What does ABA therapy look like for a teenager?
Mostly it looks like practising real life in the places real life happens.
There are no flashcards at the kitchen table. There is a lot of doing the thing your teenager actually wants to be able to do.
Skills a teenager needs are community skills. Practising them in a therapy room and hoping they transfer is the least reliable way to teach them.
A session, roughly
It usually starts with a check-in, because a teenager who has had a bad day at school is not going to practise job skills well and pretending otherwise wastes everyone's time.
Then the work, which is normally a real task rather than a drill. Making a meal, planning a journey, handling a shop, rehearsing a conversation your teenager is dreading.
Our RBTs deliver that work after 40 hours of training and a competency assessment, with a BCBA supervising at roughly 20%, about four times the field minimum.
Assent looks different at 16
A four-year-old shows you they are done by walking away. A sixteen-year-old can tell you, and can also sit there silently doing none of it.
We treat both as information. If a young person is refusing consistently, the plan is wrong, not the teenager.
Our full position on consent, and what our therapists do when a young person withdraws assent, is on the assent and ethical ABA page.
What gets measured
The goals are written so that you can tell whether they happened. Not "improved independence", but whether your teenager made their own lunch four days out of five.
How we structure a teenage program is described on the ABA therapy for teenagers page. We use VB-MAPP and ABLLS-R to establish where a young person is starting from. For teenagers the assessment matters less than the goal list, because by this age the goals are specific to one person's life.
Ask any provider what they will measure and how often you will see it. It is a fair question and the answer tells you a lot.
Frequently asked questions from parents
Q: Where does a teenage session happen?
A: In the home, and out in the places the skill belongs. That might be a bus route, a shop, a kitchen, or a school building where we have access.
Q: How long is a session for a teenager?
A: It varies with the goals and what a BCBA determines is clinically necessary. Teenagers usually run fewer hours than a young child in an early intensive program.
Q: Does my teenager get a say in the goals?
A: Yes, and it changes the outcome. A goal a young person picked is one they will practise; a goal imposed on them usually is not.
Q: What skills do teenagers usually work on?
A: Independence and daily living, self-advocacy, social situations, emotional regulation, community safety, and getting ready for what comes after school.
Q: Can ABA happen at my teen’s school?
A: Sometimes. We provide ABA in school settings and we do the outreach, but the school decides whether to grant access. Some Colorado schools welcome it and some make it difficult.
More on the teenage years
ABA Therapy for Teenagers in Colorado
How Budding Futures builds a program for the teenage years.
Is 13 too old for ABA therapy?
What changes when you start in the teenage years.
ABA for teens diagnosed late
Starting after a diagnosis that arrived in secondary school.
Want to know what this would look like for your teenager?
Tell us what you want to be different in six months. We will tell you whether ABA is the right way to get there.