You can always check the website for the Board of Certified Behavior Analysts as well. I think it is at http://www.bacb.com/. They should have a state by state listing of Analysts currently practicing in your state. If your state has an insurance mandate, or if you have an awesome policy, that may cover the costs. We are not able to use our insurance for ABA, but we get it through Arizona Long Term Care Services which is the medicaid funded agency that provides services to our children through the Department of Developmental Disability. These agencies will have different names in your state, but should serve the same function. Does your child have medicaid medical insurance through the state? If you have to private pay for a BCBA it can get very expensive very quickly. Many are PhD level and run similar rates to doctors and psychologists. Another option would be to see if your school district has a behavior specialist who is a BCBA on staff or contracted through a PO with the district. If it is not a problem at school it might be hard to get a behavior plan for home written, but if you bring it up as an emerging problem at an IEP meeting, they may be able to work with you to head it off before it becomes a problem at school as well.

My son is verbal. No big changes around the house or at school. I really believe it is triggered by my choice of object to take away as a punishment. He does not have too many things that he loves, changing up the object is not really feasible. We do not have a Board Certified Behavior Analyst - how do I go about finding one?

Does your son have a Board Certified Behavior Analyst on his team? Sounds like it might be good to have a functional behavior analysis done- this looks at what occurs prior to the behavior that could trigger it, what the behavior itself is composed of, and what occurs immediately after the behavior that might be reinforcing the behavior if he gets a result that he wants such as attention or the with drawl of a demand being placed upon him. We have done this with a lot of my daughter's behaviors and have learned so much from it. Sometimes making a small environmental tweak can head off a melt down, and even more often I have discovered that my way of responding to her (especially if I back off on my demand of putting her shoes on or whatever it was that set her off) would encourage her to use that same behavior again). It might be good to get a behavior plan in place for this now before it generalizes into the school environment, with his father and other therapists. That way if it does start to show up in other areas everyone can be agreed upon the best way to deal with it together.

Hi there Amy!

Whew. Violence and aggression are no good! I'm so sorry to hear about this.

Can you provide any more detail about your son? He is verbal? Any big changes recently around home?