How to know if you're subject to Applied Behavior Analysis?

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throwaway123
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22 Nov 2015, 9:17 pm

To begin with, I don't have Asperger's unlike most of you do. I'm diagnosed with "atypical autism".
My IQ test results are very heterogeneous, with very severe impairments in some areas, but with very high performance in a few areas. I also have severe behavioral disorder, such as head hitting, stimming, and overall problems with irritability. I have a language disorder to an extent in real life as well.

Now, here's a more relevant context and the question:
Once upon a time, my mom came home after talking to the team which was in charge of me. Upon coming home, she started reading something on the computer. She kept on reading this information for days.
I was curious as to what she was reading, so I sneaked on the computer and checked the browser history.
It turned out she was reading some specific site dedicated to behavior intervention in autism.

Why would my mother read something like that? Is it because ABA was proposed as a form of therapy in my case? Do you think that there were attempts to use such behavior therapies on me? I'm very confused by what happened back then and don't know what it means.



btbnnyr
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22 Nov 2015, 9:43 pm

Did you ever go to a therapist who made you do things like look them in the eye, clap your hands, touch your nose, talk in certain ways, name objects, point to things, then reward you with an m&m or some other small food item after you did the thing?


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Ettina
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24 Nov 2015, 2:59 pm

If you search 'ABA and autism' on Youtube you can find videos of autistic kids getting ABA. If you remember anything like what's going on in those videos, you could have gotten ABA yourself.



League_Girl
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24 Nov 2015, 3:13 pm

I think I got something similar. My mom told me I would get a M&M for making the flame move on the candle by making a sound when she was doing speech therapy and also I was in speech therapy and we all earned speech bucks for the right behavior and we would lose a speech buck if I did things like tap my foot or doing the wrong thing.


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bb400guy
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26 Nov 2015, 11:36 pm

May I ask you throwaway123/League Girl, if the ABA therapy (or any other kind of therapy) goal was to bridge the communication gap between yourself and your parents/other people, why would it matter (in a negative way) if you received therapy?

I ask as a parent of a child who cannot communicate verbally (he still does I his own ways) and has limited receptive speech and has a somewhat oppositional/non-compliant type personality. My son has been doing some RDI, but it's apparent he doesn't have many the initial skills necessary that this type of therapy requires to be successful and it was recommended that he have an ABA program developed to suit his needs (we're just starting it now) and then fade it out once his skill set improves and continue with RDI. My goal is not to make my son not autistic or "cure" him, but to be respectful of him and his needs, and this of course means to effectively treat his (and ours) communication problems.

I'm hoping one day to openly talk/text/sign (any kind of communication really) with my some about what we did to try and help him, to improve his abilities while being respectful and always of course loving him regardless of the therapy(s) outcome. I do not want him to think "he's not good enough so more therapy to change him" (this is a repeating cycle that will hurt a child). Rather, I want him to understand it's okay that he's different, but that difference required a different kind of education (and that's really what my thinking of therapies are) and we did everything we could as parents to get him that.


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