Therapy

How to tell if your child's ABA programme is working

23 October 2026

A few months into ABA, most parents ask themselves the same question: is this working? Sometimes the answer is obvious. More often, progress is gradual enough to be hard to see from inside the week, and a bad fortnight can make a good month feel like failure. Here is how to judge it more fairly, using both the data and what you see at home.

What progress looks like in the data

Every ABA programme should be measuring something specific. Each goal has a target — "asks for help using words or a picture", "stays at the table for the whole snack", "puts on shoes with no more than one prompt" — and the therapist records how your child does each session.

Progress usually shows up in a few ways:

Less help needed. Your child moves from needing a hand-over-hand prompt, to a gesture, to doing it alone.
More often, or more reliably. A skill that appeared once a session now appears most times it is needed.
Targets mastered and replaced. Goals should not stay the same for months. As one is learned, the next is introduced.
Difficult behaviour changing. A behaviour that gets in the way happens less often, less intensely or for a shorter time, usually alongside a new skill that does the same job for your child.

Ask to see the data in a form that makes sense to you. A simple graph for each target, talked through at a monthly review, is far more useful than a long report full of terms you have to look up. Expect ups and downs: illness, a new sibling, a holiday or a change of routine can all show up as a dip, and that is normal.

What progress looks like at home

Data matters, but so does your own sense of daily life. Look for:

Skills appearing outside sessions. Your child uses a new word, request or routine with you, with grandparents or at nursery, not only with the therapist. Therapists call this generalisation, and it is one of the most important signs.
Skills lasting. Something learned a month ago is still there.
Easier moments. A transition that always ended in tears sometimes goes smoothly; a mealtime is calmer; a car journey is manageable.
Your child's mood about sessions. Most children in a respectful programme are happy to see their therapist, or at least settle quickly.
Your own confidence. If parent coaching is working, you should feel more able to handle the hard moments yourself.

Progress in ABA is usually measured in small steps, and it rarely follows a straight line. What matters is the direction over several months.

Red flags worth taking seriously

Some signs suggest a programme needs a closer look:

No data is shared, or nobody can explain what is being measured
The same targets have run for months without change or explanation
The supervising BCBA rarely sees your child, or you have never met them
Your child is consistently distressed before or during sessions
Goals focus mainly on compliance, or on stopping harmless behaviour such as stimming
Skills appear only with the therapist and never anywhere else
You are not involved, and nobody is coaching you
When you raise a concern, the response is defensive rather than curious

One of these on its own is a reason to ask questions. Several together are a reason to ask for a change. Our article on modern ABA explains what a respectful programme looks like.

When and how to ask for changes

The monthly review is the natural place. Bring specific observations — "she uses the picture card with the therapist but never with us", "mornings have been harder since the new target started" — and ask what the data shows. A good BCBA will welcome this, because you see your child in hours they never do.

Changes can take several forms: rewriting a target that has stalled, changing how a skill is taught, adjusting the hours, moving some sessions to a different setting, adding coaching for you, or changing the therapist if the relationship is not working. The question to ask is not "is ABA working?" in general, but "what is working, what is not, and what are we changing next?"

If, after an honest review, you feel the approach itself is wrong for your child, it is reasonable to step back and get an independent view. Our comparison of DIR/Floortime and ABA may help you think about the alternatives.

How we review progress

At Special Minds, the RBT takes data every session and the BCBA reviews the programme with you every month: what has been mastered, what has stalled, and what changes next. Parent coaching is part of every programme. If the fit between your child and the RBT is wrong, we replace the RBT, and one month's notice ends the arrangement at any time. If you want a separate view of where your child is now, a standalone assessment (AED 499) with our Education and Program Director is available on its own.