ABA therapy practitioners understand the important role that parents have to play in a child’s ABA program. This is why it’s important for them to have the skills to continue their child’s ABA therapy. For parents, there are many training strategies and ABA parent training topics that they need to be familiar with to help their child when their ABA healthcare practitioner isn’t around.
Let’s take a closer look at what ABA training for parents is, the benefits it offers, and how you can implement it at your practice if you haven’t already done so.
What is ABA training for parents?
ABA training for parents is providing a child’s parents or guardians with the skills they need to help a child, such as training to help a child improve their behavioral outcomes, to better communicate with adults and peers, or improve their ability to focus. ABA parent goals can be a part of parent training for ABA as a way to help them further reinforce what their child has learnt during their time with an ABA therapy practitioner.
The benefits of ABA therapy training for parents
There are ABA strategies for parents that unlock many benefits for their child’s development, which also result in many other positive effects. These benefits include:
- Helping parents improve a child’s communication skills.
- Helping parents improve a child’s social skills.
- Helping parents improve a child’s independence.
- Helping parents improve a child’s mental health by reducing negative outcomes.
- Helping parents improve their own relationship with their children.
- Helping reduce the stress in a home through improving their child’s outcomes.
Implementing parent training for ABA therapy in your practice
Whether you are introducing parent training for ABA therapy in your practice or already have an existing program that you want to improve, here’s some advice that you can take advantage of to ensure your training is as effective as possible.
1. Emphasize the important roles parents play as partners in ABA therapy
It’s important to educate a child’s parents or guardians about the critical role they play in reinforcing practices implemented during therapy. This means that even when the child isn’t in a session with an ABA practitioner, it’s vital that the adults who are looking after them still ensure the children receive the same lessons. This approach will help the child make progress and prevent any regression that may otherwise occur between ABA therapy sessions.
2. Ensure your parents’ ABA training program is properly laid out
To ensure that parents have all the tools they need, you’ll need to develop an ABA training program for parents. This will help you set goals for the overall program, as well as what you aim to achieve in each session.
It may be very time consuming to develop a custom training program for each family and their circumstances, so you’ll either need to create a foundational plan that you can customize as necessary, or you’ll need to look for an existing program, whether that is one available to purchase or that a fellow ABA therapist has developed, that you can use and adapt to suit your clients’ needs.
3. Setting realistic ABA parent goals
Each child is unique and has their own challenges that they need to overcome during ABA therapy. This is why it’s important that you set realistic goals for parents as a part of their training. Not only will this help the child to avoid frustration, but will also help the parents better understand what is realistically possible.
4. Give parents the opportunity to practice what they learned
Giving parents and guardians the necessary theory is the first step to teaching them how to help their child improve their outcomes. However, it’s also critical that you give them a chance to put the theory that they’ve learnt into practice. This will help you identify any issues with how they put the theory into practice, so you can make recommendations and adjustments to improve the parents’ implementation of specific lessons or ideas. They can then practice it again to ensure that their child is receiving the best possible training at home as well.
5. Factoring in the parents’ needs
The reality is that many parents and guardians have their own day-to-day challenges that may affect how you implement your ABA parent training. For example, they may have limited time due to other family commitments, insufficient financial resources, or they may even lack the education to easily get to grips with parent ABA training. These, and other factors, can have a dramatic effect on how you implement your parent ABA training.
Be sure to listen to everything that parents have to say before finalizing your parent ABA training program. This will help you to avoid developing any potential solutions that are difficult or simply impossible for a parent or guardian to implement.
Also, while you may be the ABA therapy expert, it’s a good idea to listen to any suggestions that the parent or guardian may have to see if they have any value for their training program. If their suggestions don’t offer any tangible value, you can politely inform them why their suggestion wouldn’t work and offer some alternatives.
Simplify day-to-day operations with Missing Piece ABA therapy billing
If you’re looking to optimize your practice’s day-to-day operations so that you can focus on implementing parent training or so that you can offer your clients a better service, be sure to consider Missing Piece.
Missing Piece is an ABA billing service provider that has more than a decade of experience. We’ve been assisting ABA practices all across the US, offering solutions that maximize reimbursement, provide greater access to payer and billing expertise, can scale up as your practice grows, and provide you with more time for patient care.
Contact us to learn more about Missing Piece and how we can help you and your ABA therapy practice.