ABA - manager vs provider

Post Reply New Topic

So, seems that ABA is somewhat controversial around here, lots of threads about it on WP but I'd like to focus on a specific aspect here.

Where my kids got diagnosed, the staff highly recommended they get 8 hours of ABA per day, and gave us various names of people to contact. We've talked to some of them but no ABA so far.

The thing is, the way it works around here apparently, is that you meet with an expert who checks the kid out and draws up a program tailored to him/her, and then you find someone to "execute" that program. In other words, the person making the decisions is not doing any of the actual work, and the person doing the work is not making any decisions (not supposed to make them, anyway). Is this how it works around the world? It just seems like such a recipe for "How To Fxxx Up Pretty Much Anything By Adding More Layers of Management" (TM). It's not the only reason we've not started our kids on ABA, but it's certainly one of the reasons.

BUT, I always like to try and keep an open mind. So, if you or your kids have had ABA then I'd like to hear your perspective on this manager vs provider division of labour.

(Re. the pros and cons of ABA in general, there are plenty of other threads about that and I've probably read most of them - IIRC it ranged from "it saved my life" to "it wrecked my life", my conclusion was that it's one of those things where WP cannot help and we need to use our own judgement).

I was told the same thing. I was all for it...until I saw the cost of it!



Yep that's basically how it works here too. We are in Canada. The leader of the ABA 'team' (what it is called here) is usually someone who has done ABA in the past, at least for us it always has been. What happens where we live is the leader makes the program and then we have a meeting with the ABA therapists and the leader and the parents to talk about how it is going. I've always been a big decision-maker in the whole process. I wouldn't say that our leader actually leads it honestly- she is more like a figurehead reporting back that everything is on track. It works alright for us. It's just A LOT of work to organise it all. When my kids were young, it was like having an extra part-time job for me to keep it going.

Thanks, that's interesting.

Same here, at least that's what we were told.


So at least the leader is not actively interfering, only sucking up extra money - I guess that's the best that can be hoped for in that kind of system

8 hours of ABA per day is way too much interaction and stress for an autistic child.

This, combined with the fact that the various ABA "leaders" we talked to were unwilling to reduce the hours, is the main reason we didn't go for it.
Hell, 8 hours of perfectly nice friendly chit-chat would probably make me punch someone in the face, if I was forced to endure it with no way out.
It was going to be in our house, so my better half would have been able to keep an eye on things and we'd have the option to terminate the whole thing if necessary. But our feeling is that the chances it'll do any good are so remote that we're better investing what little time and energy we have trying other things.

With 4 kids (2 diagnosed ASD) and next to no help from extended family, there's no doubt that we need help of some kind, just not the kind that does more harm than good!

OMG that last post by that "maglevsky" character was way off topic!! !
Didn't the OP state very clearly that he doesn't want to talk about the pros and cons of ABA in general??
Bad boy!

You made the right choice for your kids.
As part of the autism industry, the ABA providers want more hours and more money.
What functioning/intellectual level are you kids?
I would recommend no ABA at all for HFA kids.
It wouldn't have done me any good and likely harm when I was a kid.

Well I think they're smart as all f**k but of course, being their father, I might be just a wee bit biased!

Let's see - at 6 and 4 years of age, both boys have some serious issues with speech delay, impulse control, overcoming disappointment / frustration, hygiene related stuff. On the other hand, both are highly motivated learners - it's just that they learn what they want, when they want, their way.
In the case of the 6yo, his current obsession is spelling, so of course everyone is like "oh what a good boy, he'll do well" and "how did you teach him all this without ever sending him to kindergarten or school?" (we didn't - he's pretty much learning it all by himself with occasional help / inspiration from his older sister, kids movies and rarely us parents).
In the case of the mostly non-verbal 4yo, the current obsession is climbing anything that can be climbed, to great heights - so everyone goes all hysterical, "careful, he'll fall down!", "you mustn't let him, it's irresponsible" and all that. But I know from experience that he can usually figure out how to get down safely - and more importantly, when he can't, he's able enough to hold on while listening to and understanding my instructions: "Lift your hand - good! Grab the branch - good! Now put your foot there - good! Come down - good! Now you're not soooo high. Now I can catch you. Wanna jump? Weeee....." like that. This is the most oppositional disobedient anarchistic undealable-with little fxxxer that anyone around here has ever seen, he's already made some so-called autism experts throw up their hands in despair, but when he needs my help to figure out how to get off a tree, it's perfect teamwork.

Yes I love them big time

Anyway - btbnnyr - have you shared your own story somewhere?
IIRC you said somewhere that you were non-verbal until quite a late age, or did I mix you up with someone else?
My better half sometimes goes all pessimistic about the younger one, like "He's just too stupid to understand anything, he'll be dependent on us forever. Will he ever talk? Please tell me he'll talk, at least! BS, he's too stupid, he'll never talk" etc. Obviously, this is only sometimes, and it's mostly just her exhaustion talking, but still, some stories "from the other side" might help her.

^^^Seems like they wouldn't benefit from ABA.

I was mostly non-verbal until age 8, and I turned out fine with fluent speech by age 10 and as adult.
Your kids seem like smart, independent self-learners, so I think they will do fine without ABA as long as you and your wife teach them social skills and push them to communicate for themselves as they get older.
For me, language had to be taught explicitly, as in I didn't suddenly start speaking and communicating by myself.
Teachers taught me on purpose from english as a second language program.
I didn't learn language from social interaction, and I don't know how much later I would have spoken or if I would have spoken fluently if people had not taught me on purpose.
I recommend explicitly language teaching to non-verbal children and perhaps using english as second language materials which taught me language, what communication is between two people (before that, I rarely responded to my name either, since I didn't understand what communication was), what topics people often talk about during social interaction, etc.
Some children have apraxia of speech, but they can still learn to listen, read, and type.

Thanks, this is interesting. We're now seeing some progress after we've adopted a method that an Occupational Therapist taught us - since he's not seeking verbal interaction (more often it looks like he's actively avoiding it), we just play with him or let him play on his own, but we stay nearby and describe what he's doing, very simply, in single words ("walking!" - "climbing!" - "you're high up!" - "jumping" etc) and name whatever objects he touches. Kind of like with a much younger kid. Actually, my feeling is that the OT overdoes it - too loud and insistent - like she's trying to cram a week's worth of talking into a 45 minute session or something. I reckon she could get more from less. So we've been doing a less "concentrated" version of it at home for a few weeks, and he now sometimes repeats words after us, not always fully intelligible, seems like he may still have trouble making certain sounds, but it's progress. Often he will drop the beginning and say only the end of the word.

Would this be similar to the ESL methods your teacher used? (I can't remember much about how I was taught English, never paid much attention because I'd pretty much already learned it by myself ) Sitting him down to look at a picture book, and naming the things in there, only works rarely, he's usually too hyperactive.

Also - feel free to ignore this if it's too weird or personal - do you have clear memories from before you could talk? What "format" are they in? Visual, aural, raw media or retroactively verbalized? I find that even my most visual memories are overlaid with some verbal "metadata", which I guess my brain probably added later on, but has now become my primary "handle" or "pointer" to those memories. (I hope the computing analogies make sense, I can't think of a better way to describe it).
I think that my son being mostly non-verbal has sometimes led me to assume / behave as if he doesn't remember things, just because my own memory is so "verbal". Especially since search engines became a big thing - knowing the right search term can save huge amounts of time, so I sort of organize my brain by "what do I type into Google to find this stuff" .

I think the method the OT is using is still much more implicit than how I learned language.
There must be an inference drawn between the behavior and the words/sounds to understand that the words/sounds are describing the behavior, and it must be inferred that it is the behavior being described instead of an object or anything else.
I don't think I would have learned language at the fast pace I did if I had been taught in this implicit way.
The method that isn't working with your son due to hyperactivity is what worked for me.
Learning language from picture books and ESL books.
I taught myself to read words from picture books at age 2, these books had a picture of a table, and the word table written under it.
By the time the ESL teachers taught me, I had already known how to read for 6 years, so I had good foundation on which to learn to use words to communicate instead of just know what they mean.
There was nothing wrong with my motor, no apraxia, so I could repeat what the teachers said easily, so as soon as I made the explicit connections between words/phrases and communications, speaking came in fairly fluently.
I have many memories from prior to speaking, they are visual with other senses like touch and hearing much like adult memories, but I have few memories of anyone speaking to me, eggsept I seem to remember people calling my name and me not responding when I was 7, but I am not sure if the hearing from those memories is added in retrospectively, probably they are. Also a memory of people talking about gas tanks blowing up in apartment buildings from when I was 5 or so. There are no other memories of people speaking to me, but they often did, like my mother telling me things that I understood at the time. In adult memories, besides people speaking, there is no verbal metadata to go along with the past scene. I don't know if that is different from other people, I always thought it was the same.

Thanks, btbnnyr.
Looks like there are some major differences with my son's situation, but it's still a useful "awareness expanding" exercise, at least for me. As well as just being plain interesting for its own sake.

I sometimes picture this scene where my son is older and verbal, and says "Mum, Dad, remember when I was 2, 3, 4 years old and you used to talk about me between yourselves - I understood every word!" and we're like FUUUCK! I don't even think it's that unrealistic, perhaps not every word, but the important stuff - including all the nonverbal cues like intonation etc. So I try to keep that in mind. It actually seems to help me relate to him better, so even if it's not true I still win

We'll probably try getting a tablet with some language-learning app for kids. It's gotta be really well padded because he throws stuff around, and the siblings will be crazy jealous so we'll have to get them something similar too.

How is the language development of your other (older?) child who is diagnosed?

The older brother is 6 now, diagnosed ASD, he started late and then for a long time pronounced words in such an idiosyncratic way that people outside the family used to ask us what language he was speaking - they couldn't recognize his version of their own mother tongue. His version of words was usually more complicated than the original, with extra sounds thrown in and sometimes with things reversed - not a simplified version, like many other kids do. Now he speaks fluently, but slower than other kids his age and with a relatively small vocabulary. Also, a lot of it is just his own thoughts and stuff he obsesses about, rather than the back-and-forth of socially acceptable conversation - though he is getting better at that.

The older sister is 8, never been evaluated for ASD, she's now very chatty in 2 languages. When she was younger she was basically a milder version of what I described above.

Basically each sibling has more severe language delay than the previous one. Could be because, as the number of kids increases, we have less one-on-one time to spend with each one?

Do you remember what your parents talked about you when you were 2 to 4 years old?
I remember nothing of what anyone said around me or to me from that age.
I remember scenes from that time, like my grandparents' house, neighbors who came to visit, what they did, what I did, but nothing of what they said.
Only the gas tank blowing up conversation stuck, because a gas tank has just blown up that day at an outdoor market that my mother and I were shopping, and I saw the bloody injured people being taken to the hospital people.

Your older kids seem to have learned langauge implicitly, even with delays, so hopefully your 4-year-old will do the same in the next year or two. It is ok to be late in language, perhaps he will have more atypical ways of thinking when he grows up that differentiate him from others and are good to use in his chosen career.

My parents didn't worry too much about my language development, because several of my cousins also were delayed in speaking, communicating, socializing. They would have worried if they saw any deficits in general cognition, but I was cognitively advanced while language delayed, so they didn't push language much. When I started speaking, I recited the tv weather forecast or cbs evening news with dan rather.