Parents Goals - Jun 26, 2014

Very recently I had coffee with the mom of a child I worked with several years ago. This parent has been running a very successful home IBI/ABA program for many many years (Her child did not flourish within the provincial program, but did when she made drastic changes to how programming was laid out in their home program at age 8. He quickly moved from PECS to sign, to vocals and currently has many somewhat-scripted sentences in his toolkit.

Most recently she's feeling frustrated by her practitioners reliance of the ABLLS-R, and VB-MAPP. Her frustration stems from the fact that her child is now a teenager and these measures are written primarily for skills a young child should have. Our conversation centred on how much the parents' goals should inform programming.
I wanted more information and perspective following this conversation, and brought it to my BCBA meeting. In this meeting my BCBA shared that she had the opposite kind of parent. One whose services would shortly be ending (the result of the end of funding - a pitfall too many parents are forced to endure), and she wanted to finish the ABLLS-R before his service ended.

This leads me to the conclusion that if the parents of a child you're servicing are able to articulate goals they want to have (I want Jr to be able to locate a snack when I tell him it's snack time), when they are appropriate and within the child's capability they should always be followed through on. If the parent is not able to share their goals, and rely on standardized measures, that doesn't mean you should follow these as your goal posts for success. As the practitioner you should ask questions that get at things the parents want most, or feel their child is lacking in - regardless of whether it exists in a standardized measure or not. This is how to be creative in this primarily supervisory role.

Being an effective leader of a child's programming means not just following the sequence. It means critically thinking about the areas of need in the child, and the family's life - because if their services end tomorrow, at least they will feel they've gotten their worth if they've shared their goals and seen progress in those areas.