[Episode 3] Using ABA to turn an autistic child's hand-leading into communication with the word 'please'. However, what over-intensive therapy brought about.

This note is a growth record of my adult son, D, who has a disability certificate. He used to have severe panic attacks and tantrums, but he gradually developed social skills, graduated from high school, and was hired by a major company under the disability employment quota. He lives a fulfilling life while valuing his hobbies and interactions with friends. I will record the path to that point and various stories from the present. This is the first of three articles (Episodes 3, 4, and 5) written about language acquisition in early childhood.

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When I went out with my son for an errand and exited the nearest station, it was completely dark. The ground was wet, perhaps from rain.

“Looks like it rained.”
“Yeah, it does.”

A casual exchange with my son. Reaching the point of normal conversational back-and-forth began with knocking on a certain door. That was joining a parents' group that conducts therapy based on ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis).

Although I started ABA from there, I eventually quit because it became too painful, and I also participated in open ABA lectures at a university of education; after much trial and error, I have reached where I am today. What I have done is not perfect, but ABA has had a major influence on my parenting philosophy.

For those who are not familiar with ABA, to explain it simply, there is a concept that human behavior can be analyzed into 'A: Antecedent -> B: Behavior -> C: Consequence.'
This is called ABC analysis.

Autistic children tend to engage in so-called 'inappropriate behavior,' such as throwing tantrums or acting out to control those around them—demanding food from their mother—rather than using words like 'I'm hungry.'

The method involves changing that into 'appropriate behavior' and reinforcing that behavior using rewards such as praise.

For example, the [Episode 2] I mentioned in the previous article, where my son used hand-leading to guide my hand to the refrigerator, is analyzed using ABC analysis in (Figure 1) below.

If we want to change this hand-leading into a desirable behavior, we teach him that if he performs the alternative behavior in (Figure 2) below: “Hold out your palm and say please”, he will get the food (reward).

…This has become a bit of a complicated story, hasn't it?

In short, I immediately turned his hand-leading palm upward, made it into a 'please' gesture, and made him say 'please' as well.

I made him understand that only when he could say that would the pudding 🍮 appear. (Figure 3)

“Words can be a tool for communication.”
Realizing that, D began to use words little by little.

However, it wasn't a miraculous event like the 'sudden awakening' often depicted in the story of Miss Sullivan and the visually impaired Helen Keller with 'Water! Water!' that caused D to awaken. It was quite a long battle.

At first, there was a lot of crying, and my intentions were not easily conveyed, but gradually he seemed to understand that if he said 'ta-i (please),' his mother would smile and give him pudding.

He became able to say even two-word phrases like “pudding please”.

However, I felt that it was wrong to be desperate and focus solely on raising his IQ, believing that “ABA-based parenting is the only correct way.” Even though ABA is a very effective method, I believe that parenting is not just about reinforcing correct things, but

something that progresses while including growth along the path of development, as well as contradictions and conflicts.

Due to the nature of autism, D remembers everything from the past, for better or worse, and now that he can hold conversations, he tells me about his early childhood.

He says, 'That time was painful.' I thought I was doing it for my child's sake, but I also reflect on the fact that I pushed him too hard for a while, believing that 'early intervention is important.'

When D was 4, I enrolled in a university major to obtain a teaching license for special needs schools*, and for my thesis, I interviewed adult individuals with ASD about their childhoods.
(*Note: This was not the university of education where I took the open ABA lectures.)

Even then, I heard quite a lot of resentment toward their mothers regarding how they were educated as children throughout the interviews.

Since training for autistic children often involves behavior modification, I think there was an aspect that inevitably became strict. Since these were stories from people who were already adults when D was a child, that was about 30 to 40 years ago.

At that time, I don't think there was much understanding from those around them, nor was there sufficient support.

Training between parent and child can only be established if there is a relationship of trust, but it can easily deviate from enjoyable parenting.

Before being a therapist, a parent just wants to be a 'parent'.
Why did I, who wished for that, still learn the concepts of ABA and incorporate them into my life by adapting them in my own way? I will document that struggle in [Episode 4].

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