Tag: ABA
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Habilitation Thoughts & Thanks
The last habilitation therapist to work in our home was a lovely young woman. I really liked her. She had never worked with the developmentally disabled. Had no educational training, no knowledge of the therapy types or techniques. I trained her myself on Tony’s programs…personally I care more about someone’s ability to be patient and…
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Our Therapy Goals Path Going Forward
This past May, I started creating my own programming for Tony’s community safety and public therapy goals as his habilitative therapist. This was necessary as his ABA team had recommended working on a completely home-based program and public outings with their therapists were limited at their request. Yet, our ongoing need as a family for…
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When Community Safety Makes My Heart Sing…
For a few months now most of Tony’s community safety walks have been handled entirely by me acting as his habilitative therapist. Using differential reinforcement and a parental enforced consequence for pushing (the non clocked in parent would tell Tony that any pushing would result in him loosing kindle privileges for 2 minutes when we…
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Why Certain Stores Get All the Public Therapy Lovin’
Because of the nature of what we do when we are working therapeutically with Tony in public, more attention grabbing behaviors from him can and will happen still…even if we are currently on an upward slope of considerable improvement. We are sometimes really pushing the boundaries of what he can tolerate. In stores right now,…
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Our Pandemic Public Therapy Progress Report
A couple of weekends ago, on our last public therapy trip with Emily as Tony’s hab therapist, he laughed, smiled, and flapped as we walked towards the door of our local Fry’s. When we first started our public therapy programs, I never would have expected to see him looking happy in that context. The best…
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Community Safety Progress Presents
Hannah and I put up the outside Christmas lights by ourselves this year, and so Tony needed to accompany us up front. Historically, any sort of outside task required multiple (you should read that as every couple of minutes at least) sprints chasing Tony down as he laughingly ran out of our yard. But when…
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Navigating The Stress Of Allergies, POTS, And All Things Health & Being Needed On The Therapy Team
For nearly a year now, I have been bobbing up and down on the waves of life, trying not to get swamped or washed overboard as I navigated managing my health and maintaining the active role I must play in all of Tony’s therapy programs that transpire outside of our house. These programs are essential…
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Our Current In-Home ABA Programs: A Brief Overview
Currently, our ABA programs are focused on skills that are being both practiced inside and outside of the home. This week, I am going to give a brief overview of the in-home therapy programs. Although everything we are working on matters, the bulk of our time is spent working on skills necessary for Tony to…
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Meetings: The Foundation of our ABA Programs
In Arizona, once a kiddo is diagnosed with a qualifying disability, they can apply for both the Arizona Long Term Care System (ALTCS) and Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD) services. When Tony was diagnosed with level three Autism, we immediately applied for both services because the insurance we had at the time would not cover…
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The Nightmare of “No”
“He’s growing so tall! He’s doing so well! He’s being so patient!” We were finishing up a quick trip into a local grocery store this morning with a new ABA behavioral therapist that is working with Tony in the mornings, and those were the cashier’s comments to us. As I have explained before to those…