There are two very different things a Colorado family can mean when they say their child receives special education services. In a public school, it means an individual entitlement to a free appropriate public education, documented in an IEP, with procedural protections that include the right to disagree and appeal. In a private school of […]
Six weeks of ten minutes twice a day comes to about seven hours. That is less time than one bad week of homework arguments in October, and it is close to the only real leverage a parent gets before a school year starts. Those seven hours go furthest when they are spent on three things: […]
The first thing I write down in a new home is a time. Not a goal, not a behavior. The time the hard part starts. For most school-age kids I work with, it lands between 3:40 and 4:15, and it is remarkably consistent once you look for it. That window is what in-home ABA after […]
School-based ABA therapy means applied behavior analysis delivered in your child’s classroom during the school day, rather than in a clinic afterward. In Colorado it comes in two separate forms, and knowing which one you are asking for changes almost everything about the conversation. One is educational ABA, written into the IEP, delivered by district […]
First weeks are often deceptively fine. Everything is new, the novelty carries a child through, and staff are watching closely because they are watching everyone closely. Week two is when the schedule tightens, the attention thins out, and whatever was being held together stops being held. So if you are trying to predict how this […]
A three-year-old bites his sister every time she takes a turn on the tablet. A four-year-old hits her teacher whenever it’s time to line up for recess. Neither one is a bad kid, and neither one is doing this on purpose in the way that word usually implies. Aggression in young autistic children is common, […]
I don’t think of kindergarten readiness as a finish line, and at Achieve ABA Therapy Group, I try to talk families out of thinking of it that way too. It’s closer to a head start: the more skills your child walks in with, the less ground everyone has to make up once the year is […]
I still remember the first time a family in Greeley called me in a panic because their son had slipped out the back door while everyone was busy with dinner. He was found twenty minutes later, three houses down, standing at the edge of a neighbor’s koi pond. Nothing happened to him that day. But […]
A mother I worked with recently in Boulder told me she could not remember the last time she used the bathroom without someone knocking on the door. She wasn’t looking for advice. She needed someone to hear it and take it seriously. Autism parent burnout is real, and it comes up in conversations like that […]
By 9 a.m. on a regular Saturday, a museum lobby is already loud. Announcements come over the speaker, a birthday party group is clapping near the gift shop, and fluorescent lights buzz over the ticket line. For some kids I work with at Achieve ABA Therapy Group, that is the moment the day goes sideways, […]
