ABA Therapy

Behavior therapy for kids with autism

We are committed to meet your child right where they are through progressive and compassionate care. Hopebridge helps your child discover and build onto their strengths.

Everyone excels if given the right opportunities

If your child has autism or is displaying signs of autism, you’ve likely heard about applied behavior analysis (ABA therapy) from your pediatrician. Or another parent told you how much it helped their child in the years leading up to school. Maybe you heard about it on social media. But what does ABA look like and how does it work?

The U.S. Surgeon General, the National Institutes of Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association consider ABA an “evidence-based best-practice treatment,” but chances are, you still feel you’re lacking details on what it means for your child. We’re here to show you the life-changing opportunities it can create.

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The ABA Breakdown

Simply put, ABA therapy is a scientific, behavioral approach. It’s a developmentally centered approach that capitalizes on learning by increasing opportunities and using the things your child already enjoys to teach them new skills.

By utilizing basic principles of behavior, special techniques and positive reinforcement, ABA therapy can bring about significant, measurable change. It’s a way to shape and mold actions for effective communication and learning. It has been proven to improve attention, focus, social skills and memory, as well as teach children other coping strategies and communication to reduce challenging behaviors such as aggression and self-injury.

Using ABA to teach consists of breaking down activities into smaller pieces in order to tackle larger goals. It may take a little longer for kids with autism to learn certain tasks that come naturally to others, often because their minds work in a different way. Our goal is to give them the attention and means to the same opportunities so they can reach their own goals.

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How does Hopebridge approach ABA?

Hopebridge’s objective is to use your child’s strengths and build upon them, all while doing it with joy. Our progressive and comprehensive programs follow your child’s lead. We cover a range of strategies so we can create individualized plans of care to support your family’s specific needs. Hopebridge focuses on teaching kids the way they learn rather than trying to fit them into a mold, which unfortunately some children experience if they attend school without first receiving behavioral therapy.

Clinical quality is of the utmost importance to us at Hopebridge, so our centers and programs are structured to teach a variety of communication and social skills, independent activities and more. What does a day in our centers look like? It may include naturalistic teaching for those learning to brush their teeth, play time in our indoor gross motor gym, or circle time with peers to work on school preparation skills.

Happy, Relaxed and Engaged Children.

Compassionate care has always been at the nucleus of our clinical philosophy, but Hopebridge continues to enhance training around our core values to continue to drive this home, which is why much of our programs focus on the “Happy, Relaxed, Engaged” (HRE) approach. The general concepts of HRE is fairly basic: Get to a place where the child is most comfortable and prepared to learn. This process is a way for us to team up with children and families, while providing an empathetic response to learners. We’re encouraging them, but not ignoring the difficulties they might be experiencing. Want to learn more? Check out our three-part series on HRE on the blog.

WHAT IS HRE?

Benefits of ABA Therapy +

More independence

We use ABA to inspire independence. Centers are equipped with various settings to teach foundational, adaptive living and leisure skills so kids aren't as reliant on others to get through the day.

Support with challenging behaviors

Children with autism can have difficulties with challenging behaviors like aggression or self-injury. ABA is effective in reducing these to give them the opportunity to engage safely in play with their peers.

Measurable, positive reinforcement

By rewarding certain behaviors, we are able to experience kids' responses in multiple environments, as well as encourage future recurrence and generalization.

Divide goals into smaller wins

Progress doesn't come from broad sweeping goals. Our clinicians have it down to a fine science with daily tasks (and time to dedicate to them) and tiny goals added together to produce results.

Comprehensive, productive environment

Our centers enable us to carry out personalized, 1-to-1 therapy over an extended period of time. Therapy isn't capped at 1-2 hours a week, allowing us to go more in depth than other providers.

More control over variables

At our centers, we have more control over the environment. We can eliminate barriers to learning and work with kids to build comfort and skills across multiple settings.

Autism: It's only a word; not a sentence

Watch as Hopebridge experts break down the diagnosis and why ABA is so effective in treating these kiddos.

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