What Makes Therapy Work?
Friday May 19, 2006
My late mother once said "Any child who gets positive, 1:1 attention from a loving adult will do better than any child who doesn't." I've thought about this again and again as I've delved more deeply into the many developmental and behavioral interventions available for autistic kids.
What do ABA, RDI, Floortime, SonRise, Social Stories, et al have in common? Some are quite costly; others less so; some involve specific curricula and careful record keeping; others don't. But at heart, all of them offer autistic children intensive 1:1 attention from a loving, caring adult.
To date, no one has compared these many interventions head to head. It would be interesting to do so. And it would be interesting to compare them to a placebo in the form of an untrained but patient and caring parent.
Could it be possible that an untrained loving parent, with all the patience and tenacity of so many good parents, could have exactly the same positive outcomes as highly trained therapists? What's your take on this question?
Comments
the attention from a loving parent really makes a big diffrence my daughter who is 3 started school last year suddenly she started to care about about what we thought we praised her on her good work efforts which motivated her to do more she would laugh and smiled and felt more postive we continue to do the cheering for every good postive behavior we also do alot of one on one work and outside time she loves which brings awareness dont give up school and love is whats best for them.
I think a loving parent can do a great deal. But I do think it would helpful if parents were aware of the guilding principles of at least a couple of these techniques — say ABA and Floor Time, and then adapted them to make them fit the needs and sensitivities of your particular child. My kid would go crazy doing repeated trails of something he already knows (ABA), for instance. But I have used a couple of techniques from some ABA programs, but without the constant repetition. I know with my child it isn’t necessary, and he doesn’t learn or retain the info any better by doing it over and over.
When he was still in school, I taught him to read — something the school hadn’t figured out. Now he’s homeschooling and doing even better. So yes, a loving parent can do so much!