Shaping means reinforcing successive approximations of a target behavior, which is a technical way of saying you reward the almost until the almost becomes the thing. In practice, it is how a child who cannot say a word learns to say it, and how a child who bolts from the dentist eventually sits in the […]
A prompt is any bit of help added to a direction so your child can respond correctly. Prompting levels are the ranked amounts of that help, running from hand over hand support at one end down to no help at all at the other. In ABA therapy, we pick a level on purpose and then […]
The letter usually says something like “not medically necessary” or “services exceed authorized limit,” and it can feel like a full stop right when you’d finally gotten your child’s care moving. It isn’t a full stop. Colorado gives you a real, structured right to appeal an ABA therapy claim denial, and a meaningful share of […]
A treatment plan can be clinically sound and still stall for reasons that have nothing to do with the child. Sometimes it’s a standardized assessment tool that’s one edition behind what a payer’s system checks for. Sometimes it’s a treatment goal written in language that made sense to me but not to a reviewer reading […]
September is the month the routine works. October is the month it wobbles. By February, the chart on the fridge is decoration and one parent is narrating the same six steps from the hallway every single morning, getting louder each time. That collapse is not a parenting failure. Morning and homework routines fall apart because […]
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 […]
Most parents meet me holding a small stack of referrals: one for ABA, one for speech therapy, one for occupational therapy, and no clear sense of how they fit together. It is a lot to hand a family in a single appointment, especially when each service comes with its own initials, its own evaluation, and […]
Starting in-home ABA therapy is a big step, and it comes with a very practical question: what do I need to do to my house before the first session? The reassuring answer is, well, not much. Preparing your home for in-home ABA therapy is less about renovation and more about a few small, thoughtful choices […]
Choosing an ABA provider for your child is one of the bigger decisions a parent makes, and it can feel overwhelming when every website promises the same reassuring things. The real differences between providers show up in the details, and the fastest way to see those details is to ask good questions. So knowing which […]
Speech Delay vs. Autism: How Parents Can Tell the Difference
