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you know, the developmental pediatrician basically, you know, she told us to focus on lowering our expectations, you know, that we can, you know, spend more time, you know, focusing on giving him life skills and focusing on him, learning that, but you know, that, and then we could do what we could to try to reduce the behaviors. I have no control over how my life is going to turn out, or what kind of… I also say that, you know, once you draw the autism card, your name is still in the lottery for a bunch of other stuff that come down the pipe to like, you know, family members still get cancer and other typically developing kids have issues and you might go bankrupt or whatever. You know, I’m not able to even consume any of these studies, you know, for kids with autism or you know, and that focus may change over the years. Like if especially you’re talking about ABA therapy or a diet or a new therapy company or a new speech therapist, like sometimes you do need to give it as long as the child is safe and you know, not, you know, not in an unsafe situation, but sometimes you need to give it a few sessions or a few weeks and months to really see.

So today I am sharing an excerpt from a question during one of my live Q&A sessions discussing what you can do for a toddler saying no to every question asked. You’re not going to be able to transition kids smoothly if you make what they’re coming to so much more difficult or less reinforcing then what they have. but you’re taking him from a 10 to a 9, back up to a 10, maybe to an 8, back up to a 9 and throughout his day he is not crashing and being offered something that’s a 2. Wherever you’re watching/reading this, I’d love it if you would leave me a comment, give me a thumbs up, share this video/article with others who may benefit, and for more information, you can attend a free online workshop at marybarbera.com/workshop and I’ll see you right here next week.

Like maybe you can do our work and self-care and things like that, then all of the rest of that time is available for problem behavior to come into contact with reinforcement. What I would hope to see over the next decade or so is movement in the next direction where the accessibility is for those kind of integrated types of approaches and services, so that behavior analysts can work directly with medical personnel on those types of problems and in a safe way so that we can ensure that individuals are not getting hurt in a way that is irreparable or to make sure even that individuals working with the individual like teachers and parents and therapists are perhaps not getting hurt due to the behavior and medical variables that are contributing to it. And just because something, you know, the child went to the doctor and they ruled out medical problems, like if that was a week ago, a month ago, a day ago, if the child isn’t unable to communicate fully, the chances of them really ruling out, I mean, I’m a nurse, my husband’s a physician, I’m a behavioral analyst. And I’ve done a lot of work about more around that too because it’s not just the kids who need positive reinforcement, like you’re saying, you know, our spouses or students or teachers are, if you’re

The child makes an error not because they’re not paying attention, but because they don’t have the language skills for that finer discrimination So a lot of my techniques, especially for early and intermediate learners are based on some of the programs that Dr. Carbone taught us and then my modifications because a lot of times it didn’t work with Lucas. And I’m going to show you how to pull it back even farther, but I would pick one discrimination like color and I would do more trial by trial, mixing that up, taking data, and then if he is 90 or a hundred percent with what color, what is it? You could use forks, you can use blocks, you can use straws, you can use markers, but you must use something that is fluent.