ABA therapy examples, in real moments.
Eight techniques you’ll hear named in a treatment plan, each shown in an ordinary bit of family life rather than defined at you.
- Eight techniques, eight real moments
- Most of it looks like playing
- Written for parents, not clinicians
Examples of ABA therapy techniques
Asking instead of grabbing
Positive reinforcement
Your child reaches across the table for the crackers. Before the grab lands, you hold the bowl up and wait. They sign or say "cracker" — and the cracker arrives immediately. The speed matters more than the size: a reward that comes two seconds later teaches the thing that happened two seconds later.
Learning to wash hands
Prompting and fading
Week one, you guide their hands through every step. Week two, you only tap the soap. Week three, you point at the sink. Week four, you say nothing. Fading the help on a plan — rather than whenever you remember — is what separates a taught skill from a child who has learned to wait for an adult.
Getting dressed
Chaining
Getting dressed is eleven small steps, not one. Backward chaining does the first ten for them and lets them do the last — pulling the shirt down — so the routine always ends in a win. Then you hand back step ten, then nine.
From sound to word
Shaping
A child who says "buh" for ball gets the ball. Once "buh" is reliable, only "ba" earns it. Then "ball". You reward successive approximations rather than holding out for the finished version, which never arrives on its own.
The 4pm meltdown
Functional communication training
The screaming at homework time reliably ends homework. So it isn't defiance — it's a working sentence. Teach a card, a sign or a word for "break" that works faster and more reliably than the scream, and honour it every time at first. The scream fades because it became the slower option.
Leaving the playground
Antecedent strategies
Most of the work happens before the hard moment, not after it. A two-minute warning, a visual timer, and telling them what comes next changes the transition more than anything you can do once the meltdown has started.
Brushing teeth
Task analysis
Break the routine into its actual steps, then teach and measure each one. It's how you find out that the sticking point isn't brushing at all — it's the sound of the tap.
The skill that only works at the table
Generalisation
A child who names colours perfectly in a session and never at the supermarket hasn't finished learning them. Good programs deliberately practise a skill in new rooms, with new people and new objects — otherwise you've taught a trick, not a skill.
Want to see it on your kid?
Every one of these gets written into a plan around your child specifically — what they already do, what they want, and which moment in your day is hardest.
