What is ABA?
ABA is...
Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is an evidence-based approach that helps children build meaningful skills. At Helianthus Positive Behavior Supports, Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) assess your child, write a plan for skills and behavior support, and train the staff and caregivers who carry it out.
We teach skills that help your child communicate, play and do more on their own. We use positive reinforcement, such as praise and rewards your child enjoys, to build skills that matter in daily life. We also use Positive Behavior Supports (PBS) to keep therapy motivating and to build a trusting relationship with your child.
ABA also helps skills last. Maintenance means your child keeps using a skill over time. Generalization means your child uses the skill with different people, in different places and in new situations.
When a behavior affects your child's safety or learning, such as aggression or trouble with transitions, your child's care team plans proactive strategies to help. Any reactive strategies are always paired with positive ones, and we get your written consent before starting a Behavior Support Plan.
Our team stays in touch with you and offers ongoing support and training to help your child's progress last.
What does ABA focus on?
Target Areas of ABA are...
- Language and Functional Communication: Communicating wants/needs to others
- Independent Play: Playing independently and functionally
- Social Skills: Interacting and building relationships with others to include peers
- Visual/Perceptual Skills: Interpreting and tracking stimuli one sees visually,
- Self-help Skills: Skills such as dressing/undressing, grooming/hygiene, feeding, toilet training
- Listener Responding: Attending and responding to spoken instructions
- Gross/Fine Motor Skills: Controlled body movements and range of motion
- Maintenance: Maintaining taught skills
- Generalization: Performing taught skills across various persons, situations and environment.
What is PBS?
PBS is...
Positive Behavior Supports (PBS) provides a process to understand and resolve the challenging behaviors of individuals that are based on evidence based practices and research. PBS offers an approach to develop an understanding of why an individual engages in specific challenging behaviors and promotes strategies to prevent the occurrence of these challenging behaviors while teaching the individual new skills. Positive Behavior Supports offer a well-rounded approach that considers all factors that have an impact on an individual, an individual’s behavior and significant others. PBS uses increasing motivation, proactive strategies, behavioral modeling, as well as other methods to give individual’s the tools needed to increase learning and contact reinforcement while providing a safe and fun learning environment. It can be used to address challenging behaviors of a wide range to include but not limited to aggression, defiance, lack of communication, stereotypic/sensory-oriented behaviors, and social withdrawal behaviors.