BellaOnline Forums Health and Fitness Autism Spectrum Disorders How many hours a week is best for ABA?

I'm talking about ABA or other Behavioral Support for Austism (as distinct from Speech Thearapy or Occupational Therapy, which is separate). What is an ideal number of hours per week for ABA / Behavioral Support? My autistic son is nearly 4 yrs old. His receptive language is OK (a bit behind but not too bad so he is high-functioning at least in that area) but his expressive language is really terribly low, and he has a lot of trouble learning new skills of any sort (whether motor or language). How many hours of ABA would be best, per week, in this situation? By the way thank you to everyone who has been bearing with me and my questions on the Austism board here over the past few months! Especially Bonnie, Connie and Vi who have been most active on my questions. I appreciate your help greatly, and welcome input from you and from any others who would be willing to give advice.

Do you have funding for the ABA? Usually the assessment determines the number of hours. But at that age it is somewhere around 20-40 hrs a week but really dependent on what he needs to learn.

Does not really matter what others are getting, but what the child needs.

Thanks Bonnie, your answer as always is so helpful and to the point. We are in the process of applying for funding for ABA, so I can see now from what you said that it will all come down to the assessment results. And what you said totally makes sense about not worrying about what others are doing but what the child needs.