Can ABA Help My Child with ADHD?

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Can ABA help your child with ADHD?

Research shows that ABA therapy is evidence-based therapy that can help other diagnoses including ADHD. Research shows that a combination of ABA therapy and medication can make significant changes in a child’s behavior. 

Oftentimes, we’ve worked with children who engage in behaviors that may seem “impulsive”, “off-task” and “disruptive” to others in their environment. From our experience, some of these behaviors typically have a reasoning as to why they're occurring. Sometimes the learner may be engaging in these behaviors because they cannot communicate their wants and needs. Sometimes these learners cannot concentrate on their tasks because they are distracted by something in their environment. Sometimes these learners don’t realize they are being disruptive with their actions to others around them. 

Step right up Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)! What do we do in these types of situations? One of our primary goals in ABA is to provide our learners with the tools to help them advocate for themselves. We teach our learners to request for needs and wants appropriately instead of being impulsive and grabbing whatever they may need (be it materials or someone's attention).

We observe the learner in their natural environment and analyze the patterns of their behaviors. We conduct in depth analysis of their environment to determine what could be distracting them in times that they are off-task. We add tools to help them cope in environments that may be overstimulating to them. 

We provide our learners with tools to teach them recognize the behaviors they are engaging in and then help them correct this behavior (should it need to be corrected). One of our learners had a very challenging time completing tasks that involved more than 1 step (i.e. homework). We created a visual support to help with the completion of these steps. We then taught him self-management strategies to keep himself on track and complete these tasks from start to finish. An example of this program can be found below. We also taught this learner to track his “on-task” behavior using a vibrating timer at every 3 minute interval. When the timer went off, he had to evaluate his current actions and label if he was on or off task. Depending on the current action, he would either continue working OR redirect himself to the task he was supposed to be engaging in. This strategy was taken from Finn et al in 2014. 

In summary, ABA can be of immense help in helping your child with ADHD. Board Certified Behavior Analyst will evaluate your child’s current skill set, help create programs to help them develop the skills they need to communicate and teach any replacement or self-management behaviors to help them in the most challenging times of their day. Give us a call to learn more about how we can help! 

Resource: 

Finn, Lisa & Ramasamy, Rangasamy & Dukes, Charles & Scott, John. (2014). Using WatchMinder to Increase the On-Task Behavior of Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of autism and developmental disorders. 45. 10.1007/s10803-014-2300-x. 

Teaching Your Child/Adult to Tolerate Wearing a Mask

Read time: 5 minutes

For some of our children/adults, clothing in general may present discomfort. With the pandemic we are facing today, it may be necessary for your child or adult to wear a mask while out in public. In this article we will teach you 5 steps to help your child/adult tolerate wearing a mask while out in public. 

1. Allow the child/adult to become familiar with the mask by playing with it, modeling how it is used on a favorite stuffed animal or on yourself. We want our child/adult to know that there is nothing scary about the mask! 

2. As part of the teaching process, we can use a social story if the child/adult understands the concept. We would not solely suggest this as the only method but it may be helpful if the child/adult understands the information being provided. A link to a social story about wearing masks can be found here: Wearing a Mask Social Story

3. When the child/adult has become more familiar with the mask, begin requiring that the child/adult wear the mask and time how long they are able to tolerate it. This will be our starting point! If the child/adult takes it off after 1 minute, we may need to start at 45 seconds and provide praise and lots of reinforcement once you hit 45 seconds when you practice. 

4. We will then start increasing the time required to wear the mask. If we had 3 successful times of tolerating the mask at 45 seconds, we can then move onto 1 minute, then 3 minutes, then 5 minutes, then 10 minutes and so on while doing other things at the same time (i.e. reading a book, playing with blocks, going for a walk). Our mission is to increase the time gradually and successfully while making the process for the child/adult less aversive. This is a procedure we call shaping. Think of it as creating the shape of a clay bowl: we must work on the small steps over and over again until we can achieve our biggest goal.  

5. The next step will be to test in the natural environment. Take your child/adult to a place where a mask may be required (i.e. grocery store). Remind the child/adult of the expectations before arriving and remind them of what was practiced at home. If the child/adult does not tolerate the mask in a public place, we may need to take a few steps back and test again to see where we need to work on and try again. 

Additional COVID-19 social stories: Autism Little Learners

We hope these steps are useful to you in these times! If you have any questions, please email me at amarilys@amabehavioralconsulting.com