ABA Behavioral-based Social Skills Group

Follow a group of young children as they learn to interact with one another

Visual:  
SOCIAL SKILLS FOR PRE-SCHOOLERS

Rachel Mulder: 
Come on in, Gabe. Hi, Michael.

Visual:  
FIRST DAY

Rachel Mulder: 
It’s Pollywogs! Come on in!  Hi, Ellie, come and play. Hey, Travis, let’s put your shoe back on. 

RON LEAF
DIRECTOR OF AUTISM PARTNERSHIP:  
One of the problems of autism and Asperger’s is that children are often isolated. They don’t have meaningful friendships. The kinds of friends they have aren’t reciprocal relationships.

Rachel Mulder:  
Play with your friends. 

Jeremy Leaf:  
Travis, you didn’t give it to him. Ask again.

Jeremy Leaf:  
Travis, you’re not listening.

Ron Leaf:  
When you have meaningful friendships, then you have a high quality of life. So ultimately our social groups are to develop the social skills that lead to meaningful friendships. They result in a high quality of life.

Jeremy Leaf:  
Everyone stand up. Good job. You did it. Nice job.

Rachel Mulder:  
Oh, no, Travis.

Jeremy Leaf:  
Oh, no. Patty, you see you just need to stand up. 

JEREMY LEAF
ABA INSTRUCTOR:  
In the beginning, no one was really playing with each other. They didn’t seem to even be aware that the other kids were around. They were just kind of in their own little world, playing.

Jeremy Leaf:
(low whistle device) Red carpet! No, Brock, you didn’t do it. I said, ‘Go to the red carpet.’

Jeremy Leaf: 
It’s typical for a three or four-year-old to get upset, but the level of tantruming behaviors they were showing when they were asked to do something they didn’t want to do was pretty much above normal expectations. 

Rachel Mulder: 
Ok, it’s ok. Come with me, come here.

Jeremy Leaf:  
Let’s see who’s sitting so cool. Wow, Brock’s sitting nicely.

Rachel Mulder:  
That’s better. You can do it.

Jeremy Leaf:  
Everybody say, ‘Cheese.’

RACHEL MULDER
ABA INSTRUCTOR: 
The basic things we want to teach are the basic learning to learn skills, so being able to sit and wait with their hands back, controlling self-stimulation. 

Rachel Mulder:  
When I say, ‘Good morning,’ to you, I want you to say, ‘Good morning, Rachel.’ Good morning, Sabrina. Sabrina, you didn’t say anything.

Several Children:  
Hi, Rachel.

Rachel Mulder:  
Hi. Oh.

Jeremy Leaf:  
Oh, no.

Rachel Mulder:  
Oh, I think I missed the hair. Kitty, go back to your seat. I’ll hold it, Milo. Thanks. And go away, hair.

Rachel Mulder:  
We’re going to try to catch the kids being good, of course with reinforcement, so we’re picking out toys and things that we think the kids will like and will be specifically reinforcing to them, and then whatever our target behavior is. So the sitting, the looking at the teacher, uh, hands to yourself; we’re going to catch them and be delivering reinforcement for those things.

Rachel Mulder: 
(playing with doll and children) Um, um, um, um. Um, um, um, um. Good, I love that sitting, boys and girls. No. Are you Ok? It’s Ok.

Jeremy Leaf:  
There you go.

Rachel Mulder:  
Sit down.

Jeremy Leaf:  
Wow, Milo.

Jeremy Leaf:  
I don’t think we’re expecting, like change overnight, but I would say within a few months hopefully we’re, and I don’t think it’s going to go from zero to a hundred percent, but hopefully we see a nice gain in a few months.

Visual:  
10 WEEKS LATER

Jeremy Leaf:  
What’d you guys get? 

Brock:  
Food.

Jeremy Leaf:  
Oh, what kind of food did you get, Sabrina?

Sabrina:  
Um, um, lemon.

Jeremy Leaf: 
Ok, one lemon. What else did you get? What is it?

Sabrina and Brock:  
Bread. 

Jeremy Leaf: 
Bread. Nice. Ok, that’ll be fifteen dollars.

Sabrina:  
Here.

Jeremy Leaf:
Thank you. Here’s your change, Brock.

Rachel Mulder:  
I’ve seen huge improvements in the kids in the past two months.

Jeremy Leaf:
Check it out. Brock, you were talking to your friend. You get to move up. Look for a moment. You get to move up to awesome. You were talking to your friend. Sabrina, were you talking to your friend? And Sabrina, you’re moving up to awesome too. High five! Nice talking to your friends. Ok, you guys can keep shopping.

Rachel Mulder:  
One of the main improvements, it’s just that they’re so happy to be here. There is very little crying now. Uh, they come in and they’re happy and they’re excited to see each other. Their affect has improved.

Jeremy Leaf:
You guys, it’s time for fun, games . . .

Everyone:  
With Pollywogs.

Jeremy Leaf:
Everyone stand up, find your partner.

Sabrina: 
Ellie!

Ellie:  
Sabrina!

Jeremy Leaf: 
Good job. Back to back. Toes to toes. Wow, such good listeners.
Hug to hug. Good job. Come over here, Pollywogs.

Rachel Mulder:  
 
Another big improvement is just the learning to learn skills. They’re all able to sit and pay attention for longer periods of time, following group instructions and individual instructions. 

Rachel Mulder:  
 
Alright, now, we’re going to look at our old lady. Let me see what pieces I have. She was very hungry. I have a nice kitty cat for . . .

Child:  
I’ve the cat!

Jeremy Leaf:
quiet now.

Rachel Mulder:  
  
For reinforcement, we introduced this color chart system where the kids each have a clip, and they move up higher on the color chart for good behavior of the different skills and behaviors that we’re targeting for each of them, and they will move down for, um, behaviors or things that we don’t want to see.

Brock:  
No.

Rachel Mulder:  
Oh, no, that’s not Ok, no. Sit back up. That was not nice, that was not sharing. Ok, so look, you’re not up on Superkid anymore. You have to lose your cape.

Jeremy Leaf: 
What’s really nice is in the beginning, we were having to use a tangible or a toy every time they answered a question, every time they met a goal or complied or responded. And now, by using the color chart we’re able to reinforce less frequently so they’re really starting to work on those generalizations of the skills and needing less frequent reinforcement.

Jeremy Leaf: 
Sabrina, check it out. Were you having fun with your friend, huh? 

Everyone:  
Superkid!

Jeremy Leaf:  
Go get a key! Yeah! And Michael, were you having fun with your friend? Yes. 

Everyone:   
Superkid! 

Jeremy Leaf:
Go get a key! Yeah!

Jeremy Leaf: 
We use corrective behavior when they’re not meeting their goals, if they’re not listening, not using those learning to learn skills.

Rachel Mulder:   
Put it on the right way. Put it on. Ok. Ok, go back to your spot, Travis. Who has the spider? Ok, so Travis, that’s not what you need to answer. So Travis, you’re moving, you’re moving down. You’re not on Superkid anymore.

Jeremy Leaf: 
No cape.

Rachel Mulder:   
No cape.

Ron Leaf:  
Research shows you learn as much from corrective feedback as you learn from positive feedback. You want sort of a balance and you want sort of a blend, and you want quite a bit of positive feedback. But using corrective feedback is essential. It’s, you don’t learn if you don’t hear, ‘No, that’s not the right way to do it.’ It’s how you do it. You do it in a supportive way. You do it in a constructive way. You do it, but you’re direct and you help them understand what’s right and what’s not so good. And so we’re, we’re an advocate certainly of using corrective feedback. As a teacher, I don’t know how you teach without using corrective feedback. 

Jeremy Leaf:  
And Sabrina, you can line up. And Brock, go line up. 

Brock:   
I can’t.

Jeremy Leaf: 
Now that does it, Brock. You’re not a Superkid anymore. Bummer. And Travis, you can line up too. There you go. Nice hands to yourself.

Jeremy Leaf: 
The first day it would have been absurd to even try to go outside and be out there because they would have been running all over the place. And today they’re walking in line on the way to the park. They’re playing games in the park. Even if some, a kid runs away, he’s compliant enough that we say, ‘Come on back,’ and he comes back right away. Just being able to work in different settings is really important, I think. So many times people think of ABA as so rigid that you sit at a table across from them, and here we’re in a group that looks really typical and we’re outside playing games. It’s really nice to be able to do that.

Ron Leaf:  
And over a course of two months, now they start getting upset when they have to go home. They, they look forward to when the other children come, and they jump up and down. They’re so excited because now they do have social interests, and now they see the importance of being around other children, the joy of that. 

Jeremy Leaf:  
That’s right! (high fives) Good job! Way to go.

Ron Leaf: 
And knowing that, they indeed want to have friends. And they crave that. And you know from a social standpoint, they’re going to be just Ok. You know as adults they’re going to be in meaningful relationships. Our children have acquired that love of social connection.

Jeremy Leaf: 
Go, Pollywogs! Wow!