mixed feelings/goals

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My little son just turned 4 and is newly diagnosed with autism.

His main issue is "attending." He just has a short attention span and doesn't easily pay attention to things.

When he does pay attention, he likes what he is doing.

So, I am very comfortable with saying, if feeding him pieces of candy or pretzels will help to lengthen his attention span, I am all for it. My son attended special needs pre-school while they were doing his evaluations, and they did the candy thing, and I believe it helped him. He did it for 3 weeks, now he is out for 3-4 weeks while they prepare his IEP and get an aide lined up.

I am in an interesting situation where my insurance pays for ABA therapy, but ABA only. So, I am pursuing home ABA therapy (massive bureacracy involved, though everyone says he will qualify, I just have to follow through with the bureaucracy).

What I have been told is, that as the parent, I will be the one to determine goals. I have been told they will not do anything I do not want.

For an example of ABA therapy I am totally fine with: My son is playing cars with a teacher. she is into it, and praising him for playing along. He is having fun. But, he quickly loses interest. Then she offers him a piece of candy if he will play more. He plays quite a bit longer. She praises him. She offers him a piece of candy when he loses interest again, but he is done. Okay, onto the next thing. This is the kind of thing he has done, and I have a good opinion. I was not crazy about it, but with giving it a chance, I am okay with it. I think it has made him seem more interested in what people are doing and helped him have a little more interest in participating and having a little longer attention span.

At special needs pre-school, now that he is diagnosed, they go to no negative re-inforcement. Before he was diagnosed I was not sure, and the teacher was not sure, if he understood negative re-inforcement or not (very confusing). But we were both leaning toward thinking he did not. At his evaluation they did not think he understood negative re-inforcement. When I went back to talk to his teacher, she said, okay -- no more negative re-inforcement. He just does not get it. It is the same difference to him as positive re-inforcement, he doesn't really understand the difference like you would expect for his age, he is still like a younger child on that.

This means that we are just re-inforcing positive behavior and ignoring negative behavior. It is going very, very well. The last couple of weeks at home have been awesome.

So I would like advice on goals. I am pretty sure his first goal will be "attending" I want to verify this, but I believe it can mean just watching something someone is doing and starting to participate. I don't believe it means making eye contact.

He is also going to have a goal of sitting on the rug at circle time. I have been in the class, and circle time is short. I would like my son to sit there. The things they do are things that would be interesting to him, it is not intrinsically boring or distasteful to him. He likes songs and he likes stories. It is basically a little story and then a little song, that is all. My understanding is they are going to have someone sitting with him and giving him an m and m to remain sitting every time he acts like he will get up, but if he gets up, it is okay, they will just try to get him to sit longer the next day.

This is how I would describe him: he is a sweet boy, he has some functional language. He has a twin sister and big brother he hangs around with all the time. He does well with them. At home he does like to pace and he does like to pace and hum. It is no big deal. When we are out somewhere, though, he starts seriously staring into space and also to shake his head. He can still be engaged while he is shaking his head, I don't mind it (despite realizing it looks strange). The staring into space can bother me, b/c there are times when he is doing it that he does not seem like he is happy or comfortable, it seems like he is very uncomfortable and unhappy. At these times I carry him or let him wrap up in a blanket. However, I do not know what it is that causes this!! !! ! I am sure it is something sensory but I don't know what.

When he is at pre-school he does show these behaviors. When I am not there!! ! The first day when I was with him and his sister was with him, the teacher was saying maybe he just had a speech delay and needed to have a chance to be in pre-school without his sister (who talks for him often). When I am not there, though, apparently he does a lot of staring into space and shaking his head. But I do know he likes his teacher (I can just tell).

Well, I am hoping for some insight about the sensory stuff at pre-school.

And, I do think he is old enough to go to pre-school without me, and have to go in a new/unfamiliar/uncomfortable environment. I do not think his distress is great enough to not send him. However, I don't have to send him, and if I do not like it for him, I am free to keep him home.

So, given I am doing this, I am wondering what any warning signs are, or things to mention I do not want, when I am talking to the teacher.

His teacher is aware he does good with me, so she is mostly looking to do things I do with him. Of course I don't have a problem with that.

Anyway, just wandering if anyone has any advice.

I have three sons on the spectrum. I'm not a fan of behavioral modification. It did not work at all with any of my kids, and even caused major problems at times, that took a long time to overcome.

The effectiveness of reward systems were short lived at best, and in the long term have not brought about any lasting positive changes whatsoever.

Were the problems obvious?

I feel like, I can mitigate for obvious problems, but if there are problems I am not on the look-out for, I might miss them.

Besides hoping to identify and help with some possibly sensory issues, I am not expecting any one to have any special insight with my son or to know better than me, and I have no sense that I am going to be talked into something I don't like or have a bad feeling about against my better judgment.

I am really just at a point where I think he has to spend some time outside the home. It will be 3 hours 4 days a week, and he does definitely like recess and playing with toys and snack.

So basically, with some reservations, I am taking this route at this time, but if there are specific things that happened that were a first sign of a big problem, I would like to know.

Yeah, I have basically accepted that he can have some success with being fed candy as if he was a puppy at obedience school. Whatever, if it seems like it is going well, I am going to keep it up.

We are at a point where if I don't send him to pre-school, then what.... I don't send him to school, either? I think it will be easier if he starts small at pre-school with a goal of something like increasing the time he sits on the rug at circle time.

I am not expecting him to go into a regular classroom in K, but I do expect him to be at school from 8:35 to 3:45 5 days a week, so it just seems like pre-school will be a gentle start in that way.

Who knows, I have mixed feelings.

I also do not look at it as "only" a reward system. The hope is that he will participate long enough to get some natural re-inforcement. Like, he will realize, oh, I do like stories, just like I like stories at home with mom.

Or he will realize, hey, it is fun to play for a little while.

It seems like it is more like that, than just a direct "here is your candy" with him only, only doing it for the candy and being totally disconnected from the overall experience.

It does seem like he has got a little more attention and enjoyment with playing and participating, and thinking "hey, I could participate, and not just watch, and hey, mommy will clap when I do, this is cool, hey I think this is fun." But I think it started with m and ms at school.

He went to school 3 weeks and has been out of school 2 1/2 weeks now while we wait on the IEP.

If not the m and ms, it could just be that he is more interested from being around other kids besides just his brother and sister. Then I think, maybe he is just in a habit here, and going to pre-school makes him realize he can pay attention and participate a little.

When I have seen someone do it with him, it seems like he will do a fair amount of additional participation with natural re-inforcement for an m and m, at first, and then when he is done he is done.

Problems? Yes, there were some serious ones, but those were brought on by behavioral modification methods that involved punitive measures. Being put into a "quiet room" or relegated to sitting at a desk in a dusty basement because he would put his head down on his desk (not bothering the class though). They also had a closet of sorts they would bring him to if he wasn't behaving well enough to be in the class, that was so cold he had to wear his boots and winter coat. We let him go to that school for almost two years, and I wish I had pulled him out much earlier.

Most of the methods used though, didn't involve much for punitive measures, and were more reward systems (all three boys). They would work at first, but only for short periods, after which they wouldn't respond to them at all anymore. Over time, reward systems just wouldn't work at all.

Oh, and I just caught that you posted again, so I'll go ahead and take a look.

K. Read the second one too. But yeah, that's what we thought too. But it didn't work at all. If you're interested, I've explained the reasons for this in another thread in the parenting forum titled Cold Hard Facts if you want to take a look.

BTW: I'm well aware that every ASD kid is different. But if they aren't responding to conventional wisdom, I really think the reasons I gave there are probably why.

I am sorry, I am used to a forum where I can edit if I realize I have thought of something else.

But if someone can say, what I have described above, is actually similar to a time when ABA was a big problem and regrettable, please, I would like to hear that specifically.

I am okay with a logic that says, starting with a reward, he will get natural re-inforcement, and then have the natural re-inforcement, so that it is not always just going to be "look, we gave him an m and m, and he did what we wanted." I do not want to be that way. But here I go pursuing ABA therapy.

I'm not trying to say it won't work. Don't get me wrong. It does work with quite a lot of ASD kids. The problem for us though, is that it doesn't work with all ASD kids, and it didn't work for ours. In fact, it backfired badly.

I'm kind of, and admittedly prejudiced against behavioral modification, because it was so obviously NOT working for our kids, yet several of the educators working with them kept insisting it DOES work, because it was working for other autistic kids in their care. There's more to the story than that though. I've butted heads myself with a couple of them due to what I felt were arrogant attitudes, but that's another story altogether.

Anyway, I'm not a fan. I won't deny that it works for a lot of kids, but the truth is, I now believe the approaches we've used for our kids might actually work better with most ASD kids, but I doubt most parents would be willing to try them until they use conventional wisdom first, and that fails. And it may not.

As I said, the "big" problems came with punitive measures. That doesn't sound like what you'll be doing. But even with just reward systems, though they didn't create severe problems, they did waste a lot of time. I would say, because I've heard this many times from parents I know around here, and on these forums, that if you see a pattern of a certain reward system working for a little while, then suddenly your child no longer responds to it, and you have to keep changing the system, you're probably going to see reward systems in general fail altogether at some point.





And that would seem to make perfect sense, and if it works, it does. But...

If it seems NOT to be working eventually, it may be because the "logic" just doesn't compute in your child's head. It's like taking a program designed to work on a particular computer processor, and trying to make it work with a different processor with a totally different architecture, that the program isn't designed for.

At a certain level I think that some things are never going to make sense to him and thus never be something he is going to naturally, internally want to have a part of or do.

But I am hoping for there to be some things it turns out he will like.

Thanks for your response, and I will check out the other thread also.

I was raised very closely with my cousin who has autism and I do think some goals with him were incredibly stupid and pointless. But if they had worked on things he ended up liking, it seems like it might have been possible.

Overall I just want to go in with a clear head. I definitely don't want to have him ignored just b/c something works for someone else. That is something I can look at for sure.

But it is too early to say how well he will respond to rewards. I actually didn't respond to rewards as a child, so it is natural to me to be suspicious of them and find them insulting. But hey, maybe my son will be a different way than me.

Oh, yeah! Targeting likes as opposed to focusing on stuff they don't like, and trying to get them to improve things they hate doing, is a very common problem.

ABA without a punitive component works well for a lot of spectrum kids in that they learn they can do some behaviours and learn that the behaviour is rewarding in it's own sake, and then the prompts can be faded away.

Yes it can work, but it can be very frustrating when it doesn't work, especially when it's already been tried by others, but someone else comes along insisting that it will, and you already know it won't with your own kid. It wastes a ton of time and effort when it doesn't work, was well as being very frustrating and confusing for parents for whom it doesn't work, and don't know why it doesn't.

What most frustrates me about it is that the people who tend to promote the method most fervently, are not themselves on the spectrum. Having had 52 years of personal experience living with ASD, it can be pretty aggravating to have someone who's never dealt with it personally, but has had some success with it with some ASD children, insist that to me that they know what they are doing in a way that insinuates that I have no qualifications to suggest alternatives. It's actually happened. (I'm not saying you are doing this. Sometimes certain comments remind me of this situation, though I know you don't mean to.)

I respect those who dedicate their lives to the field, and I respect the fact that ABA works for SOME on the spectrum. I also respect the fact that non spectrum parents are often very frustrated by their ASD children's behaviors because they can defy all conventional logic. But that's really the point. ASD kids don't operate according to conventional logic, therefore it requires unconventional methods to deal with them.

Behavioral modification may work as far as producing conventionally logical results that make a lot of sense to those that are not on the spectrum, but the question we ought to be asking is, "Does the method, and it's results, create any meaningful understanding in the child, or is it just creating a cause and effect surface behavior?" I submit that conventional wisdom suggests that the obvious behavioral changes resulting from behavioral modification means the child understands. But I don't believe that is the case, given that it doesn't work for all ASD kids, suggesting they may not understand the attitude adjustments necessary to make these same behavioral changes not for the rewards, but because it just plain works better for them and everyone else.

When they make changes based not on immediate rewards, but because of improved relationships, that's an attitude change. And that, I think, is far more important because it creates personality adjustments that have much deeper, longer lasting effects that are independently driven and maintained. Behavioral modification begins with immediate gratification. That's what it's based on. That's how it works. Yet we teach kids that delayed gratification is what they should strive for. It's a conflict, and it's a conflict ASD kids are pretty good at picking up on, though it could be only subconsciously. They hear us telling them "Good things come to those who wait," but they SEE us offering them immediate rewards for what we tell them is "correct behavior" (which, as I said before, they don't necessarily believe is correct). So we're rewarding them immediately for behavior corrections they don't think need correcting, while explaining they ought to be learning to wait for the best rewards.

It's all extremely confusing.

"If we're supposed to wait for good things, why are you giving me a reward now? And why are you rewarding me for doing something that I know isn't right?"

See what I mean? It doesn't matter that the child is really not right. The child BELIEVES he is right. And he's being rewarded for going against what he thinks is right. Being rewarded yet being told he should learn to wait. That's a LOT of mixed messages!

That is how I used to think as a child. I remember it all. Adults were, in my mind, the worst hypocrites.

I know that isn't true now, but it took decades for me to figure out all the quirks of how my own head works, and twist around my own understanding to the point where i could understand that although certain things might look hypocritical and confusing, there were reasons for all of them.

I will maintain even now though, that delayed gratification really IS the best way to live. And that being said, behavioral modification is NOT about delayed gratification. It's about getting immediate results, not just for the child getting the reward, but also for the parent who wants to see a change in behavior right now.

Now, I do realize immediate results are not what the "big picture" intent is of behavioral modification. However, during the process of it, that is precisely what we see when we're subjected to it. That's a conflict for us.

If, instead of using any method that involves immediate behavioral changes, we delve into in depth understanding of each other, that takes a lot of time, doesn't produce immediate results, but never sends any mixed messages. I honestly believe that approach, if it works for kids for whom behavioral modification and rewards don't work well, will most likely work well also for those for whom it does seem to work well, and with longer lasting, independent skills based on internal attitude adjustments before the behavior actually changes.

Both parent and child would be working on the principle of delayed gratification, and the child, instead of working toward a more immediate goal, learns to think differently, and act on internal motivations, effectively changing from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. And that's a very important difference, because they are learning to change their behavior for their own internal reasons, not just because it's what we want them to do, but because THEY actually want to.

All that said (and I know it's a lot, sorry), you might now be able to understand why, when I read, "...they learn they can do some behaviours and learn that the behaviour is rewarding in it's own sake, and then the prompts can be faded away," the first thing I want to ask is, "Then why not start without the prompts to begin with?" But I knew it would take some explaining as to why that would be my first question, which is why I didn't just post that as a hit and run.

Then I think my question is, how much value do I place on my son sitting on the rug at circle time? I do place a fairly high value on it, but not ridiculously high. I don't think it would mean anything more than that he sat on the rug. I don't think it would be symbolic.

At this point I do see the point of trying to encourage the behaviors in a way without m and ms, or just not encouraging the behaviors that require m and ms (kind-of my interpretation, I hope not a bad mis-interpretation).

But I do need help and this is the help I have available. I do want to give it a try.

But I appreciate this conversation, I think I have got some good ideas. If it doesn't work out I am not going to let them blame me or my son. It will just be a strategy that doesn't work for him and they will have to deal with it.

I/my older son were kind-of blamed for his reading difficulties by a previous teacher so I do not plan to accept that again. However I got my son a package curriculum and he is reading on grade level now in 2nd grade. (Not the same son.)

I'm not trying to tell you not to do it. It can work, as I've said. It's the rest, the more in depth approach though, that I think really matters. That's a long term deep thing that can work in conjunction with rewards.

I don't mean to tell you that rewards are bad. That wasn't the point. The point was to try to explain, from ONE autistic's point of view, how we can look at things. How me may think of things our parents do. It can be very upside down to what you may be used to. The point really is, to understand YOUR son. And I know that can be really hard. Maybe I had an advantage because I grew up with it. Maybe I got lucky that my kids are a lot like I was. But it wasn't all luck, because they are also very different from me in many ways too. And that's why I had to spend a lot of time just accepting first, watching them, and trying to understand them as they were, before trying to help them understand it too, then trying to help them find their own motivations to make certain changes.

It's not about rewards or behavioral modification being bad. It's about not missing the aspect of who they are, as they are, accepting that, getting to know them as intimately as possible as is, then working with them as opposed to against behaviors, to develop their own WANT to change things for themselves.

Sorry if it looks like I'm trashing the method. Didn't mean to do that at all.

No, it is just food for thought for me.

I think other people I am around are very invested in this working, so don't want to be so invested in it.

What I have seen with my older son is, that if a method doesn't work, it can be a reflection on the child. I do not want that. But at the same time I think this is worth trying.

Actually I think it is very valuable to hear that there are kids that don't do the reward thing and it is not the end of the world.