Ilynx wrote:
Hello All,
I have a 3 y.o. son on the spectrum. He is super high functioning and very verbal. He is currently engaged in about 16 hours a week of ABA, and this has been really wonderful for him, for the most part, for these first two months. We are getting to the point where they are beginning to address his hand flapping and mouth noises, but my wife and I are concerned about how these behaviors have been addressed so far. We have asked them to stop addressing them for now, until we are more comfortable with how they will proceed.
These behaviors clearly serve some purpose for him, and we want to make sure we are 100% on the same page about the strategies used to address them before moving forward. We still have a couple of concerns.
First, it seems like everyone outside of our family believes he only engages in these behaviors when he is excited. The only replacement behaviors that they have offered so far include hand clapping, fist pumping and saying, "I'm excited!", or raising his hands in the air and saying, "yay!" We believe that our son flaps his arms under many different circumstances, not just when he is excited. He seems to do it when he is bored, concentrating, in transitions, nervous, and when holding back the urge to go to the bathroom. We are concerned it will be detrimental to lump all responses to these behaviors under the “excited” umbrella.
Second, we are very concerned about using any terms, phrasing, situations, etc. that attempt to coerce or pressure him. We’re worried that using phrases like, “What do your friends do?”, “Big boys don’t flap”, or “You don’t see any other kids doing it, right?” is similar to peer pressure, using shame or guilt to produce an outcome that society desires.
At this point, we are still discussing whether we would even like these behaviors to be addressed, as well as some options for how. But if we do allow them to start addressing the behaviors, what should we be looking out for? I know they will want to give him a replacement behavior, but shouldn't it be done by example rather than coercion? And without judgemntal or negative words?
TIA,
Ilynx
First, how is fist pumping and screaming "I'm excited" going to work in the long run? Seriously? Can you see how that would play out in school? He's sitting in class and suddenly he is fist pumping and yelling that he is excited? ROFL! I don't mean to be laughing at your expense, but clearly someone has a very rigid understanding of the idea of replacing stims with more "socially acceptable ones!"
Now, on to the real answer:
I was very hesitant to start ABA with my daughter. There were two things they were not permitted to address if they wanted to work with my daughter 1) eye contact and 2) flapping. They could ask once for her to look at them. If she did, great. If she didn't, move on. If she wanted to flap, they could ask her to wait until she was done doing whatever task they were doing, but then they needed to let her flap (and hop, those were her two big stims). One therapist actually used flapping and hopping as her reinforcer, and a second one eventually did, too.
You don't have to allow them to extinguish his stims. I think the difficulty is that for many people trained in ABA, this is a challenge because stims and eye contact are two things that they are trained to work on. For 3 of my daughter's therapists, it wasn't an issue. But the 4th one struggled a lot more because it clashed with how she "thought" sessions were supposed to go. But she worked very hard to learn how to work around the flapping and eye contact issues. When her time with my daughter was over, she gave me a heartfelt thanks because she felt she learned more from working with my daughter than her daughter learned from her. She said she learned that sometimes therapy is more effective when it is NOT done by the books.
BTW, my daughter is 8 now and she rarely hand flaps. She rarely hops, and she never spins. And none of them stopped because anyone ever told her not to do it. She stopped on her own volition. And she knows if she ever feels the need to do it, no one is going to reprimand or correct her. Her family and teachers get it: it is a self-regulatory mechanism for her. She does have some less noticable stims, like finger swooshing (she moves her fingers rapidly up and down like she is playing the piano with them barely touching so them make a slight swooshing sound), but no one taught her that either. I guess she just realized she could do it without people noticing, so she started doing it.
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Mom to 2 exceptional atypical kids
Long BAP lineage
06 Apr 2014, 8:12 am
