Discovering Behaviour Therapy
I started my undergraduate degree in Early Childhood Studies at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. I went into this degree not knowing anything about what early childhood is or what this degree would be about (more on this craziness in a different post). It ended up being a great four years and I learned so much about the development of children and how they learn.
During my undergraduate degree, I learned about different disorders that can occur while a child is in-utero and also about disorders that can be diagnosed once a child is a bit older (18 months+). One of the disorders is autism spectrum disorder, which is a social and communicative disorder.
During this degree, I had four placements in four different environments, from a toddler classroom in year 1, to an Ontario early years centre in year 2, a hospital setting in year 3, and in a behaviour therapy setting in year 4. I learned so much from all of these placements, but by far, the most interesting was my placement in a behaviour therapy setting.
It was so fundamentally different from everything my entire degree had been teaching me. Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) is a school of thought under behaviourism that was created by B.F Skinner. Intensive Behaviour Intervention (IBI), follows ABA principles, and is very different from a childcare environment. It consists of an instructor therapist (IT) and one client (child, adult, or senior). There are times when an IT is teaching more than one client (2 clients = dyad, 3 clients= triad, 4+ clients= group instruction).
My placement at this centre was very difficult and it challenged my way of thinking about how people learn. It made me very interested in learning about how ABA works and the applications of ABA in the lives of children with autism, as well as my own personal life.
Having the experience from my placement lead me into a government-funded organization where I learned a lot more about how to be a good IT. I learned what to do when a child is having a behaviour, how to reinforce different behaviours, how not to reinforce behaviours, and so much more.
These experiences have lead me to my current role of being a clinic coordinator and senior therapist for a centre and I’m pursuing my Masters in Applied Disability Studies.
