How ABA Therapy is Personalized: A Closer Look at Tailoring Treatment for Your Child

Applied behavior analysis (ABA) is an effective intervention for helping children with autism improve their independence and their overall quality of life. ABA is highly individualized to each child which means that your child’s treatment will be personalized to fit what is best for them. ABA is tailored to support your child’s best interest through a variety of methods. Let’s explore some ways in which ABA treatment is individualized to meet the unique needs of each child.

Individualizing ABA to Meet the Needs of Your Child

There are many ways ABA is individualized to meet your child’s needs. This approach ensures that your child’s services are designed to fit what is best for your child based on their needs, abilities, and goals. ABA does not support “cookie cutter” treatment meaning ABA providers aim to create individualized treatment based on personalized goals and developing treatment plans that are likely to be most effective for the individual learner to meet those individualized goals.

Initial Assessment

ABA begins with a comprehensive assessment to understand the child’s strengths, challenges, and specific behaviors. This involves observations, interviews with parents or caregivers, and standardized tools. The results guide the development of individualized treatment plans.

Personalized Goals

Goals are based on the child’s unique developmental stage, needs, and family priorities. These goals often focus on improving communication, social skills, adaptive behaviors, and reducing challenging behaviors.

Data-Driven Approach

ABA relies on continuous data collection to monitor the child’s progress. Therapists adjust interventions based on this data to ensure the child is meeting milestones or to revise strategies when something isn’t working as expected.

Customized Interventions

ABA therapy uses a wide variety of techniques, such as discrete trial training (DTT), natural environment teaching (NET), and social skills training. These techniques are selected and customized according to the child’s individual learning style, preferences, and specific needs.

One-on-One Therapy

ABA is often delivered in a one-on-one setting, allowing the therapist to focus entirely on the child’s needs. In some organizations, group settings can also be introduced when appropriate for teaching social interactions.

Family Involvement

Parents and caregivers are involved throughout the process, learning strategies to support the child outside of therapy sessions. This makes ABA more effective and consistent across different environments. It also gives the BCBA an opportunity to modify the interventions to support the child’s experiences at home outside of ABA sessions, as well.

Flexible Programming

As the child grows and develops, their needs will change, and so will the ABA program. Goals are revisited and updated to ensure that the therapy remains relevant and beneficial.

This individualized approach ensures that each child receives ABA therapy tailored specifically to their personal growth and developmental journey.

Creating a behavior Plan Individualized to Your Child

Oftentimes, children with autism have some challenging behaviors that negatively impact their life. These behaviors may be a threat to their own or to others’ safety, such as with self-harm or aggressive behaviors. Other times, the behaviors are not supporting the child’s optimal quality of life. For example, having excessive tantrums instead of learning coping skills and functional communication can have a negative impact on relationships, skill development, and getting one’s needs met. ABA providers often create behavior plans to address these types of challenging behaviors.

Creating a behavior plan in ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) involves a systematic process designed to reduce problematic behaviors and promote positive, replacement behaviors. The plan is highly individualized and based on a thorough understanding of the specific behaviors, their triggers, and their consequences. Here’s a step-by-step outline of how a behavior plan is typically created and how it is personalized to support your child’s needs and goals.

Identify the Problem Behavior

• Define the target behavior
  • The first step is clearly defining the behavior that needs to be addressed. The behavior should be described in specific, observable, and measurable terms. For example, instead of saying “aggressive behavior,” describe it as “hitting with an open hand.”
• Prioritize behaviors
  • If the child exhibits multiple challenging behaviors, the team may prioritize which behaviors to target first based on severity, safety concerns, or impact on daily functioning.

Conduct a Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA)

The FBA is a critical step in understanding why the behavior occurs. Sometimes, a BCBA (Board Certified Behavior Analyst) will do a formal FBA in the form of systematic assessments while other times they will use less formal strategies such as by using observation and data to identify the function of the behavior. An FBA assessment typically includes:

• Direct observation
  • Observing the child to see when and where the behavior happens
• Data collection
  • Gathering data on the antecedents (what happens before the behavior), the behavior itself, and the consequences (what happens after the behavior).
• Interviews
  • Speaking with behavior technicians (who work directly with your child), parents, teachers, and/or other caregivers to gather more information about the behavior, its context, and possible triggers.
• Functional analysis
  • In some cases, controlled assessments may be completed to test hypotheses about the behavior’s function.

Determine the Function of the Behavior

The goal of the FBA is to identify the function of the behavior. Behaviors typically serve one of the following functions:

• Attention
  • The child engages in the behavior to gain attention from others (positive or negative).
• Escape or avoidance
  • The behavior helps the child avoid or escape an unpleasant task, demand, or situation.
• Access to tangibles
  • The child exhibits the behavior to get a preferred item, activity, or reward.
• Sensory stimulation (automatic reinforcement)
  • The behavior provides internal sensory pleasure or relief (e.g., hand-flapping, rocking).

Develop the Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP)

The Behavior Intervention Plan outlines the strategies to reduce the problematic behavior and encourage positive, replacement behaviors. Key components include the following, all which are based on your child’s specific needs and the findings from their FBA.

• Antecedent Modifications (Prevention Strategies)
  • Changes to the environment or situations that trigger the behavior. For example altering the environment to reduce triggers (e.g., reducing loud noises or visual clutter), providing choices to reduce power struggles, or modifying tasks to make them more manageable (e.g., breaking tasks into smaller steps).
• Replacement Behaviors
  • Identifying and teaching appropriate behaviors that serve the same function as the problematic behavior. For example, teaching the child to request a break instead of engaging in disruptive behavior to escape a task or teaching a child to ask for help or attention instead of engaging in attention-seeking behavior.
• Consequence Modifications (Response Strategies)
  • These strategies involve changing how adults or peers respond to the behavior to reduce reinforcement of the problematic behavior. An approach that is highly recommended is to include positive reinforcement for a replacement behavior (such as praise or rewards) being given when the child engages in the appropriate replacement behavior.

Data Collection and Monitoring

• Baseline data
  • Prior to intervention, data is collected on the frequency, duration, and intensity of the behavior to establish a baseline.
• Ongoing data collection
  • After the plan is implemented, ongoing data is collected to monitor progress. This includes tracking both the reduction in problematic behavior and the increase in replacement behaviors.
• Data analysis
  • The BCBA (Board Certified Behavior Analyst) reviews the data regularly to assess the plan’s effectiveness.

Review and Modify the Plan

• Regular review
  • The behavior plan is reviewed periodically (e.g., every 3-6 months) to ensure it is effective and aligned with the child’s progress and changing needs. BCBAs also meet with your child’s direct therapist often to ensure your child is making progress or to give recommendations for modifications to be made to the intervention strategies if progress is not being made.
• Adjustments
  • Based on the data collected, the behavior plan may be modified if the current strategies aren’t working, or as the child acquires new skills.

Your child’s ABA services will be individualized to their unique needs and personalized goals. As we discussed, there are many ways from initial assessment to ongoing treatment which allow for your child’s ABA to be suited to what is in their best interest to support their skill development and quality of life.