Early intervention is vital for children with autism and from my experience one important easy intervention is Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA).
Applied Behaviour Analysis is a scientifically validated approach to understanding behaviour and how it is affected by the environment. It can achieve strong results if delivered correctly by parents and teachers a like.
ABA began working with young children with autism and related disorders in the 1960s and a wide variety of techniques have been developed for building useful skills in learners with autism.
Today, ABA is widely recognised as a safe and effective treatment for autism and has received endorsements globally from a number of State Bodies including the U.S, Surgeon General.
Over the past decade there has been a dramatic increase in the use of ABA to help persons with autism to live productive lives and ABA principles and techniques can foster skills such as looking, listening and imitating, as well as complex skills such as reading, conversing and understanding another person’s perspective.
The key is early intervention and combining multiple ABA techniques into comprehensive, individual and intensive early intervention programmes for children with autism.
These interventions must address a full range of skills, from communications and sociability to self-care and readiness for school.
Early intervention refers to ensuring programmes are designed to begin at age 4 and intensive means that programmes that are delivered for 30 to 40 hours per week for 1 to 4 years.
From this writers direct experience ABA does result in significant improvements in learning, reasoning, communications and adaptability when they participate in high-quality ABA programmes.
You first step after receiving a diagnosis of Autism is to plan and arrange a relevant ABA programme with multiple ABA techniques.