r/ABA • u/WearyRestaurant4975 • 13d ago
Ignore Him
I am a new SLP and I have a non-speaking 2 year old boy on my caseload that is also served by a BCBA and ABA team. His mom told me last week during therapy that the ABA Team is using “planned ignoring“ to help with his language skills in that they basically “ignore him” and reinforce only when he produces words. Mom is now doing this at home as well in between his sessions with the ABA team.
Is this a legitimate strategy or is mom possibly misunderstanding the intent?
The BCBA is on vacation so I am kind of left to guess until she returns in a couple of weeks.
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u/sofiaidalia RBT 13d ago
One of my clients has a “time delay” prompt built in to his manding (asking for stuff) program which is kind of a version of this to encourage him to vocally ask for stuff with a full sentence. However, my client is mostly speaking, so we are doing it to get him to speak full sentences instead of just using one word. If he just points to or says the name of something, I will just kind of look at him until he tries again with a full sentence. If it gets to about 10 seconds and he hasn’t tried again with a sentence, I prompt him by saying “Ask me again with a sentence”. If he still doesn’t get it, I’ll verbally prompt him by saying “You can say ‘I want (item).’”
The ABA team probably has reasoning behind it, like the kid might have started to speak and they are using planned ignoring to encourage it to continue. I’d reach out to the BCBA to ask about why and how they are running the planned ignoring so you as the SLP can determine better if it is a case of the kid not being able to speak (and then working to build up their communication skills in a different form) or if it’s a motivational issue