My daughter just started her ABA last week. She is 3years old and she had started school in a special class in April. We prefer ABA then the school environment since she is getting 1:1 therapy for a long period 5times a week. The goals set for her are exactly what she needs and the send a report each day saying what progress she is making and what they did. We have decided to even take her out of school until she is 4years and just focus on ABA. We think it is the best choice for early intervention. She previously was receiving speech therapy and occupational therapy at home. She is non-verbal.

Get ABA. It is the ONLY scientifically approved therapy that works for kids with autism. I would just focus on the approach. Our therapists look for natural learning opportunities that teach our son how to be in the world. There are some agencies that are more rigid which doesn't fit with our household or how we want our son to be treated. ABA has helped our son to make huge strides. I will be forever grateful to our therapists.

In my opinion, there will turn out to be hundreds of different kinds of autism. Some kids are under-sensitive, for example, while others are over-sensitive. (Also: Some will respond well to certain diets, while others will not.)

One of treatments that has shown the best results in many different kinds of autism is ABA. There are a bunch of reasons, but mostly it is because the ability to develop skills is just as important as the skills themselves.

Look at it this way: If a child has no language, no amount of medicine will suddenly "cure" the language deficit. There are many steps that the child will need to take before they can speak, and ABA gives you the ability to break those steps down into very small parts, and reward each skill as it develops.

The key words for ABA therapy are "early" and "intensive". The earlier you can start, the better off you are. This is not to say that kids can't learn to talk after four years old, only that it is harder for them.

The more intensive, the better. Studies show that kids with 20 hours a week have better results than those with 10, and kids with 30 hours a week show better results than 20, etc...

The ideal solution is to make every activity part of the game. When you build it into every routine, you can get an additional four or five hours a day just from the typical interactions of life.

Our son loved cookies, for example, but had almost no language at age 2. We would hold the cookie out of reach for a few seconds and encourage him to say the word "cookie". If he failed, of course, he still gets the cookie, but he quickly figured out that if he tried, he got the cookie faster, and he got more at once.

Within the month, he learned a word that sounded like "kahki", which he quickly figured out was a fast way to obtain both praise and cookies. The word itself didn't matter. What mattered was that he had learned how to control his environment using language. More importantly, he had learned how to learn.

Every new skill, and every new behavior, has been taught using roughly the same method. Potty training, self-calming, getting (somewhat) dressed, even going to bed at night all started with the process of discrete trials and positive reinforcement for success.

There is a lot more to it than that, of course, but you might want to start at a place like: http://www.users.qwest.net/~tbharris/aba_handbo...

ABA saved our life, or at least made it more enjoyable!!!

Our public preschool does an evaluation and if they are considered on the spectrum they will have an ABA assigned to them. Being around the kids helps too:)