Services at ABA BEARS

ABA BEARS provides early, intensive, and comprehensive ABA treatment to children and adolescents with autism and other disabilities.  Our treatment program is designed to help your child to achieve typical functioning, and short of that, teach them all of the skills necessary for them to live as independent and fulfilling a life as possible.  

We implement direct 1:1 (one behavior therapist to one child ratio) ABA to our clients in their homes, communities, and schools.  We work with children as young as 18 months and for as long as they need help.  All treatment recommendations, including the hours of treatment, are guided by research and the individual needs of each child.  

Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA)

An FBA is conducted prior to the start of treatment.  An FBA is an assessment that identifies the reason your child engages in problem behaviors (i.e., tantrums, aggression, non-responsiveness) to help us design the most effective treatment program to reduce or eliminate those problem behaviors.  An FBA usually involves 2-3 observations sessions for 1/2 - 1 hour at your home, community, or school depending on when and where your child’s most challenging behaviors may occur.  

ABA at Home, in the Community, and at School

Behavior therapists work with your child one on one to teach them all of the skills necessary to communicate, play, imitate, take care of themselves, and be successful in their everyday lives.  All skills learned at home are generalized to the community.  We help children learn to tolerate and thrive across diverse environments including parks, grocery stores, restaurants, movie theaters, and any other location parents find to be problematic or challenging.  We help children successfully integrate into mainstream classrooms.  All of the following are components of our treatment program.

Treatment Sessions at Home

One-to-one teaching sessions (usually 2 to 4 hours long) occur Monday through Saturday in your home, typically in a room designated for teaching. Your child takes a 10-15 minute structured break (e.g., riding a tricycle, ball play) for every 45 minutes of teaching. In the teaching room, your child alternates from intensive teaching situations (e.g., labeling objects, learning to communicate) to structured play situations (e.g., completing puzzles, playing with toys).

School Shadowing

ABA BEARS provides one on one school shadowing for children attending school.  The goal of school shadowing is to generalize skills learned from home to school, teach and facilitate social interactions between your child and their peers, and to transfer instructional control from the behavior therapists to school personnel to help them more effectively work and interact with your child.

Team Meetings

For most children, we provide WEEKLY team meetings to ensure consistency and treatment integrity across all behavior therapists.  All team meetings include at least 1 parent, all of the behavior therapists that work with your child, and the supervising BCBA.  Your child’s progress and any challenges in their treatment are discussed and addressed.  No treatment decisions are made without parent involvement and understanding.

Parent Training

ABA BEARS provides all families with regular parent training sessions.  Parents learn to effectively manage their child’s behaviors across all settings.  Parent participation and follow through with treatment techniques and strategies are critical to each child’s generalizing and maintaining their skills across environment and situations.

ABA BEARS Programming & Philosophy

ABA BEARS customizes each child's program to maximize that child's skill set. That being said, ABA BEARS adheres to specific principles when programming for children.

Behavior Management

We pride ourselves on our ability to effectively and meaningfully decrease inappropriate behaviors (e.g., protests, tantrums, aggression) and increase appropriate coping skills (e.g., waiting, deep breathing). An intervention program is a failure when a child's inappropriate behaviors continue to manifest in the same way and in the same situations 6 months to a year after services have begun. A successful intervention program not only succeeds in teaching a child appropriate skills, it meaningfully decreases the child's inappropriate behaviors, at home and in the community.

Play

One of the primary focuses of our treatment is the teaching of functional play skills. We place a particular emphasis on teaching kids to be kids. For us, that means teaching children to play the games and activities typically developing children play. More specifically, we teach our clients to ride scooters, bikes (no training wheels), skateboards, and skates. All of our clients learn to play board games, swinging on the swings, and age-appropriate games on the tablets and phones.

In this field, the ratio of male to female therapists trends to 1:4. In contrast, children diagnosed with autism trend to 4:1 boys to girls. Given this disparity between a mostly female staff working with a mostly male autism population, we must be cognizant of the roles we model and the skills that we teach our clients. We provide all of our staff training to teach "girls to be girls" and "boys to be boys." For us, that means teaching our clients the skills to engage in those more gender specific activities that typically developing children play. We teach boys the correct techniques to play baseball, soccer, football, and basketball. We teach girls the correct techniques to play hopscotch, soccer, and jump rope. That is not to say that we do not teach girls to play baseball, or prohibit boys from playing hopscotch, but that we need to emphasize our teaching to effectively impart the necessary skills to our clients so that they may successfully integrate with typically developing peers in the natural environment.

Please recognize that this is not an attempt to force gender stereotypes, but rather an understanding that gender differences do exist and that for your child to succeed in socializing and being accepted by peers, we need to teach them the skills to blend into age-appropriate peer groups.

Communication

We utilize a variety of methods to teach your child to effectively communicate his or her needs. This can take the form of teaching your child to point to desired items, exchange pictures for desired items/activities, asking for desired items or activities, replying to questions with "yes/no," and/or making gestures to indicate preferences (e.g., nod for "yes," shake head for "no").

Independent & Self-Help

We teach children to live as independently as possible.  This includes teaching them how to use utensils to eat, how to get dressed, wash their hands, and to appropriately use the restroom.  We teach whatever skills your child needs to be successful with all of their self-help needs.

Parent and Family Involvement and Participation

Research shows and our experiences have conclusively demonstrated that family involvement is critical to a child's progress and longterm prognosis. Therefore, we require active parent and family involvement and participation. Parent training is mandatory for all parents in our program. We also involve everyone who plays an active role in the child's life in our training. Consistency is the key to any successful program.