Building off one of @A MyAutismTeam Member points, good people are essential. Try out different speech therapists, etc until you find someone she relates well to. I took mine to three speech therapy places- Scottish Rite was terrible for him- young inexperienced college students who aren’t trained for special needs- he made almost zero progress there in months of therapy- spent most of time running away from and avoiding therapists, another place was another speech factory with a young inexperienced therapist- he said one word in 45 mins and was not engaged at all, the other he was Super engaged right from the beginning- tried hard and she really knew how to keep him motivated. You don’t have time to waste on people who can’t motivate your kid. Consider Private speech therapy 2x a week (Or pay them for extra 15 mins on top of 30 min session) unless you feel the school district does a good job.

Also check out Gemiini - I found that to be effective for helping him understand that apples, for example, have certain characteristics- but several types fit into apple definition- green apples, red apples, yellow apples. It was helpful for us for a few months. https://gemiini.org/#/get-started

Nay. Kids are more than just behaviors. Rewards and punishment are for dogs. It is borderline abuse in my books. Look up what autistic community says about it. Not the non autistic as they didn’t have to deal with it neither do they understand it.

Since we’re on the topic of ABA, what are some alternatives when opting out of ABA? L will be 3 in December and I am curious as to all options that exist.

I am one of those who likes to know about all options and details about those options and then make an educated decision based on what’s best so, I would
Love everyone’s input on alternatives. We just began our journey through services and therapies in April so I am New at this and wanting to learn more.

We do OT and Speech virtually however, L is not interest in the slightest. I’m open to all suggestions please and thank you!

I agree with you @A MyAutismTeam Member. It didn’t help my son but I don’t think it’s made for low functioning autistics. My son was kicked out of a very “prestigious” ABA school because it didn’t work for him and like I said in “My Story”, I think they wanted him out because he threw off their successes average! ABA is strictly reward based and they will use anything your kid likes as bait. Works for a lot of kids but the only thing my son has ever cared for was using his iPad and repeatedly playing small sections of movies again and again. Literally from age 4 to just last month that was his world (13 1/2 years!). I’m sorry Christian had that experience and my son was physically abused in school also (we have pictures of the bruises on his back as proof). I’m not implying it was connected to ABA because almost all of the specialized autism schools do some form of ABA or ABA- Like therapy. But anything done by a caring person can help. I PERSONALLY think when there only becomes one way to fix a problem abuse and corruption starts to breed. We are told therapy is the only thing that helps... that’s scary because it stops people from looking in other directions. It’s like no competition with a business. When your the only place in town, the quality gets lost and there’s no need to change for the better.