said, just because there are real things happening to you (and there were real things happening to me) doesn't mean there isn't a need to make sure you've interpreted what's going on around you correctly. I once had this slew of boys harassing me, following me around, saying they "liked" me and then laughing. I finally lost it when one of them rubbed up against me (I kicked him.) When I told the teacher what happened, I listed all the boys who had said they liked me.

Turns out, one of the boys was not participating in the crap, and actually did like me. After all the punishments were doled out by the school, he asked the teacher if he could apologize and he told me, very sincerely, that he wasn't making fun of me - he meant it. He kept a respectful distance from me from that point on, too - so it wasn't a fake apology to get me to be nice to him. I was too traumatized to do anything but ignore him from then on, but in retrospect I was really sad that I'd missed out on a possible friend and ally by lumping him in with the a##holes.

I don't know how old you are, but I just want you to know that I believe you, and I'm sorry it happened. The problem with having any kind of disability is that people tend to blame that for everything - and the reality is that people who struggle with communication get bullied, too. I can't blame you for being mad at your Mom, I'm pretty mad at mine.

I don't want your bad experiences to make you to give up on learning how to think about things from another person's point of view, or how to double-check to make sure you correctly decoded what other people meant by what they said and did. It's made a big difference in my life, and it's important. I learned a lot about it by taking acting and communications classes in college, and my life is a lot easier now.

Doesn't ABA target "autistic behavior" like stimming or instill basic social skills like eye contact or saying "please" and "thank you"? Does anyone know how ABA would treat aggression? Is it ever used on non-autistic kids to treat aggression specifically?

Honestly, the more I read about this, the more it sounds like a bad idea. It looks like FBA was designed for kids who either are unable to or won't communicate why they are exhibiting "problem" behavior. This is from a site called behavior advisor dot com, third link when you google fba:

My son had severe alexithemia, along with an inability to communicate appropriately (an equally severe pragmatic language deficit) what was going on with him (although he had college-level language skills.) We would have gotten nowhere without the FBA. Charting behaviors and using it to figure out what was upsetting him was critical to helping us get to a place where he was no longer violent and COULD talk about what was going on and advocate for himself. I won't argue that there's plenty of misuse and even abuse of this system, but that doesn't mean the system is a failure.

No child uses freaking out as their preferred way to communicate. Children who do so are struggling with either knowing what is going on or finding a way to express what they want and need.

ABA should NOT be used to reduce "autistic" behaviors like stimming, etc. purely for cosmetic reasons but rather to direct children to appropriate ways to communicate their needs. Violence and self-harm are maladaptive - children (and adults I suppose) need to learn adaptive behavior that keeps everyone safe. When used appropriately, ABA is simply a teaching tool, using incentives to help the child reach conclusions about what to do by walking them through the steps until they make the connection themselves.

When I mentioned Helen Keller upthread, it was because the system Anne Sullivan used to teach her to communicate is so similar - a communication disorder is a communication disorder no matter if the cause is physical or neurological. Note that Helen Keller's temper tantrums were legendary before she was taught sign language.

FBA is not an ongoing therapy. It is just literally analyzing the stuff that the child does in context and what works to prevent certain things in the future. The ones the school did were awful b/c they had a particular agenda regarding blame. I am not a therapist but I do a stripped down version of it. Sometimes, if it is a big mystery I make a form and everything. Mostly I don't. I do think in those terms, though.

Here is an example.: The other day my son had a meltdown (He wasn't violent, but it doesn't have to only be for violence) at the supermarket and started crying. He was perseverating about what if different Japanese characters started fighting with each other and just kept bawling. Now, if I had not been paying attention I would have thought it just happened out of the blue. Turns out, earlier he was running ahead of us, and my husband told him not to, b/c someone might steal him away. He asked why someone might steal him. He is 8, and so I told him a sanitized reason of someone who might not have a child and want to keep him for their own. (I knew not to tell him the more usual reason--as I knew he was not ready for that.)

Normally when my husband or I tell him about stranger danger he is (alarmingly) unconcerned. This was the first time he thought to ask why someone might want to take him. He did not seem alarmed, and I maybe thought it might be a good idea to make him a little concerned. (I know--I know-I was tired and more stupid than normal) So, I told him they might be worse parents than my husband and me and they might put him to work or something and not let him play Candy Crush.



Anyway, he started asking me those questions about Japanese characters. (He is hyperlexic and he also tends to anthropomorphize numbers. letters, symbols, foreign characters etc. as living things) Then he just started crying. So I did a unwritten FBA. Behavior: Crying at supermarket while perseverating about Japanese characters. Antecedent: Being upset b/c we told him he could be snatched up, put to work and not be allowed to play Candy Crush. Consequence: No negative consequence (punishment): should be soothed and allowed to calm down. What I learned: I am an idiot and should be more careful not to scare him.

Edited to add: You would also analyze the results of the action taken, in this case it was soothing him, and it worked.

There was nothing dehumanizing to him about doing that kind of analysis. He is highly verbal, but awful at describing emotions, or emotional cause and effect and he perseverates. if I asked him(even afterward) what set him off, he would have relived the whole thing in his mind again. There are kids that are not as high-functional as the aspies you are thinking about, but still verbal and yet poor at communication.

We have never done ABA as a system or therapy, but I find FBAs helpful at solving mysteries. Past analysis was what led me to figure it out, as I know his patterns.