Early Intervention Program

Behaviour Intervention (BI) Sessions

What do the sessions look like?

BI therapy sessions include the following components that shift in relative weight in response to your child’s learning needs:

• Play that follows the child’s interest.  This portion of the intervention focuses on the core challenges among those living with Autism Spectrum Disorders: increasing social engagement, reciprocal interactions, self-initiated requesting, generalizing of skills, flexible problem solving and social referencing.  The key is to identify the naturally occurring motivation and using that motivation to reinforce the targeted skills.
• Semi-structured teaching: Teaching is done in the context of a fun, adult-directed play activity that targets language skills, cognitive skills, motor skills, academic skills, etc.  For example, if a child is interested in dinosaurs and your target is identifying big or little, you could have the child feed a dinosaur either the big item or the little item. 
• Structured Teaching: Discrete trial teaching (an ABA teaching method) is used to teach language skills, cognitive skills and academic skills.  For example, if you are teaching nouns, you could show a target item to the child and ask “What is it?”. Motivation is maintained through frequent positive reinforcement and high levels of success.
• Natural Environment Teaching: ABA methods are applied in everyday routines and settings such as snack time, self-help routines and outings.  Every moment is a learning moment!

Where do sessions occur?

Most children will benefit from a combination of home-based and centre-based therapy sessions.  Reach the Peak and parents collaborate to develop a plan that best suits your child’s learning needs.