A lot of people get confused when they hear the words intensive ABA therapy.
I get questions all the time about how many hours kids should be getting with the BCBA
and with a therapist.
So today I want to give you some of my thoughts on what intensive ABA therapy entails and
what you should be expecting for your child or clients.
Hi, I'm Dr Mary Barbera, autism mom board certified behavior analyst online course creator
and bestselling author of the verbal behavior approach.
Each week I provide you with some of my ideas about turning autism around.
So if you haven't subscribed to my youtube channel you can do that now.
Today I'm sharing a small excerpt from a question during one of my live Q and A coaching sessions
that I did within my private Facebook community.
This question is about how much ABA is needed for kids with autism.
So I thought you'd enjoy my answer.
What is intensive ABA?
My kid’s BCBA said 3 hours per week by a BCBA and what mostly people get is 4 to 6
hours per week is a lot.
She also said 40 hours per week will make my kid a robot and she didn't want to do that
to him.
Also is 40 hours of ABA therapy by a technician good enough or should it be 40 hours per week
of a BCBA?
So all of these questions are rolled.
We'll roll them into one.
So one of the things I did in preparation for this, a Q and A session was I downloaded
this couple 3 page handout that was compiled by Dr. Cheryl Tierney, who is a developmental
pediatrician at Hershey Medical Center.
And she is a big advocate for ABA.
She's working on legislation in Pennsylvania.
So she developed this a handout.
We have her permission to share it as widely as we want.
It basically says that 20 to 40 hours.
So research supports a range between 20 and up to 40 hours of intervention per week lasting
at least 2 years or more.
And then she has the references of number 4 and number 8 in the back here, which number
4 is a Dawson and Osterling study.
1997 and 8 is a 2000 study by Harris and Handleman.
There's other studies that show, like the Lovaas study shows 40 hours.
So this is a saying 20 to 40 hours.
In my experience with kids like Jack and Cody um, those, those clients that are featured
within some of the videos um, my early intervention clients, what I did was I started out in early
intervention with them.
I had a contract and I started just 3 hours a week of just me in some situations it was
2 hours of me, 2 hours of a speech pathologist, 2 hours of an occupational therapist.
Um, some form, some combination of that.
So it was basically between 3 and 6 hours of early intervention providers to start.
Then when I started, I trained the parents like Jack's mom, Angela and Cody's mom, Jenna.
I trained mostly moms, but there were a few dads that were stay at home dads and I trained
the Dads.
I trained them to do the intervention daily, 15 minutes a day was kind of the goal and
then we would expand that to up to an hour or more per session.
Um, and at the same time I was working with the families to get them to have insurance
or medical assistance in Pennsylvania, pay for a more intensive therapy.
Most of the kids like Jack and Cody, um, got 20 hours a week.
Some of the kids got 30 hours a week like Kurt, I think I remember getting 30 hours
a week, a child that had major headbanging with an open wound on his head that I don't
have video permission for that I saw years ago as one of my first clients, he got 30
or more hours a week, but he had, you know, a substantial opening on his wound, on his
head.
I think 20 to 40 hours, especially with you, uh, the parents.
I know we have some early intervention professionals here.
If you can get the parent to be doing, uh, basically taking these techniques and working
on bath time and bedtime and going to the grocery store and incorporating all these
errorless teaching strategies and pairing up and positive reinforcement.
Basically, kids need every waking minute.
They need to be having positive reinforcement and not, uh, you know, basically it's like
digging a dish ditch, you know, and if you're treating problem behaviors wrong, if you're
not, um, pairing up the environments and everything, it's like digging a hole.
And so even if you have people come in 2 hours a day or 4 hours a day and start filling in
the hole, then all throughout the night if you're doing the wrong thing and not applying
the techniques, it'll be like digging a hole again.
The best thing to do is to have you learn whether you're a parent or a professional
and then teach the parent or teach yourself with the courses and with other trainings
if you want um, to learn how to do all of this both at the table, away from the table,
in the community.
Um, becoming the captain of the ship for the parent.
Usually the mom.
Okay, so will 40 hours per week make my kid into a robot.
No, not the kind of ABA that I promote.
Um, if you, are you getting rote responding and robotic language, that is not what my
type of ABA and verbal behavior approached does.
Um, it's very much, uh, based on their assessment, very slow moving, pairing up.
It should look very natural but be very structured at the same time, 3 hours a week of, uh, of
BCBA might be enough to oversee the 20 hours a week of a therapist.
So no one I know ever has gotten 40 hours of ABA therapy by a BCBA that would be extremely
expensive.
It, you would have to be a multimillionaire who would be able to afford that, it is very
expensive.
So that's why the BCBA now has an RBT credential, which is a registered behavior technician.
You can train anyone to be that technician, the parent, a 14 year old babysitter.
You can, you know, a volunteer from church.
It doesn't have to be somebody highly qualified.
And in fact, if they come highly qualified with a different flavor of ABA and they are
very strict and keeping the demand on and having the kids scream, it's gonna just undo
a lot of the work that I'm teaching you here.
I hope you enjoyed this short snippet.
Wherever you're watching this, I'd love it if you would leave me a comment, give me a
thumbs up, share this video with others who may benefit, and for more information, you
can attend a free online workshop at marybarbara.com/workshop and I'll see you right here next week.