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When we got the final diagnosis of autism for our son, Ben, we were devastated, deeply saddened and above all, we had a sense of helplessness about the whole situation. Our paediatrician told us there was nothing we could do except give him some early intervention therapy and recommended a centre where he could get an hour or two a week. What could he learn in a couple of hours a week I thought. It was obvious to my wife and myself that we had to do something to help Ben. Anything.
We were told about ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis) by a relative who had a friend what was a therapist. I was not convinced about the program until I actually saw a home video of three year old autistic boy doing part of Receptive Program. He was being asked by the therapist for a number of pictures on a table and he was choosing and giving them to her.
WOW! I thought. If Ben could do that, he would have to have a mental picture of what the item is in the first place. And if he can be taught one item, he could be taught hundreds or thousands!
A month later, Ben, at the age of two years and three months began ABA. Starting with the Matching Program, he was taught to match a red plastic bowl to another. In a months time he was matching pictures of everyday objects and he soon progressed to matching pictures of actions.
The Receptive Program was the next progression. As we were told at a presentation by John McEachin, a world authority in ABA, the Receptive Program is a vital step into a huge number of other programs. The child, although still nonverbal, now UNDERSTANDS what you are saying! This would be a world of a difference from when we started just three months before.
A thought lingered in my mind. If Ben was taught what a cat was from a picture and he gave this same picture when asked for it, he could simply have memorised the picture. But would he do the same for the picture of another cat - one he had never seen before? This is called generalisation and the child is not simply matching any more but is challenged to think I remember the first day of this important new step. Ben was asked for the picture of a chair he had never seen before from a number of other pictures (or distractors) on the table. Ben scanned the table of and tentatively drew the correct picture towards him. BINGO!
From then on, my whole world was ABA. With a background in computers and an interest in photography, I kept a track of Ben's programs on spreadsheets, searched for pictures from the web, photographed, printed, scanned, cut out catalogues, junk mail, brochures, laminated and filed away. I also used software tools to touch up, colour and enhance any electronic photos. I kept all the pictures electronically. They ranged from everyday objects eg. food, animals, plants, furniture to actions eg. cooking, drawing, writing and included prepositions eg. under, over, inside eg. girl sitting on table and girl sitting under table. A common mistake that people make is to purchase pictures of "sterile" objects or actions i.e. ones with white, white or no backgrounds at all. Whilst this is OK to introduce new items, objects and people rarely appear with no backgrounds in real life. It is important to begin introducing distractors into the pictures as soon as possible to make the child observe and not simply look.
Too many distractors of course could confuse the child. One has to make the object of interest the primary focus of the picture.
It wasn't long before Ben actually started verbalising the names of pictures and a year after he began with ABA, his vocabulary of expressive pictures was over one hundred and fifty and increasing steadily. We are very happy with Ben's progress. Our aim is to see Ben in a mainstream school by the age of six.
As anyone in the ABA world will tell you, the most important thing is to start early and to put in your effort in those early years. Your greatest enemy is time.
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