Has anyone else other than me done the Lovaas programme?

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If I hadn't worked on ABA, or otherwise called The Lovaas programme, I would not be able to read, write or talk, instead be rolling around on the floor twiddling my fingers. If someone has low functioning autism and is under four years old I recommend doing this programme on him/her, especially if he/she needs to be at least a little bit normal in the world. I am SOO glad it was done on me!

I would be interested in writing to people who have also taken part in this programme, or know someone else who has done it, or wanted to find out more about it. Thank you!

I would be very interested in hearing from others who have been through this program. We had our son in an ABA program for only a year, but I think it was very beneficial. He was five, and just diagnosed, and there were some really wonderful, loving therapists who helped him through routine changes, turn-taking, and just seeing other's points of view.

Often we as parents wonder if what we are doing for our children, in the way of therapies, is right and good for them. Thank you for basically saying, yes, ABA is a good thing.

Kris

I didn't do the Lovaas programme but that was because I never really needed it.

Be aware that there is a major developmental leap that occurs right around the age of four or a couple years after, that is very normal for autistic people, whether or not they receive ABA. Thus, ABA may not be the only reason you could read, write, or talk, and you very well could have stopped rolling around on the floor twiddling your fingers on your own, or had it blamed on another "intervention" besides ABA. Many autistic children under the age of four look "low functioning," it's in fact known that at that age, the long-term "functioning level" can't be determined at all from looking at how autistic people do under the age of four. (I don't happen to agree with the concept of functioning level, but nonetheless people who do, still tend to know this.)

I have known a lot of autistic people who went through a massive developmental advance right around that age. Those who were doing ABA had the ABA credited for it. Those who were doing sensory integration therapy had the sensory integration therapy credit for it. Those who were doing biomed had the biomed credited for it. Those who were doing no special interventions had their natural development credited for it, and that is probably the case for many of those who had their particular progress credited to other things such as ABA.

Crediting ABA for progress at that age and being absolutely certain that it is the only sign of progress, is sort of like people saying that the only reason an ordinary baby learns to say "mama" and "dada" by the time they are a year old is because of something the parents were doing specially to help them at that age, and that without whatever special thing the parents were doing, the baby would still be crying and thrashing his hands. It doesn't make sense. Just as a year old is a particularly common (but not universal) milestone time for ordinary people, 4-6 years old is a particularly common (but not universal) milestone time for autistic people. Of course, some autistic people won't learn those things, but many of the ones who don't learn those things were also in ABA programs and the like.

So basically, you can't accurately look at a 3-month-old typically developing baby and go "oh no, he isn't talking, so he won't be saying mama and dada by 12 months and he'll just be crying and waving his arms around unless I do something really special for him." And you can't look at a 2-year-old autistic child and say "oh no, he isn't talking, so he won't ever talk or read or write by age 5 unless I do something really special for him, he'll just be rolling around on the floor twiddling his fingers forever."

I do notice that kind of bizarre thinking is more common in a person with atypical development of some kind though. I used to have a neighbor across the street who had a kid with learning disabilities of some kind. He was 5 years old and liked to play with his belly button. His parents were terrified that if they didn't do something he'd still play with his belly button when he was a teenager and ready to start dating. The idea that he would stay exactly the same and never change seemed bizarre to me, and was not borne out by his actual development. Autistic people typically do not stay the same and never change either, regardless of propaganda to the contrary. The vast majority of autistic people, for instance, can speak by the age of 9, regardless of whether they've had any "intervention" at all. So it's actually doubtful, by the statistics, that you'd never have learned to speak without ABA.

I don't doubt that's what you were taught, though. I was taught similar about the particular kind of behavior mod I got at a much later age. I only later realized it wasn't actually truthful to say that was the only thing that could have helped me, or indeed even that it helped me at all. I was just told over and over that without these people I would've been stuck in an institution forever. I now know that's probably not true.

Mightyzebra,

Thanks so much for taking the time to post this. I am interested to see what kind of responses you receive, particularly since I work for the Lovaas Institute.

As Anbuend points out in a later post, testimonials in and of themselves won’t always give you an accurate picture of what works or doesn’t work. However, while ABA may not be the only reason you can read, write, and talk, there is strong research evidence that it probably played a part. Unlike the random responses you may receive, the research on ABA tries to take out as much bias as possible to see what happens with two comparable groups of young children if they receive ABA treatment and if they do not.

I’m well aware of some limitations of the research, and that’s why more research continues to need to be done. However, at this point, no other intervention comes even close to the level of study and replicated results that ABA treatment has undergone. Those studies show that many children with autism learn critical skills they would not otherwise develop using ABA treatment. To their credit, those studies also show that ABA treatment is not effective for every child with autism. Therefore, based on the research, I must agree with you that young children with autism would benefit from trying ABA treatment. However, because we are all different, parents should also assess about every six months whether the treatment is helping their particular son or daughter.

In your case, it appears ABA was well worth it! Thanks for sharing your story.

Sorry, forgot to add my last couple questions. How many hours per week of therapy did you receive and for how long (how many months/years)? Do you remember anything about it?

Many of the studies on that have serious flaws, though. And one recent study shows absolutely no difference between ABA and control groups on acquiring those skills. People were either going to do well or badly at various things either way.

I personally did not benefit from the little ABA I received (as a teen) nor any of the similar teaching strategies that were tried on me earlier, for reasons that are intimately connected with my learning style, which is a very typical one for autistic people. Even in the best-case scenario for intellectual-style learning, where the information is put in and you can get a result out again that is wanted and expected, I am unable to apply that learning in practical situations. I learn best by not being consciously taught, or consciously setting out to learn, but by absorbing as much information as I possibly can and slowly and over time sorting it out in my head by pattern. This can't be planned for or controlled very well and so it is less favorable for people who want quick results. The most one can do for someone like me is expose them to similar information over a long period of time in context and hope they pick it up eventually. But what I have found, is that everything people consciously cram into my head, falls out again at some point, often quite messily. But I retain things that creep slowly in the back door by pattern. All attempts at shortcuts (such as ABA but also such as many other teaching methods) fail.

Some aspects of that are extremely common in autistic brains' approach to learning. Other aspects of it seem to apply to both autistic and non-autistic people. (One fallacy of behavior mod in general is that people learn best by trial and error, whereas research shows that almost no organism learns that way because in many situations the penalty for error is death.)

If anyone's curious for the longer version of this, see this post I made. Interestingly, one researcher referred to that post as actually exemplifying a lot of autistic people's learning strategies, and not just mine, as backed up by various cognitive-science evidence that's too gobbledygook for me to totally understand.

I do know a kid who appears to have learned a lot in an ABA-based school program. I also know another kid (actually, two other kids) who was put on an ABA program and immediately lost his toilet-training and developed a fear of learning. I've long had a suspicion that those who do well at ABA are those who are good at harnessing a learning system in their brain that might not be optimal for them but which they do have the energy to sustain. Sort of like using a backup system. I didn't have the energy to sustain that sort of thing, so in the end ABA would not have worked on me, even if in the short term it might have seemed to.

This is a really interesting perspective. I suppose it's impossible to ever know what one would be like w/o an intervention if an intervention was used. For example, I had 40 hours/week Lovaas behavior modification (what it used to be called) for 2 years when I was a toddler. I entered regular first grade and was said to have been "recovered" (which I disagree with this terminology). I have mild struggles but when I self-disclose my history professionals (mental health) often think I was misdiagnosed even though I was diagnosis by a third party prior to entering Lovaas' study.
Lydia