A Verbal Approach, LLC
Services (7+ yrs)
Our school-aged program provides focused services to expand on current skills, teach new age-appropriate skills, and get kids ready for school transitions, increased social complexities, and even start training vocational skills. Our goal is to get them ready to become adults at the highest level of independence possible. All or some of these methods will be included in your child's therapy based on their individual need and the intensity of services requested. Focused services typically occur at an intensity of 10-20 hours per week.
Communication Training
Teaching functional communication so our kids can tell us what they need is our focus and priority. We also want to expand communication to include commenting on the environment, retelling events, asking questions, and having conversations. This can include improving spoken language, PECS, and AAC devices.
Social Skills
We want to provide our kids with the opportunity to have meaningful engagement with similarly aged peers and take those skills into the school and community settings. We can work on conversational skills, understanding social situations, and more.
Self-Care Skills
Increasing independence in self-care skills carries benefits into adulthood. These self-care skills can include dressing and grooming, tolerating the dentist or doctor, adhering to medication regimens, completing age-appropriate chores in the home, participating in the community, and more.
Feeding Therapy
If your child is a picky eater, we can help. ABA uses an evidence-based approach to desensitize your child to trying new foods and adding healthy foods from all the food groups to their regular diet. We also work on mealtime skills like sitting for meals and using utensils.
Leisure Skills
As children get older, play becomes less structured and can include more independent activities. We will teach how to engage in individual and group activities, hobbies, and other activities for them to find enjoyment in and share with others, as well as good-sportsmanship behavior.
Vocational Skills
Even at a young age, we can start teaching the prerequisite skills for future jobs, which will also be helpful for high school, higher education, and independent living. This can include filling out forms, alphabetizing, basic math, advanced sorting, and more.
Other Services
Challenging Behavior
Challenging behaviors are any behaviors that interfere with learning, social opportunities, and participation in the community. We will assess challenging behaviors by conducting a functional analysis to determine why the behaviors are occurring, then create a behavior intervention plan to reduce and replace those behaviors.
*Severe challenging behaviors will not be able to be addressed in an in-home setting.
Parent Training
We don't just want our kids to show their skills in our therapy sessions, we want everything to generalize to the home environment when we're not there. Parent Training is a vital part of this. We will educate you on the principles and concepts of ABA, how these concepts apply to your child, and how to continue teaching these skills when we're no there.
Collaboration
If your child receives any other services, such as speech, OT, PT, or others we will collaborate with them, including observing some of their sessions, to ensure everyone is on the same page and we are working together to achieve the best results.
We can also attend ARD meetings, review IEP goals, and provide any school-related supports needed.
We also encourage weekly outings to the library, mall, grocery store, or even Mcdonald's to work on generalizing skills to the community and teaching appropriate behaviors in these new settings.
*At least one parent or guardian must be present for all outings. Parents cover any costs for themselves and their child/family while A Verbal Approach covers any costs for the therapists. Therapists are NOT to transport clients, but they may ride with you if both agree.