Children's Developmental Milestones, Inc.

Frequently, children with autism experience difficulty interacting with others or present challenging behaviors that impede social development.  As such, behavioral interventions are often an integral part of any program designed to address such challenges.  Children's Developmental Milestones is unique in that we offer two different methods of behavioral intervention:  Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and  DIR/Floortime.

Applied behavior analysis is the process of systematically applying interventions based upon the principles of learning theory to improve socially significant behaviors (reading, academics, social skills, communication, and adaptive living skills-gross and fine motor skills, eating and food preparation, toileting, dressing, personal self-care, domestic skills, time and punctuality, money and value, home and community orientation, and work skills), and to demonstrate that the interventions employed are responsible for the improvement in behavior.  The most common and distinguishing type of intervention based on applied behavior analysis is Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT).  DTT is a systematic way of teaching a child new skills through repetition and reinforcement.

ABA methods can be used to help your child: 

1. increase behaviors (eg reinforcement procedures increase on-task behavior, or social interactions);
2. learn new skills (eg, systematic instruction and reinforcement procedures teach functional life skills, communication skills, or social skills);
3. maintain behaviors (eg, teaching self control and self-monitoring procedures to maintain and generalize job-related social skills);
4. generalize or transfer behavior from one situation or response to another (eg, from completing assignments in the resource room to performing as well in the mainstream classroom); and
   
5. reduce interfering behaviors (eg, self injury or stereotypy).

Our on-site Behavior Intervention Case Manager (BICM) will  complete a thorough functional behavior assessment (FBA) in order to assess your child 's needs.  Once a comprehensive behavior plan is developed we will work with you and your child's school to appropriately implement your child's behavior plan and provide follow-up training and support as needed. 

Floortime therapy is a systematic way of working with your child to master developmental milestones.  As such, Floortime  is considered a developmental approach to therapy. Children with autism are often identified initially due to delays in achieving crucial developmental milestones (self-regulation, communication, crawling, walking, etc.).  Floortime therapy focuses on taking your child back to the very first milestone he may have missed and begins the developmental process anew. Floortime therapy is different from behavioral methods of intervention in that it addresses internal constructs such as emotion and motivation.  Floortime therapy is used most often with infants and toddlers through early childhood.  Additional information on Floortime may be found on their website at  www.floortime.org