Here are some warn signs that your child’s program may not be as effective as it should be:
Programs are consistently on acquisition for 2-4 months, or longer.
This may indicate that the programs are simply not being done, not enough time is spent on each program, that an appropriate task analysis has not been completed, or that the skills are not developmentally appropriate to the child’s current level of functioning.
Programs are not presented in a developmentally-logical order.
For example, conversation skills should be introduced after children are able to generate novel present-tense and past-tense descriptive sentences.
Your child has a tantrum when he/she is told “no.”
This may be an indication that insufficient rewards are being used, children are being allowed to repeatedly fail within programs, a task analysis has not been completed, or that developmentally-inappropriate skills are being targeted.
Skills are repeatedly gained and lost.
This may indicate that developmentally-inappropriate skills are being taught, mastered skills are not being integrated into subsequent higher-level programs, or skills are not being generalized to real-world settings.
Your child used to be very responsive to one-to-one instruction, but now tantrums when tutors introduce new tasks.
This may indicate that reinforcers have not been adapted for a child’s maturation. The impact of food and physical reinforcers tends to diminish for some children as they mature and develop a broader set of play skills and interests. This may also indicate developmentally-inappropriate tasks or insufficient task analysis.
Your child knows what a quadrilateral is, but can’t tell you what he/she had for lunch.
This suggests that intervention has focused on memorization skills (e.g., moving from 100 expressive object labels to 500 expressive object labels), rather than on increasing the complexity of communication skills (e.g., moving from one-word verbalizations to full-sentence verbalizations).
Your program list gradually drifts into all play-based, nonverbal activities.
This suggests that your team is losing reinforcement control, and is consequently reducing the demand level of the program to prevent noncompliance and tantrums.
