There are many different aspects that affect a typical person’s behavior during their lifetime. Rewarding a normal child for good behavior is a good beginning in teaching them good traits as they grow. Eventually they will be trained and will do the right thing without the reward. For example, if the child would like to play with a certain toy with several parts such as Lego the parent will warn them that they are welcome to play as long as they clean up. A parent will probably have to repeat this admonition several times before this behavior becomes ingrained in the child’s behavior.

What happens, though, when the child in question has learning and/or behavior issues. It may be someone who has some type of autism and only wants to play on their terms. This is especially challenging to parents whose other children are on the normal spectrum and are being disciplined in a certain way. A young sibling of an autistic child can become angry when their special sibling is indeed treated in a “special way”. Yet, what is a parent to do? It’s so much easier just to ignore the lack of heeding the parent’s instructions by the autistic sibling and letting the other siblings clean up. No one wants a tantrum when suppertime is just around the corner.

Many scientists have grappled with this dilemma and are trying all types of behavior modifications for a child such as the one discussed above. Parents should know that they must have outside intervention if their special child is disrupting the normal function of their home.

Just as most children will sit quietly in a class and listen to the teacher, the special child will be more attentive to the ABA therapist especially when just starting therapy. Hopefully, eventually the parent will be able to replay the skills that the child learns with therapy at home.

This is the major impetus for professional ABA therapy, to give the child the confidence and knowledge to be able to interact at home in a positive way with parents and siblings. Successful ABA therapy will help the autistic child’s siblings respond positively to his or her behavior.

Even if the special child cannot always behave, just by seeing improvement the siblings will be proud and praise this child. Much of ABA therapy involves teaching the child in question by repeating the same activity time after time until he or she catches on. Today’s robots are taught in much the same way. It’s not the same as programming a computer which is part of the robot’s being. The robot will actually watch the teacher and repeat the motions exactly as the teacher. Fortunately (or unfortunately) people are not robots. They have been given freedom of choice by G-D to decide for themselves what they want to do. A child under ABA therapy must see benefit from copying their therapist which is what we all want out of life, whether it’s verbal or material appreciation. Not all clients are alike, and each one needs their own individualized therapy program.

Here are the three branches of ABA therapy. As you will see each branch gives birth to the next until the practical real-life therapy goes into action:

Branch 1: Theory

Psychologists such as Sigmund Freud and Ivan Pavlov set the tone of Psychology at the beginning of the twentieth century. Freud stressed the “importance of unconscious thoughts and urges”. The first behaviorists wanted to change the map of psychology to a more scientific field of study such as chemistry and biology. Freud emphasized thoughts and behaviorists were more interested in actions.

The theory of behaviorism has changed from the way Pavlov viewed it over one hundred years ago. He experimented with both dogs and humans to examine and prove how they respond to stimulus over a time span. As the stimulus was repeated the participant would automatically respond to it.

Ivan Pavlov worked with dogs and conditioned them with both food and a whistle. After some time, the dogs would salivate just by hearing the whistle without getting the food reward. First Pavlov would give the food at the same time as the whistle was blown and the dogs would salivate in anticipation of their food reward. After a time, he would withhold the food and just blow the whistle. The dogs still salivated just by the sound of the whistle without getting the food.

Behaviorism advocates believe that behavior can be predicted after a candidate is conditioned over intervals of time. This is the way animals are trained for the circus, but it doesn’t always work if the animal gets distracted by a greater and better stimulus. For sure, this applies to humans to a greater extent because there is an element of choice. Scientists today realize that this stimulus and effect therapy can work with simple tasks that are centered on repetition but not when it is used for multifaceted ideas that utilize deep thinking. For example, a teacher can get his or her students to memorize the multiplication tables in early elementary school, but they would not be successful in getting older students to memorize more complex mathematical examples. The students would need to use their own evaluative thinking to answer those questions correctly.

Today, behavior therapy is still used as it offers rewards for positive behavior and discipline for the negative ones. For conditions such as ADHD in order to modify the child’s behavior certain privileges will be withheld temporarily until the child realizes what the consequences will be. It is certainly challenging to withhold privileges from a child who cannot sit still in a classroom. In modern therapy, the professional will sometimes realize that it is not the child’s fault alone.

In fact, there was a true story of a boy who could not sit still in his seat, and it was discovered after a visit to an orthopedist that he had something wrong with his back and his moving around was a physical rather than psychological problem.

Branch 2: Research

The second branch of ABA is the actual research in the lab. This is done by researchers rather than ABA therapists who will put the research into action. It is a scientific approach to a human issue and there are numerous experiments that prove the effectiveness of distinct therapies. This is an ongoing branch as new ideas are constantly coming to light by talented and original thinking researchers.

Before an ABA therapist used a technique the therapist studied and learned about it extensively and this part of their learning is research. Some therapists spend time in a laboratory setting and see for themselves which therapies work and which don’t. The therapist should be comfortable administering specific therapies before trying them out on a patient.

Branch 3: Real Life Intervention

The third branch of ABA is taking everything that the therapist has learned and putting it to good use to help those children that cannot function in regular school settings. Nothing is as rewarding as finally seeing the child that you coached actually succeeding in a regular classroom. Of course, this cannot happen to all patients, especially those on the autism spectrum. But even getting the child to a comfortable place in a social setting, making friends and doing the basics that many of us take for granted is a huge step.

The transition of bringing the child from the therapy office setting to the real world successfully by behavior modification is truly rewarding for the therapist and of course the parents. An extreme case for those of us who are old enough to remember is the movie The Miracle Worker, which is the story of Helen Keller, a blind and deaf child whose parents were at loss as to how to discipline her in her reactions to simple social interactions such as sitting at a meal and eating without throwing the food around.

Helen Keller could not see or hear yet she was helped by her therapist, Annie Sulivan to become a responsible and successful member of society, ultimately writing her own biography. Keeping the child’s confidence intact is a primary function in ABA therapy. Love with one hand and discipline with the other holds true for this challenging treatment. There should be the eighty- twenty ratio, of eighty percent positive reinforcement and twenty percent discipline. This ratio is true for parents of all types of children.

Final Words

Thankfully most of the children involved in ABA therapy are not as handicapped as Helen was. Yet for some families it is impossible to sit through a meal without the special child throwing a tantrum and interrupting the flow of conversation. Simple social task improvement is a crucial part of ABA therapy and it’s not as simple as denying or rewarding the child with a special dessert. It is of course more complicated than that. With lots of love and patience and the right therapist there is hope for these special children.