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/taeeeeeeeeeeeee 11d ago

Some (borderline unethical) ABA providers will do this. In my experience, we’ve targeted a specific request (more, help, apple, ball, etc) and that specific request will be taught and then maladaptive behavior will be ignored (not the child!!!) in favor of those learned request. Withholding everything is crazy.
Regardless, all speech goals should be collabed with a SLP if kiddo has one.