To ABA and ST or not

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I took my son out of school to home school him for 3rd. grade. Heard more pros than cons, except from psychologist ,of course. He is in ST and they are to be incorporating Hand writing without tears and some ABA. I can't see where they are doing anything but taking our money. 4 boys move in across street and he is getting lots of socialization. Any thoughts on if some of these therapies are a waste of money. I could do ABA at home. How do you qualify fir SSI benefits? Is it based on income? Thanks!

I think that those therapies are a waste of money, and it would be a great deal of torture, if he had to do 40 hours of ABA a week, on top of school. That would be like school added on to school. Not very pleasant. I think that he should be allowed to socialize with the neighbourhoood kids, and be a kid. Save your money, and pay for his College or University classes with it.

I can't tell you whether or not ABA therapy is a good idea because there is no firm definition for what it involves.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) keeps a pretty close watch on the pharmaceutical industry. As such, when you pick up a bottle of aspirin you know what exactly is in that bottle, and you know that it has been verified. By comparison, there is no FDA when it comes to autism therapies. You can go to a hundred different therapists who each claim to use ‘ABA treatment techniques’ and you will get a hundred different therapies. Even treatment centers, which have multiple people on staff, will vary how they treat your child based on which therapist your child works with. Some therapist will just do whatever they want and put a label ABA on it so that parents are more likely to trust that it is a good therapy. As it is, terms like ‘ABA therapy’ have become nothing more than marketing terms like JUMBO or SALE. They really don’t reflect what the actual treatment is like, any more than seeing the word sale guarantees a good price.

So, saying yeah. I can't say anything good, or bad about it because the term doesn't mean anything.

Too much of anything is not good. Rewards based A.B.A. can be used to teach skills. So can speech therapy. When I was in school, I had speech therapy, and I learned how to fake eye contact pretty well. Eye contact is very important in the NT world and has a lot to do with autistic people being allowed opportunity for success. Is the eye contact standard unfair? I believe it is, but that is how things work.