Andy’s Behaviour Answer:  ABA

Liz Steele

Andy’s Mother

ABA, Andy’s Behaviour Answer, also stands for Applied Behavioural Analysis.  So, you ask, what the heck is that?  Good question!  In this article, I give a parent’s view of ABA:  what it is and how we use it in our family.  I particularly hope to offer the knowledge of the ABA approach for behaviour management to parents of strong-willed children around the age of 3 or 4 because I wish we had known about the program when Andy was a pre-schooler.  I think it would have helped us to avoid distress in elementary school.

In the fall of 2002, Andy, our son with Down syndrome, was nine years old and had started Grade 4.  Andy’s lack of cooperation had always been an issue to one degree or another.  It got very serious because he was getting bigger, and physical acting out was not safe.  In October 2002, our only options to settle his behaviour were prescription drugs or ABA.  The thought of having to feed Andy prescription drugs was sickening at best, traumatic at worst.

We (teacher, educational assistant, and parents) all believed that Andy was so very capable of being included and learning alongside his same-age peers without drugs.  We learned of ABA through community connections to an autistic child who was also working on behaviour issues, especially cooperation.  After only two weeks in the program, success for Andy was obvious.  After only two months, Andy was happy in a full-day, integrated school program.  ABA combined with the skills of a teacher experienced in special education created a Grade 4 year that was the inclusion experience we hoped school would be for Andy. 

Definitions for ABA are plentiful.  I like the one at the web site http://rsaffran. tripod.com/whatisaba.html#top: 

“Applied” means practice, rather than research or philosophy. “Behaviour analysis” may be read as “learning theory,” that is, understanding what leads to (or doesn't lead to) new skills.  (This is a simplification:  ABA is just as much about maintaining and using skills as about learning.)

ABA is part of a psychologist’s field of study.  Two journals regularly publish information on the subject, the Applied Behavioral Science Review (Elsevier Science) and The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science (Sage Publications).  When I was searching around, ABA references kept coming up with “for example, autism and Down syndrome.”  With references such as these, I do wonder why parents of children with Down syndrome are not notified about ABA as a matter of course.  The particular ABA program we chose was developed in California by Dr. Ivar Lovaas and has been used in British Columbia by many families with an autistic child for early intervention therapy.  Throughout this article, I refer to our ABA program as simply “ABA.”

For us, ABA is (1) a way to define an individualized, successful learning framework for acquiring skills, (2) a behaviour management approach that makes sense for a cognitively delayed child, and (3) if necessary, to put (1) and (2) together to create programs that teach a child how to behave. 

Click here to read the full paper (19 pages)

If you have had good success with utilizing ABA Therapy for your child with Down syndrome, we encourage you to comment on this blog.   Please note, Liz Steele can also be contacted directly at the following email address:    This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Thank you to Liz Steele for sharing this excellent and beneficial information on our blog.