What We Do

“I want to eat biscuits!”

Jason was weak at sentence construction and pronunciation at the beginning of the training, our therapist therefore set up many situations to motivate Jason to communicate with others and taught him to say “I want” to get what he wanted. One day, Jason looked at his therapist and said, “I want to eat biscuits!” He has improved a lot on spontaneous language and sentence structure. His therapist also revealed that he spoke complete sentences more often than before.

“Imitation”

At the beginning of Chi Hin’s training, Chi Hin kept on crying over his mother leaving. He could not express himself by words and had very restricted interests. Our therapist first increased Chi Hin’s compliance level by showing him different toys and teaching him different play skills. Hin has gradually started to stay calm while separating with his mother. The therapist later focused on teaching him imitation, starting from imitating body actions of others, to mouth shapes and even sounds. At the end of the training, Chi Hin could imitate many body actions and has also learnt some vowels.

“A screaming kid”

Many children with autism often express their needs by screaming, so does Chun Hei. In the beginning of the training, whenever our therapists requested Chun Hei to tidy up his toys, he would scream, spit or even hit himself. Through some training programmes, Chun Hei has gradually become able to control himself and to focus in class to learn different objects’ names, then we rarely heard him screaming again.

“Respond quickly”

What would you do if a kid does not respond to his or her name?

One day, our therapist called Isaac’s name while he was playing. Isaac did not respond purposely. In order to increase Isaac’s responsiveness and compliance, our therapist gave him reinforcers when he had complied or responded to her. Through intensive training, Isaac has learnt to quickly respond to people and to follow instructions.

“Overcome the fear”

Ka Ip was weak at controlling his emotions. He was also scared of noisy environments and arguing scenes. Our therapists therefore prepared some fear stimuli and first showed Ka Ip a mildly feared stimulus. When Ka Ip felt comfortable with this level of stimulus, he would be presented with a stronger stimulus. The time of being exposed to the stimulus would also become longer. After the treatment, Ka Ip was able to watch videos of arguing scenes calmly.

Jason, Chi Hin, Chun Hei, Isaac and Ka Ip were invited to present their experience in receiving ABA services with Autism Partnership Foundation (operating in Hong Kong) (APF, HK). Jason, Chi Hin, Chun Hei, Isaac and Ka Ip are past beneficiaries of APF, HK.