Behavior Reduction: As part of your child's assessment, the behavior analyst will collaborate with you to create goals to address your child's behavioral excesses and problem behaviors. These are behaviors that impair your child's quality of life, because your child is engaging in them too often or because your child should not engage in them at all. Behavior reduction programs may be implemented for any of the following relevant excesses and problem behaviors:

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• Self-injurious behavior (SIB)

• Aggression toward others

• Property destruction

• Repetitive behavior

• Food refusal

• Screaming, crying, or whining

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Family Coaching and Caregiver Training:

Behavior therapy teaches new behaviors to you in parent training, or coaching, so that both you and your child become more and more independent of the therapist. You will learn to apply principles and methods of ABA on your own. Caregiver coaching is also offered for your regular nanny, grandparent, or other family member who supervises your child during sessions. In addition, sibling coaching extends perspective taking and care toward your child's siblings, who may benefit from guidance about how to interact with your child. Behavior happens in response to the environment, and your child's family is a part of his or her environment. This means that your own behavior is also a part of your child's environment, and when you make changes in your own behavior, you will see your child's behavior change, too!

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Treatment Methods:

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Natural Environment Teaching (NET): Your child will participate in naturalistic and incidental learning opportunities, which are child-initiated. These opportunities occur when he or she is already engaged in an activity. This type of learning helps your child achieve independence in using new skills in the actual environments in which he or she needs them. Pivotal Response Training (PRT) is a type of naturalistic learning.​

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Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT): Your child may receive structured learning opportunities, which are adult-initiated. These opportunities have a distinct beginning, middle, and end, usually in an environment relatively free of distractions. Once your child masters goals in a structured setting, he or she will participate in naturalistic learning opportunities for the same skills.

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Verbal Behavior (VB): Your child's services may focus on developing communication skills, using a functional approach to language. This approach focuses on the function, or reason, for using language, based on the consequences. It begins with emphasis on your child communicating his or her wants and needs and progresses to your child commenting, conversing, and using language in other ways. Skinner coined the term verbal behavior to refer to behavior that is reinforced by other people, and it includes both vocal verbal behavior (speech) and non-vocal verbal behavior (such as exchanging pictures or using signs). Teaching non-vocal verbal behavior may be a bridge to vocal verbal behavior.

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Motivation

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Motivation is essential to every treatment method. You can create motivation! When you are currently deprived of something, this can increase the likelihood that you'll engage in behavior that results in you gaining access to that item or activity, and this is what we call motivation. Instead of giving access to toys and activities freely, you can make access to toys and activities contingent on the desired behavior. Programs to teach your child to speak create the motivation to speak. Here are some examples of creating motivation:

• If your child is about to color and has crayons but no paper, the therapist prompts your child to communicate that he wants paper or waits for him to independently request it. 

• If you give your child small portions of her favorite snack at a time, this creates the motivation to ask for more. 

• For potty training, the therapist offers your child lots of water to drink to create the motivation to use the toilet and to communicate the private sensation of a need to use the toilet. 

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Autism Self-Advocacy

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At Inspire, the voices of autism self-advocates are heard. Some adults with autism who received ABA therapy from other companies as children speak of feeling that their behavior therapists and parents were forcing them to change who they are, to "normalize" them, and not just teaching them new skills. A theme in autism self-advocacy is respect for diversity. Here at Inspire, the behavior analyst does not assume that all of your child's behavior needs to be changed to mirror everyone else's. The approach is to appreciate individuals as they are, while also helping them to improve in areas of genuine need.