#celebrateeverymilestone
Working with children diagnosed with ASD has given me some of the best rewards. As an ABA therapist, I get the chance to share in moments that some families don’t know if they will ever see. I get to celebrate milestones every day with my clients and could go on about all the progress I have seen in my 3 1/2 years with BCI.
A moment in my career that shaped me was when I began working in Early Intervention. My first case was a client who was non-verbal. As a team, we worked on helping with sign and vocalizing what we were signing as we assisted them. I was able to celebrate with the client and their family every day when a new word was signed and eventually when they were speaking to request. When I began working with this client I would model how to sign a word, then provide them with the prompt to do the sign themselves. Within two weeks of sessions the signs were independent and about a month later we were getting spoken words. As I had to make the shift and transition off the client when they aged out of Early Intervention Services, they were talking in simple sentences. The process of getting a child to speak for the first time is something I will carry with me in my career. It is not about getting a child with ASD to where we think they should be but rather them showing us where they need to be in that moment and helping them learn from where they are to get them to goals we set out to achieve.
The work that we do in Applied Behavior Analysis gives families a framework to help their child succeed in their abilities. Celebrating clients is something I get to do every day. On a daily basis, I see clients hit milestones, something that I believe not many people can say.
