• October 4, 2022
• Center for Developmental Psychiatry

How to Choose the Right Autism Spectrum Disorder Treatment for Your Child

Autism. It is a mental disorder that millions of Americans have to live with.

In 2022, it is estimated that about 1 in every 44 children in the United States has autism spectrum disorder.

This is usually tracked at an early age, so parents have a lot of time to seek autism spectrum disorder treatment. Of course, there are several different treatments available for people to use, but it may be hard to know what the best one is.

What is the best autism spectrum disorder treatment? How many different treatment programs are out there?

This is your guide.

Building Skills

One way you can go for autism spectrum disorder therapy is to build on skills that your child may already possess. This can be an activity that they like to do and from there, center the treatment around that activity.

For example, say the child is great at solving puzzles. You notice this right away and give them bigger and bigger puzzles. Along the way, you also give them more difficult puzzles for them to solve.

This type of treatment can be great for teaching children patience and helping them solve a conflict. You can also really test the waters with children by giving them a situation that does not have a clear answer.

When it comes to a puzzle, one thing that you can do here is to intentionally keep a couple of pieces from a bigger puzzle out of the box and hide them. Then, have the child solve most of the puzzle until they run into this dilemma.

See how they approach this situation and if they get angry, use this as a situation to help teach them how to calm down. See how persistent the child is and if they give up, explain to them that in life, not everything has a concrete answer.

This type of treatment is called Pivotal Response Training. The goal of this style is to use the interests and skills that the child already likes and build your lessons into those activities and skills.

Positive Reinforcement

Another direction you can go for treatment is the positive reinforcement route. This treatment looks to encourage good behavior rather than focusing on punishing bad behavior. To do this, there are often rewards attached for good behaviors done during this type of treatment.

Let’s say that a child in treatment likes to play a video game that is available to them. A parent or a therapist notices this and uses that information to their advantage.

A parent could tell the child that if they do all their homework or take out the garbage, they can get extra time to play video games. This will encourage the child to do that task knowing how that will benefit them after it is done.

A therapist can tell a child that if they listen to their instructions about the activity that they want them to do, then the child can play video games for a set amount of time after. This can get the child to comply in learning the skills that they need.

This type of treatment falls under the Applied Behavioral Analysis method. The goal here is to reward desired behaviors and teach kids the appropriate behavior in certain situations. Then, as time goes on, you slowly start to fade out those rewards in hopes that the newly taught behavior has sunk in.

Structured Treatment

Another option you have to go about treatment is to use a very structured format. This method has a parent or therapist break down everything step-by-step and has the child listen to repeated instructions.

An example can be trying to tell a child where everything in the house goes. You can show the child that the garbage goes in the garbage can, the recyclables go in the recycling bin, the toys go in the toy box when they are done playing with them, and more.

To do this, you have to show the child all of the items that you want them to place in the right spot themselves. Then, have them perform the action. Do this over and over again until the child has this down to a science.

This can be great if you want to teach children what to do in certain scenarios too. It can be experiencing emotions like anger, fear, or sadness. Teach the child how to handle their own emotions like that and what to do if other people are experiencing those emotions.

This type of treatment falls under the Discrete Trial Training method. Here, the goal is to treat children through a very regimented system that is structured down to the last detail. Then, children learn proper behaviors through memory and repetition.

With this type of treatment, children may end up being able to perform these actions as easily as breathing. They will have it down to a science and not even blink when they see this situation pop up in the outside world.

Get the Right Autism Spectrum Disorder Treatment

These are just a few of the options that you have when it comes to autism spectrum disorder treatment. Now, you have to choose the best method for your child.

Will you take the route of building off of their skills, encourage positive reinforcement, or go through structured training and repetition to get the child in the right direction?

If you know your child well enough, one of these methods should fit your needs. Do you need a treatment plan for autism spectrum disorder? Schedule an appointment with us today.