What We Do

 “A scratch on a toy”
Recently, we saw a scratch on a toy and found out that Long had scratched that toy earlier. At the beginning of Long’s training, he seldom made eye contact with others or responded to his name. Also, he would pinch or scratch every object on his hands. Therefore, our therapist designed different exercises to help him. As Long loved music, when he successfully made eye contact with our therapist or responded to his name, our therapist would sing songs and dance with him. Besides, he was reinforced when he could hold objects softly. After a month of training, he has become more aware of the environment and has improved a lot in making eye contact with people. We were also happy to see that he started to hold objects gently!

“I want to play in the ball pit.”
At the beginning of Ocean’s training, he could not talk. Since Ocean had the desire to speak, our training started with teaching him verbal imitation. Ocean learnt to imitate one-syllable words by looking at the shape of the therapist’s mouth. In the process of training, we found out that Ocean loved playing in the ball pit very much. Therefore, our therapist trained him to point at a card showing a ball pit to indicate that he wanted it and later taught him to say out the words of “ball pit” in Chinese, which were three syllables. He was immediately rewarded and praised when he successfully pronounced similarly. After a period of training, Ocean was able to say the words of “ball pit” clearly and also say “help me” actively when he needed assistance from his therapist!

"Learning an after-school routine"
Tung is a boy who lacked of self-motivation and self-care ability. His mother told us that he could not finish taking off shoes, putting shoes away, hanging up school bags and storing his personal belongings in appropriate locations independently after school. Therefore, our therapist helped him to learn the routine of packing things through practices. A visual schedule showing sequential steps of the routine was presented to Tung, so that he could understand and memorise the sequence of events better. Our therapist also prepared some food that he liked as reinforcements to motivate him. After a series of training, Tung gradually relied less on visual or verbal prompting and could eventually complete all the steps independently.

“I have learnt many new vocabularies!”
Hin had weak eye contact with others, low intention to speak, and he seldom responded when his name was called at the beginning. Our therapist used various toys as reinforcers to let Hin understand that he would get his desired toys more effectively when he looked at others. We had also designed other programmes for Hin, such as learning how to sit nicely and using cards on different topics to increase his vocabulary. We successfully raised his intention to speak. Both Hin’s mother and his kindergarten teacher were aware of his significant improvement in language ability. After the training, Hin not only had more interactions with other people, but also sustained attention on tasks. His rapid progress was really amazing!

Long, Ocean, Tung and Hin were invited to present their experience in receiving ABA services with Autism Partnership Foundation (operating in Hong Kong) (APF, HK). Long, Ocean, Tung and Hin are past beneficiaries of APF, HK.